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Why do
Why do millennials use millennials use
Facebook? Enduring insights Facebook?
Grace J. Ambrose
Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business, Faculty of Marketing,
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA 171
Juan (Gloria) Meng Received 15 March 2018
Revised 14 August 2018
Department of Marketing, College of Business, Minnesota State University, 8 January 2019
Mankato, Mankato, Minnesota, USA, and Accepted 9 March 2019

Paul J. Ambrose
College of Business and Economics, University of Wisconsin Whitewater,
Whitewater, Wisconsin, USA

Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to address the following questions: What is enduring about consumer behavior
on social media given that digital and social media (DSM) technologies change rapidly? Why do millennials
use social media to the extent they do? The authors’ review revealed that a prevailing theoretical approach
that may help answer these questions is inadequate. The technology acceptance model (TAM) from
information systems was grafted into marketing to explain consumer technology adoption. TAM predicts
Facebook adoption effectively, as demonstrated in the authors’ first study, but does not go beyond that in
explaining the why’s behind its use. In a second study, the authors used the means-end approach (MEC)
complementarily to unearth the why’s of millennials’ use of Facebook.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors used a mixed-methods design combining the structural
modeling of TAM with the probing one-on-one interviews and laddering of MEC.
Findings – The authors found that the laddering process both widened and deepened TAM’s scope. It not
only confirmed the importance of the TAM attributes, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, but it
also revealed others, in determining adoption. It was also able to dig deeper from these to uncover a mesh of
fundamental values that millennials used Facebook to satisfy, such as belongingness, pleasure, social
acceptance and inner harmony, in their quest for inner and relational contentment. The authors also found
negative aspects that kept consumers away, such as its lack of privacy and the overwhelming nature of
unwanted video in its feed, tying these back to important values.
Research limitations/implications – The authors build on prior exploratory work relating to DSM use
and uncover psychological drivers of consumer behavior on social media, by blending TAM in a consumer
context, and the MEC approach. The TAM-MEC framework used here offers a technology-independent
template for other DSM research, by focusing on how and why consumers use media socially.
Practical implications – Managerially, the authors discuss the building of sustainable marketing
strategy on enduring consumer values rather than on transient attributes or technologies. The authors also
discuss potential areas of vulnerability for Facebook, such as its increasing use of video and live content,
which creates negative consumer sentiment and which may drive consumers to competitors.
Originality/value – By blending the quantitative TAM and the qualitative MEC, something that has not
been done before in marketing, this research provides trustworthy answers to the research questions. In so
doing, this study also contributes some cohesion to the fragmented DSM research field, as called for recently
in prominent journals, by anchoring DSM study in well-established theories in marketing. Qualitative Market Research: An
International Journal
Keywords Marketing strategy, Facebook, Millennials, Consumer behaviour, Structural modelling, Vol. 23 No. 1, 2020
pp. 171-197
Consumer values, Social media adoption, Laddering, Mixed-methods © Emerald Publishing Limited
1352-2752
Paper type Research paper DOI 10.1108/QMR-03-2018-0036
QMR One of the challenges in studying the impact of digital and social media (DSM) on marketing
23,1 and consumers is that the rate of change in the business environment, and especially in the
technology impacting businesses today, is extremely high. Friedman (2017, pp. 29-30)
explains that technological progress has accelerated, in the past few years, beyond our
ability to quickly learn and adapt. As each technology stands “on the shoulders of past
technologies,” (p. 30), the time window to adapt to it has shrunk to about five to seven years
172 before it becomes obsolete (p. 33). This poses enormous challenges to marketers trying to
keep up with these technologies, as they determine how best to use them to make marketing
more effective. In the light of this challenge, instead of focusing on the technologies, we set
out to uncover what is enduring about consumer behaviors in DSM contexts: Why do
consumers use social media? For practitioners, such an approach has value because
marketing efforts can be guided by widely known marketing and consumer behavior
principles culled from such study while there may be new technologies sprouting daily. For
academics, the value lies in being able to apply the established to the as-yet-to-be-explained,
including future technologies, bridging the concept gaps between what we know and what
is new.
The inspiration for this study were recent calls in prominent marketing journals to help
bring cohesion and balance to what was perceived to be a fragmented research field
(Lamberton and Stephen, 2016; Stephen, 2016). Based on their analysis of DSM research over
15 years, Lamberton and Stephen (2016) made several recommendations to guide marketing
researchers in this area, going forward. Those that directly motivated this research are
given below, accompanied by a brief description of how we address each:

Why do people use social media? We build on prior exploratory work that has
sought to answer similar questions (Bolton et al., 2013; Pai and Arnott, 2013;
Whiting and Williams, 2013). In particular, we explore why young millennials use
social media so prolifically.

Use multiple methodological approaches. We use a mixed-methods design.

Define contributions in terms not of the novelty of the domain, but in terms of
existing theory. We use the widely used technology acceptance model (TAM) and
the established means-end theory.

We also endeavor to implement the following recommendations made by them:

Avoid chasing potentially transient topics given the pace of technological change.

Close the academic-practitioner gap.

More focused theories related to consumers’ psychological experiences in the
domain.

In seeking a theoretical base to explain social media use, we begin by revisiting the TAM, a
prominent theory used to study technology adoption quantitatively. We identify limitations
of the model for this context, and then complement it, with a qualitative approach, based on
means-end theory, which has as yet, to the best of our knowledge, not been used to study
consumer adoption of technology in marketing. We conduct empirical studies meshing both
approaches and uncover what drives consumer behavior of young millennials on social
media. We discuss our research contributions in terms of a distinctive methodology that can
be used to study other DSM platforms, application of existing theory to a new domain and
strategic managerial insights, thus addressing the latter three recommendations made by
Lamberton and Stephen (2016).
 The DSM categorization usually includes mobile technologies (“DSMM”), but consumer Why do
behaviors related to these are beyond the scope of this paper. We use Humphreys (2016, p. 1) millennials use
definition of social media, because it is technology-independent: “[. . .] it is a practice or set of
practices, for using media socially.” In referring to new media therefore, we will refer to
Facebook?
those internet-based digital media that are used for social purposes. Consumer use of new
media socially is multiform, from blogs to media-sharing to social networking. We select
Facebook, the most widely used, with 2.23 billion monthly users as on date (Statista, 2018),
for our empirical study and focus on 18-29-year-olds, because of their heavy use of social
173
media (Smith and Anderson, 2018), and because their use may be an indicator of how
consumers will behave in the future (Bolton et al., 2013). This is a group that would fall at the
younger end of the “millennial” classification (Dimock, 2018).
We present below our primary and supplementary research questions:

RQ1. Why do younger millennials use media socially?

RQ2. What are enduring drivers of consumer behavior on social media given that DSM
technologies change rapidly?
In probing for answers to these, the following supplementary questions are also addressed:

RQ3. What does a given DSM technology means to consumers?

RQ4. Does a DSM technology meets fundamental needs of consumers? If so, what are
these?
RQ5. What can marketers of a technology do to keep adding value to users’ experiences
to continue to meet those needs more effectively?
In the next section, we selectively review directly relevant literature on TAM’s origins in
information systems (IS), its adoption into marketing, social media research in marketing
and the use of the means-end approach (MEC) in marketing.

Background
Technology acceptance model
The TAM (Davis, 1989; Davis et al., 1989) is the preferred model for studying technology
adoption. IS researchers developed it to address the problem of users in organizations being
resistant to the adoption of new computer systems intended to improve performance. TAM,
by predicting acceptance or rejection early on during design and implementation, would
make it possible to make alterations to the systems or the processes, to improve user
acceptance (Davis et al., 1989). Davis (1985) developed the model as a special case of
Fishbein and Ajzen’s (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) theory of
reasoned action (TRA). He suggested that the empirically validated TAM model might be
generalizable for “modeling user acceptance of a broad range of end-user computing
technologies and user populations while being parsimonious and theoretically justified”
(p. 985), mentioning two important evaluative criteria. TAM uses TRA as a theoretical basis
for specifying two cognitions (key beliefs): perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of
use (PEU) of the system to predict a user’s attitude, intention and computer use. Davis et al.
(1989) explain that these two beliefs were selected because of their relevance for predicting
system adoption, based on an analysis of prior studies in their domain. TAM and its
variants have found substantial empirical support in the context of organizational use of a
variety of systems (Venkatesh et al., 2012).
QMR TAM was grafted into marketing to help predict consumer behavior related to
23,1 technology in a number of different contexts (Bruner and Kumar, 2005; Childers et al., 2001;
Dabholkar, 1996; Dabholkar and Bagozzi, 2002; Kim and Forsythe, 2007; Kulviwat et al.,
2007; Lam et al., 2008; Lin et al., 2007). As in other disciplines that used TAM, researchers
often modified it for their context. Often, the same beliefs, PU or PEU, were included without
strong theoretical justification or reference to TRA. While acknowledging that their use
174 context was different from TAM’s workplace adoption, some justified using TAM elements
because technology acceptance was the common focus of study (Childers et al., 2001). In
general, these research streams aim to predict acceptance in terms of technology
characteristics such as its complexity, or consumer characteristics, such as “technology
readiness,” referring to consumers’ propensity to adopt new technologies for accomplishing
goals in home life and at work (Parasuraman, 2000). However, they do view technology as
the end-goal of consumer adoption, a point we return to later.
IS researchers too, extended TAM for the consumer context, adding predictors such as
hedonic motivation, and moderators such as age, both consumer characteristics, in the
unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (Venkatesh et al., 2012). The IS stream,
justifiably from its perspective, also viewed the technology as the end-goal of consumer
decision-making. In both domains, as the research stream developed, the parsimony and
simplicity of the original model were sacrificed. Bagozzi (2007) critiqued such grand
integrative models for this reason and advocated a paradigm shift to one based on universal
principles of human decision-making. Bagozzi’s recommendation strongly guided our
approach as we sought to use what we know in marketing about how consumers make
decisions, in the DSM domain.

Social media research

Lamberton and Stephen (2016) trace the evolution of DSMM research in marketing through
three eras. In Era 3, the age of social media (2011-2014), they describe a major theme being
consumer self-expression on social media as a means of amplifying or dulling marketing
actions. While noting that consumers adopted social media as a means of meeting personal
goals, researchers were captivated more by the commercial or marketing potential of these
platforms (for example, for word-of-mouth marketing or viral campaigns). A question
emerging in this stream considered drivers of social media use. How do consumers use
social media to meet their own goals? Why do people use certain social media?
Whiting and Williams (2013), used uses and gratifications theory (UGT) from
communication studies to identify ten themes in consumer use of social media, in a small-
sample exploratory study, in decreasing order of importance: social interaction (88 per cent),
information seeking, pass time, entertainment, relaxation, communicatory utility,
convenience utility, expression of opinion, information sharing and surveillance/knowledge
about others (20 per cent). It is not the intent here to do a detailed review of the UGT
approach as that would detract from our focus, but we comment briefly to help differentiate
our approach. The uses and gratifications approach (Blumler and McQuail, 1969; Katz et al.,
1973), concerned with how people use media to satisfy their needs has numerous strengths.
It shifts attention away from media to users of the media, who are viewed as being goal-
oriented, active and volitional in their choice of media, to gratify certain needs. It is also
fundamentally concerned with user motivations, which is consistent with our perspective.
However, its methodology may be limited in its ability to uncover those motivations. It
primarily uses non-probing self-report, which may only tap into what consumers are
conscious of and therefore able to report. In fact, this is a key assumption of this approach
(Katz et al., 1973). In some UGT studies (Leiner et al., 2018), respondents select gratifications
from a predetermined list derived by researchers from literature. Findings may not uncover Why do
unconscious deeper motivations, though these can sometimes be inferred from surface-level millennials use
themes that emerge. As explained further below, the MEC we use is able to probe and
extract these motivations consistently. Pai and Arnott (2013), in a study in a non-marketing
Facebook?
field, actually integrate UGT and MEC theory in their study of adoption of Facebook in a
sample of 24 Taiwanese users, similar to the way we mesh TAM and MEC in this study.
Bolton et al. (2013), interested in Generation Y (“Gen Y”), because of its intense exposure
to technology, present a framework of antecedents and consequences of social media use by 175
this cohort. While commenting that existing research does not examine (in depth) the drivers
(and outcomes) of social media use, they conclude from a review of the literature that
primary reasons Gen Y uses social media are to socialize and experience a sense of
community, for staying in touch with friends, and for information and entertainment. They
also suggest that social media use may have positive emotional effects on their
psychological and emotional well-being (such as improved self-esteem), also pointing to
possible negative effects such as depression, loneliness and social anxiety. In formulating
their framework, they recommend research into drivers, especially enduring drivers of social
media use by Gen Y.
These studies are a good starting point for our research. We first note that some of the
gratifications uncovered in UGT studies of social media use, such as communicatory utility
and convenience utility (Whiting and Williams, 2013), appear connected to the PU and PEU
in TAM. We also note that gratifications, such as pass time, entertainment or information
seeking, appear to be “shallow,” meeting surface-level needs of consumers. Others appear to
meet deeper needs such as those for social interaction, personal identity and self-status
seeking. This distinction can be clarified by asking: why does the consumer want to seek
information, or why does he/she choose to pass time using this platform? These surface-level
gratifications are possibly powered by deeper motives. Our research joins these streams,
helping to provide more answers to the question, why do people use media socially? What
drives their decisions to use DSM? Are there deep, consumer-based reasons than the
technology-anchored ones of usefulness or ease of use? Are DSM merely a superficial
distraction because they entertain or help pass time, and can therefore be quickly
substituted, or do they satisfy deeper needs and therefore mean more to users, implying
strong ties and greater loyalty? What are some hindrances to these deeper and more
meaningful relationships? We take the perspective that marketers can use these platforms
without an overtly commercial rationale. They can determine how marketing can enable
consumer use of these by understanding the role of social media in the context of their lives,
a point also made by other social media researchers (Castro and Marquez, 2017).
TAM has also been one of the predominant theoretical approaches to studying adoption
of social media (Wirtz and Gottel, 2016, for a review). As in other studies, researchers
modified TAM to better fit the context. Junglas et al. (2013), for example, added a
“sociability” construct, defining it as a “human’s desire to socialize with others that can be
met through the use of technology.” This stream also introduced a category of constructs
labeled “users’ emotional responses” that were found to be a significant outcome of TAM
predictors, PU and PEU, in social media adoption. “Emotional responses” included sense of
belonging, satisfaction, trust, pleasure, arousal and dominance. We note that these factors
are generally viewed as fundamental needs that consumers seek to satisfy through their
consumption and are therefore of interest to us. We also note that they shift the focus away
from the characteristics of technology such as its usefulness or ease of use. In our research,
we sought to determine if we could knit both these sets of factors, the characteristics or
attributes of a technology, and the needs of consumers (not just their characteristics), into a
QMR common framework that can explain social media use. The general conclusion of Wirtz and
23,1 Gottel’s (2016) review confirmed the fragmentation finding mentioned in our introduction
section:
[. . .] compared to the original TAM regarding information systems in general, one of the main
differences of the studies in a social media context is that many more single factors
influencing PEOU and PU [. . .] and the like, come into play, covering a considerably wider
176 range of themes (p. 10).
The authors also observed that findings lacked generalizability across the diversity of social
media and tended to be strongly context-specific. They recommended pursuing other
competing theoretical models in future studies. This recommendation also motivated our
research.

Limitations of technology acceptance model

At the outset, when considering limitations of the TAM approach in marketing, acceptance
or the “act of taking or receiving something offered” is not strictly accurate in describing
consumer behavior vis-à-vis technology adoption, which is more proactive, with adoption
following consumers’ active search for information based on recognition of their needs,
according to models depicting the consumer decision-making process (Engel et al., 1986).
Another limitation is that while TAM predicts use effectively, as established by
numerous empirical studies, it does not explain why consumers voluntarily choose to use a
technology and continue to use it beyond adoption, which would be of value in marketing.
Mick and Fournier (1998) made this point in their qualitative exploration of the paradoxes of
technology for consumers (though referring to work from an earlier era):
Most work has emphasized the antecedents, rates, and act of technology adoption. By
comparison, only a minuscule amount of research has been devoted to consumer behavior after
technology has been acquired (p. 123).
Their study made possible a deeper understanding of consumers’ complex relationship with
technology as well their pre- and post-acquisition behavior. In our study we are seeking
similar more comprehensive, behavior-based insights that would be valuable input for
building marketing strategies based on what is enduring about customer behavior, rather
than on the changing attributes of a technology. What are the largely unconscious
motivations that determine choice and subsequent use? Does a technology meet
fundamental needs of consumers? If so, what are these? What can marketers of a technology
do to keep adding value to users’ experience to continue meeting those needs more
effectively?
Many TAM studies overly focus on the technology, and not its consumer, viewing the
technology as the object of consumer decision-making. However, if we follow consumers’
thought processes to deeper, more unconscious levels, we are likely to discover that the
technology is only a means to more important, personally relevant ends for them (Bagozzi,
2007). What does a given technology mean to consumers? A technology is only as important
as what it enables consumers to accomplish in the context of their own lives. Does it enable
them to live life more efficiently, and with greater control, freedom, harmony and
satisfaction? This is possibly the reason why ease of use and usefulness are important. In
designing, technology manufacturers need to be concerned that it is easy to use, so that it
enables consumers to satisfy their needs without fussing over it or having to figure it out.
The less it gets in the way, the more it can be perceived as being useful. Such a perspective
would put consumers at the front and center of technology-related research, their rightful Why do
place in marketing, it can be argued. millennials use
Despite these limitations, TAM has much merit because of the large body of empirical
work supporting it. We set out to explore if we could add value to it by blending it with a
Facebook?
qualitative approach, to provide richer insights, and a more complete, holistic picture of how
consumers use and experience DSM. We demonstrate how the two methods can work in
conjunction, to first predict adoption (reiterating TAM’s value), and then to probe to explore
consumers’ motivations with respect to social media use, using the MEC. We begin with 177
important attributes of the technology (such as its ease of use or usefulness and others), and
follow the cognitive processes of consumers, probing the reasons why those attributes are
important to them. Many of these reasons are largely unconscious to consumers being
deeply embedded in their knowledge structures, but are powerful motivators of decisions.
Means-end theory is well-anchored in consumer research. It can provide additional insights
beyond those afforded by the TAM as it seeks to explain why consumers adopt a given
technology, or even why they choose not to. This combination has not been used before in
the study of technology use in marketing, to the best of our knowledge.

Means-end theory and consumers

Means-end theory (Gutman, 1982) is based on fundamental assumptions in cognitive
psychology about how humans process information (Huber et al., 2004). In a consumer
context, it proposes that behaviors of consumers can be explained by underlying values that
propel them. Means are objects such as technologies or activities in which people engage,
such as making social-media posts. Ends are valued states of being such as happiness,
security, inner harmony, social recognition or self-esteem (Gutman, 1982; Rokeach, 1968,
1973). These are known as terminal values, understood to be the ultimate motivators of
behavior. Another class of values, known as instrumental, refers to general, preferred modes
of behavior, such as being honest, capable, independent, loving or courageous. The means-
end chain (MEC), a tool used in this stream of research, is used to explain how choosing the
object facilitates the achievement of desired end-states.
The MEC causally connects salient product attributes, viewed to be at a shallow level in a
consumer’s memory, to consequences of product use at a deeper level. These can be
distinguished as functional consequences (those occurring as a direct result of the product’s
function), and psychological and social (“psychosocial”) consequences (Gutman, 1982). At
the deepest level are personal or symbolic values linked to these consequences (Rokeach,
1973). The bundle of attributes and benefits that represents a product is merely a means to
the end of satisfying these values. Deeper layers of knowledge are unconscious and have to
be elicited using qualitative techniques such as in-depth laddering interviews (Reynolds and
Phillips, 2009). Such probing analysis is likely to be particularly useful in studying DSM,
which are complex, with varied attributes appealing to different consumers. It would help us
study consumer use of a given platform by transcending its superficial-level attributes,
abstracting them. This type of abstraction is in actuality, how consumers represent
important attributes in memory, in terms of their meanings, to minimize cognitive load.
We briefly comment that Pai and Arnott (2013), in their study of Facebook, equate the
gratifications of the UGT approach with the values of the MEC approach: “Thus, we aim to
combine the concept of U&G theory and the means-end chain by viewing Katz’s
gratification as synonymous with Gutman’s ends” (p. 1042). This poses some difficulty as
gratifications are defined in UGT as some aspect of satisfaction reported by users related to
the active use of the concerned medium (Herzog, 1944). The reported gratifications are
typically factor-analyzed to reduce them by commonalities (Leiner et al., 2018). As explained
QMR in our review of social media research, because of the methodology used, uses and
23,1 gratifications are sometimes at a superficial level, as found in this study, e.g. posting/
viewing pictures, killing time and updating status, and may therefore not be “ends.” In our
study, we probe to discover deeper motivations for these behaviors.
The MEC approach has also proven valuable in practice, helping managers understand
what a product means to consumers, and why it is important to them. As an illustration,
178 brand managers probe to understand why a consumer buys Starbucks coffee nearly every
day. They discover that this is a young professional who seeks to satisfy her values of
pleasure, a comfortable life, self-esteem and social recognition that she associates with the
brand “Starbucks” (a salient attribute for her) (Figure 1). The consumer also knows that
Starbucks tries to be socially and environmentally responsible in its procurement of coffee
beans. These attributes of Starbucks add to her values of being responsible and contributing
to a beautiful world. She may regularly purchase Starbucks brewed coffee at present.
Preferences change with time, but by understanding the set of values the Starbucks brand
satisfies for her, managers can tailor customer relationship management programs to her
that satisfy those needs continually within the Starbucks brand umbrella. She may be
persuaded to switch to their cappuccinos in the future. The strong consumer-brand
relationship can be developed into a sustainable competitive advantage. When validated,
they have potent information to develop meaningful messages that speak to their target
segments effectively, and that can be used to strengthen relationship ties.

Means-end theory and involvement

The level of consumer involvement with a brand has implications for the type of MEC
elicited: consumers who are highly involved will have detailed MECs spanning all four
levels (Walker and Olson, 1991). High involvement is correlated with desirable outcomes
such as brand preference, stronger emotional responses, brand-directed effort in making
decisions, advertising effectiveness, brand loyalty and purchase behaviors (Peter and Olson,
2010). But not all consumers have a high level of involvement with a given brand they use.
Those with low involvement will typically have MECs that are cut off at the attribute or the
functional consequence level. These consumers use the brand currently, but with little
commitment. For them, it is easily substitutable. Choice is made on the basis of superficial
preference (e.g. for attributes) that is unlikely to be stable over time. If a competitor comes
out with a superior attribute or a stronger appeal, they are more likely to switch because the
brand does not mean a great deal to them. Involvement is important to consider when
investigating DSM phenomena. If we find that large numbers of consumers do not have
detailed MECs for a given platform they use socially, we will conclude that a particular
platform does not mean much to them, and that they are likely to switch quickly when

Figure 1.
MEC for a loyal
Starbucks user
something new comes along. Low involvement can possibly also explain some of the Why do
surface-level gratifications revealed in UGT research. millennials use
If means-end theory, well-established in marketing, is able to reveal universal human
values that guide consumer choice, it would be helpful to establish that this theory applies to
Facebook?
consumers’ use of social networking. As managers are confronted by rapid product/
technology obsolescence, such study can guide customer-centric innovation of new products
that speak to these enduring values.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we describe our 179
two empirical studies, first using TAM to examine adoption of a specific social media
platform, Facebook, and then a qualitative laddering study, to provide insights into why
consumers use Facebook. We discuss the results and contributions, and then conclude.

Overview of studies
Two complementary studies were designed to explore why younger millennials choose to
use social media. Facebook was selected as it continues to be the primary social network
platform used by this age group, with about 81 per cent of 18-29-year-olds reporting (non-
exclusive) use of it (Smith and Anderson, 2018). In the first quantitative one, we conducted a
survey to explore social media use in this age group, and to validate a basic TAM model.
Findings from this also served to help design the second study. In the second qualitative
study with another sample of the same age group, one-on-one probing interviews were
conducted to gather data for laddering. The purpose was to generate a range of attributes
salient to consumers using Facebook and then to drill down from these to uncover why they
were important to them.

Study 1: survey
Study 1 gathered data regarding young people’s social media use, and to validate a basic
TAM model in a social media context. A total of 252 volunteer students from a large US
university were recruited for the study. This convenience sample consisted primarily of
younger millennials, of interest to us because of their heavy social media use: 88 per cent of
US 18-29-year-olds report using some form of social media (Smith and Anderson, 2018). The
live survey used PollEverywhere (2018), a cloud-based audience response system that saved
time over paper-based or computer-based surveys. Students were seated in a lecture hall and
began the session by texting in a given code with their phones. After the procedure was
explained, questions were presented on a screen one at a time (Figure 2) and they responded
by texting, to earn a small amount of extra credit (equivalent to 0.067 per cent of their course
grade). Students were familiar with the system, having used it for classroom participation
throughout the term, earning points for responding to questions. Sufficient time was
provided with the presentation of each question for all students to respond. When a
structured question such as, “Which of the following social media platforms do you use
most frequently? A. Facebook, B. Snapchat, C. Instagram, D. Other” was presented, students
would text in either A, B, C or D. If shown an open-ended question such as, “If you said YES
to Facebook use, please list the top reasons that come to your mind, as to WHY you use
Facebook,” students texted their open-ended responses such as, “To stay in touch with
friends, to see what friends/acquaintances are up to and for entertainment purposes”
(Male, 27). Responses were made visible only to the researchers and exported as Excel files
from the PollEverywhere system. With these audience response systems, participants are
generally motivated to volunteer and to respond, as the earned points (one spreadsheet
column) are quickly exported and posted in learning management systems, usually within a
few hours.
QMR
23,1

180

Figure 2.
PollEverywhere
screenshot showing
sample survey
question

We measured only the basic TAM constructs, PU, PEU, attitude and intention to use, using
Kulviwat et al.’s (2007) slightly modified TAM scales. There has been mixed evidence from
prior research about including PEU and attitude in the model, but we included both in the
test of our basic TAM.

Results – Study 1
A total of 234 usable responses were obtained from the sample (minimum age = 19,
maximum = 38, mean = 22.5, SD = 3.07). In all 95.9 per cent reported using some social
media and 3.05 per cent reported different outlets on average. Usage is summarized in
Figure 3. Facebook, with about 72 per cent reporting usage, was the most heavily used, but
Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, were not far behind. The question asked was about usage
of “social media” rather than “social networking sites.” This accounts for the diversity of
responses about outlets used, with participants including the video site, YouTube, and
messaging/networking apps such as Snapchat, and WhatsApp, among others. In all 40.1 per
cent of respondents said they used Facebook most often. This was followed by Instagram
(20.8 per cent) and Snapchat (18.9 per cent).
One open-ended question asked respondents why they used Facebook, if they did. The
top three responses, categorized, were staying connected with friends and family (this was by
far the most widely cited reason, at 71 per cent, followed by entertainment and news (44 per
cent). Ease of use, was third at 15.7 per cent. Attitudes toward Facebook reported were
positive (18.7 per cent of responses), neutral (35.8 per cent) ambivalent (“love it and hate it”),
22.4 per cent, and “mostly negative” (10.4 per cent).

Technology acceptance model

A stripped down theoretical TAM model (Figure 4), specifically focusing on Facebook
adoption, was tested using LISREL 8.72. The measurement and structural models were
estimated simultaneously using summed indicators for the constructs. In addition, proposed
 Why do
millennials use
Facebook?

181

Figure 3.
Usage of social media
(%) by a convenience
sample of millennials

Figure 4.
Theoretical TAM
model and path
coefficients for
Facebook adoption

relationships among constructs were tested through path analyses. We did not include the
PU – behavioral intention link often included in TAM applications as this link had been
introduced because of its relevance to organizational settings (Davis et al., 1989).

Model fit testing
Model fit was assessed through chi-square tests, error levels (root mean square error of
approximation [RMSEA] and RMR), and multiple fit indices, such as the comparative fit
index (CFI), incremental fit index (IFI) and non-normed fit index (NNFI). Although the chi-
square (347.47) was significant at 115 degrees of freedom, the chi-square to degrees of
freedom ratio was on the 3.0 threshold for acceptance. The fit indices were all above the 0.90
level, indicating an acceptable model fit. In addition, RMSEA was 0.10 and RMR was 0.08,
QMR suggesting that the proposed model should be accepted. Considering these indices
23,1 collectively (Table I), we found good support for the TAM model in a Facebook use context.

Structural model
Basic TAM hypotheses were tested by freeing up the proposed paths and fixing the other
path coefficients at zero. All the path loadings were significant at least at the 0.05 level,
182 indicating high validity of the measurement model. As the results indicate (Figure 4), both
“Usefulness” and “Ease of Use” had a significant and positive impact on attitude to
Facebook use. A strong positive attitude toward use leads to intention to use Facebook. In
general, we found support for the paths in the TAM model, for Facebook adoption.

Study 2: qualitative study

Findings from the first study gave us a good basis for framing the subsequent qualitative
study. We used another sample of 101 undergraduate and graduate students drawn from 3
large US universities. In the MEC interview method, the researcher probes one-on-one,
meanings for attributes and consequences, in two phases (Reynolds and Phillips, 2009). The
first phase is to identify the attributes that are most important to the subject in making a
choice. In our context, open-ended questions were initially asked by the team of three
researchers:
Do you use social media? Which ones? Which one do you use most often? What is it about the
social media platform you just mentioned keeps you coming back to it?
The respondent typically answered listing key attributes such as, “It’s easy to use,” “Can
stay connected with family and friends,” “Funny videos; it’s entertaining” and “Family,
friends, pictures, news.” The questions then focused on Facebook use:
Do you currently use Facebook? What are reasons why you use Facebook? Let me know as many
as come to mind. You said you don’t use Facebook. Why don’t you use Facebook?
The second phase involves the laddering process, which uncovers how the consumer
connects the attributes in a causal fashion with more abstract consequences and values
using a series of probing, “Why is _____important to you?” type questions such as, “Why is
staying connected with family and friends important to you?” The intent here is to uncover
the hierarchical cognitive structure of the decision, and how knowledge of the object is
organized in memory. This procedure was used repeatedly until it was not possible to
proceed further. Reynolds and Gutman (1988) or Reynolds and Olson (2001) for detailed
descriptions of these procedures. A soft laddering approach (Grunert and Grunert, 1995) was
used, where verbatim responses were recorded manually on tablets and laptops. With this
approach, no effort is made to restrict the respondent’s natural flow of speech, except to
gently prod her introspection with repeated “Why is that important to you?” type questions.

Cutoff Quasi-coefficient of
level determination r2q Explanation (systematic variance)
Table I.
1 1 All implications are significant at a cutoff of 1.000
Proportion of 2 0.912 91.20%
“significant” 3 0.836 83.60%
implications by 4 0.777 Cutoff selected; 77.7% of implications are accounted for
cutoff level 5 0.681 68.10%
The researchers steered the interviewees gently toward the goal of eliciting higher-order Why do
abstractions. A total of 99 usable responses were obtained. This is consistent with the millennials use
average sample size of 98.1 for such studies reported by Reynolds and Phillips (2009).
Responses were uploaded as .rtf files into Dedoose (2018), the cloud-based mixed methods
Facebook?
software platform that helps automate qualitative research.

Laddering
Laddering is tedious (Kaciak et al., 2010), especially with a large group of respondents, but
183
has significant payoffs (Kaciak et al., 2010; Reynolds and Phillips, 2009) in providing
insights not otherwise obtainable through more quantitative methods. In the past, a
drawback of the research method was the lack of reportable standardized measures, which
made it difficult to replicate the findings or to evaluate data quality (Grunert and Grunert,
1995). In recent years, researchers have put forward a number of metrics to remedy this
drawback (Reynolds and Phillips, 2009). Hence, we describe below, in greater detail, the
procedures used in analysis, and report as many of the quality metrics recommended by
Reynolds and Phillips as possible. Prior DSM research using laddering, Pai and Arnott
(2013), has typically not reported these metrics. Reynolds and Gutman (1988) observe that
this crossing over from generating the qualitative-type raw data using the interviews, to the
more quantitative way of analysis, uniquely positions laddering as a generator of rich and
reliable information on which strategy can be built. Dedoose (2018) does not provide most of
these metrics, but makes it easier to compute them from its output charts and tables,
bringing substantial efficiencies to the data analysis process.

Coding and analysis

The coding process began with a classification of the open-ended responses into the four
levels of abstraction (attributes, functional consequences, psychosocial consequences and
values) in Dedoose by two independent trained graduate-assistant coders. Dedoose allows
testing for inter-coder reliability through its code application test. This test gave a Cohen’s
(1960) Kappa value of 0.89 (>0.80 = excellent agreement, per Dedoose’s criteria). Miles et al.
(1994) suggest this value should approach 0.90. Discrepancies in coding were resolved by
one of the researchers. See Appendix for the codes generated.
To identify the linkages between the concepts categorized in the data (known as
“implications”), a summary score matrix was generated in Dedoose, following the detailed
procedure described by Reynolds and Phillips (2009) and Gutman (1984), in which the rows
and columns are the codes developed earlier. The unit of analysis was a connected pair of
concepts. The total entries in a given cell represented the number of times, in the entire data
set, that particular row code directly elicited a given column code. An implication matrix
was then generated from the score matrix, as described by Reynolds and Phillips (2009).
This displays the number of times each element leads to each other element, capturing both
direct and indirect relations. We constructed this matrix, counting each mention of a
relationship among elements by an individual only once, because of the number of
respondents. The coding yielded a total of 108 ladders (i.e. complete MECs) consisting of
1,024 ladder elements with an average ladder length of 9.5 elements (minimum = 2 and
maximum = 36). Ladder quality (LQ), defined as the percentage of total ladders having at
least one element at each of the four levels of abstraction was 70.1 per cent. Once this was
done, a cut-off level of 4.00 implications was chosen to summarize the data results in this
matrix. This cut-off accounted for 77.7 per cent of the total connections (Table II). The
selection of this cut-off, based on systematic variance accounted for, was guided by the 70
per cent recommended by traditional laddering research. The cut-off of 4.0 was also used to
QMR compute the quasi-coefficient of determination (r2q), giving a value of 0.77. The
23,1 interpretation is that at this cut-off, 77.7 per cent of implications were significant. The quasi-
reliability metric, rq, was then computed as the square root of the quasi-coefficient of
determination. The value obtained, of 0.877, represents the proportion of systematic
variance accounted for.
The basic data from these connections were used to construct (manually) a hierarchical
184 value map (HVM) of means-end connections relating to Facebook usage (Figure 5). The
HVM is a graphical representation of the significant results of laddering, connecting
attributes, consequences and values. In constructing an HVM, it is not the number of
mentions of a concept that is important, but the frequency with which any two concepts are
connected in a ladder that determines if the pair is included (Gutman, 1984). The choice of
4.0 as the cut-off ensured that pairs included were more consistently observed across
subjects. In constructing our HVM from these, we endeavored to avoid crossing lines, as is
generally desirable (Reynolds and Gutman, 1988). However, with the large number of inter-
connections, we were not able to completely avoid these.

Chi-square df Ratio Sig RMR RMSEA CFI IFI NFI NNFI Decision

Proposed theoretical model 347.47 115 3.0 0.000 0.08 0.10 0.93 0.93 0.90 0.91 Accept
Table II. Notes: RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation, CFI = comparative fit index, IFI = incremental
Theoretical model fit fit index, NFI = normed fit index and NNFI = non-normed fit index

Figure 5.
Summary HVM
connecting important
attributes to values
Results – Study 2 – laddering and means-end chains Why do
Consumers typically appeared to connect with Facebook in multiple ways (mentioning, on millennials use
the average, 3.1 Facebook attributes as being important to them). There were 15 distinct
attributes mentioned (Appendix), ranging from “It’s the in thing” (A1) and event planning
Facebook?
(A2) to playing games (A10) and getting product deals and coupons (A15). These reduced to
just seven functional consequences (FCs) – “enables me to socialize” (F1), “can stay
connected with friends or family; avoid losing touch” (F2) and “can know what’s up; know
each other’s lives” (F4) are examples. (See column 2, Appendix for others). Psychosocial 185
consequences that lead from these were also fewer, relatively: “I can feel friendly” (PS1), “I
can feel caring; live out my self-image” (PS3), “I don’t feel alone or isolated; feel accepted”
(PS4) and “I have people to depend on when needed; connections can be useful” (PS5) were
typical (column 3). A total of 17 distinct values were unearthed by the probing (values
column, Appendix), from “happiness” (V14), “competence in managing my relationships”
(V2) and “self-image; it’s who I am” (V4) to “being in control; being secure” (V13) and
“ambition” (V7). Recurrent values satisfied with the technology – those that were
represented in the HVM, were “friendship and family” (V1), “enjoying a good life, pleasure”
(V3), “mental well-being; inner harmony; and peace” (V6) and “social acceptance;
togetherness” (V5).

Discussion
We set out to study why young millennials use social media, and what are enduring drivers
of consumer behavior on these platforms, given that DSM technologies change so rapidly.
TAM uses ease of use, and usefulness of the technology (its attributes) to predict intention to
adopt. We were guided by the rationale that as technologies are transient, a consumer-
focused rather than a technology-dependent approach would provide insights beyond those
from TAM. From a consumer’s perspective, any technology is rarely the end, as TAM views
it, but more a means to self-relevant ends for consumers. The means-end based approach
offers a solution to the perceived limitations of the TAM in a consumer context, by probing
to glean additional insights about consumers’ behavior. We used both together in the
context of social media adoption by millennials, specifically studying Facebook use.
In our first study, the TAM predictors PU and PEU strongly predicted intention to adopt
Facebook via attitude. The basic TAM model we ran stripped it of the host of factors
frequently added to help improve fit in a given context. These often end up muddying the
adoption being studied (Wirtz and Gottel, 2016). Instead of adding predictor variables that
are often context- or technology-specific as prior research has done, we launched a second,
qualitative study to take these findings further.
The MECs generated from the laddering process in the second study delve deeper into
consumers’ adoption, helping us understand why PU and PEU are important to users, and
why they continue to use the technology after adoption. In our HVM (Figure 5), the PU and
PEU equivalents, “easy tool to stay in touch with family and friends” (A3) and “easy to use”
(A5) were two of seven significant attributes that consumers generated as being key
determinants of their Facebook use. Others mapped onto the HVM were “can share pictures”
(A4), “convenient and cheap” (A5-1), “can make new friends” (A11) and the two negative
ones, “time consuming” (A7) and “has nothing to interest me” (A9). We note here the many
commonalities with the themes uncovered by Whiting and Williams (2013). Some of these
were “non-significant” in our research, appearing in our responses, but not represented in
the HVM (in italics here): “social interaction,” (e.g. A1, A3, A3-1, A11), “information sharing”
(A4), “communicatory utility” (A3, A4) and “convenience utility” (A5, A5-1). Their other
themes were also largely present in our findings: “information seeking” (A15, F4), “pass
QMR time,” “entertainment” (A10, A12, F3, PS8) and “expression of opinion” (A14); this theme
23,1 also connected to our value, V4 (self-image). “Surveillance/knowledge about others” was
represented in our research as a functional consequence (F4), “pass time,” only negatively as
A7, and A8, and the obverse of “relaxation,” appeared as PS6 (“I feel overwhelmed”). Here is
evidence to support what we surmised earlier that the UGT approach adopted by earlier
research (Leiner et al., 2018), revealed gratifications that were sometimes at a superficial,
186 attribute level, and sometimes at deeper levels, a limitation of its methodology. Our findings
also have some commonality with Pai and Arnott’s (2013) MEC attributes as represented in
their HVM – “sharing pictures” (A4), which overlaps with their “uploading pictures.” Others
that were common, but not appearing in either HVM: easy to use (A5), lack of privacy (A6),
playing games (A10) and make new friends (A11).
In our study, why are ease of use (A5) and usefulness (A3) important? We note that Pai
and Arnott’s (2013) HVM for Facebook use did not throw up these two attributes as
significant, though they did appear in some form in their initial list of content codes (e.g.
“convenience” and “ease of use”). Consumers are attracted by Facebook’s ease of use and its
usefulness in helping them stay connected, being far more convenient than conventional
communication tools such as phones. Typical MECs from these attributes (HVM, Figure 5)
are shown below:
Easy tool to stay in touch ! I can stay connected with friends or family; avoid losing touch ! I
can feel caring; life is all about caring (that’s the kind of person I am) ! helps satisfy my values of
friendship and family. This value is strongly connected to another: social acceptance and
togetherness, which is strongly connected to another: mental well-being; inner harmony, peace.
Easy to use, convenient and cheap ! I can know what’s up; know each other’s lives ! enables
me to socialize ! I can be/feel friendly ! enjoy a good life, pleasure.
These provide insights into why consumers use Facebook. “Avoid losing touch” was an
important functional consequence (F2) that served as a gateway for the satisfaction of a web
of values and psychosocial needs important to users. “Knowing what’s up and knowing
each other’s lives” (F4), was another relevant functional consequence, together with “enables
me to socialize” (F1). For similar reasons, we note why “can make new friends” (A11) was
another salient attribute. The satisfaction of social-related values contributes directly to
consumers’ mental well-being, inner harmony, and peace. Thus, Facebook helps consumers
in their quest for both inner and relational contentment. The strong emergence of the
“social” theme in use of social media is not a new insight. Bolton et al. (2013) suggest from
their review that a primary reason why millennials use social media is for socializing and
experiencing a sense of community. Pai and Arnott’s (2013) study also revealed Facebook’s
role in satisfying the social value of belonging. What is new is our demonstrating
empirically, how the satisfaction of social values contributes to personal happiness,
harmony and well-being. A representative excerpt is:
I am connected to friends and family. I am loved and accepted. Keeping family close gives you
strength. That’s important for my own mental well-being and being at peace (Female, age 20).
Similar to earlier research, we found that Facebook was multidimensional in the values it
helped users satisfy. Our HVM extracted six values, four of them connected to positive
attributes: pleasure (V3), belongingness (V5), inner harmony (V6) and friendship and family
(V1). Pai and Arnott’s (2013) study produced “hedonism” (our “pleasure” value), “belonging,”
“reciprocity” (a “giving back”; no equivalent in our study) and “self-esteem” – the
equivalents in our study (Appendix), though non-significant, were V2, “competence;
capable,” V4, “self-image” (V4) and V15, “confident.” The similarities are substantial. The
differences could partly be because of the fact that Facebook itself has been changing its Why do
functionality and features rapidly over the years; what was prominent in consumer use five millennials use
years ago may have changed today. Interpreting our values in terms of relationship depth,
not only does Facebook enable consumers to live out their self-image, but it also helps them
Facebook?
manage the multitude of their social connections, giving them substantial pleasure in using
the product, embedding this technology firmly in its users’ lives.
The sharing pictures attribute (A4) enabled users to avoid losing touch, stay connected and
know what was happening in others’ lives, mirroring Pai and Arnott’s (2013) ladder for this 187
attribute. This in turn prevented loneliness or isolation in the context of hectic, demanding lives
requiring much time to be spent away from loved ones. These feelings of acceptance were
strongly connected to the values of belonging, social acceptance and togetherness.
Some excerpts reflective of these:
I have a busy life. It’s hard to make friends. Facebook helps me make and keep friends and
enhances friendship (Male, aged 23). I am involved with family all the time [. . .] togetherness is
important [. . .] and being able to share in the same joy. You don’t want to lose family and who
you are (Female, 27).
Facebook is a technology that speaks to the deepest needs for human connection and users’
self-identity and is therefore seen as a high-involvement product for a majority of users (refer to
the LQ metric of 70.1 per cent: implying that 70.1 per cent of our respondents had detailed MECs
at all four levels), and not one which they use with little engagement or interest.
Values also shed light on the broader social context of consumers. Consumers shape, and
are shaped by their culture. The values unearthed by laddering are a reflection of values
important in the culture. As an example, Britain and the USA saw epidemic levels of opioid-
related deaths in 2017. Friedman (2017), in his analysis of the causes and consequences of
this widespread drug abuse in the USA, distils the essence of the problem as being the
divide between strong and weak communities: “Addiction is often a by-product of social
breakdown leading to a sense of isolation.” In his quest for answers travelling across
America, he reports hearing repeatedly, “I feel disconnected and hopeless about
participating in a rapidly changing global economy.” In another report on the same theme, a
32-year-old homeless British man explained his addiction as “making all the pain go away”
(Yeginsu, 2018). The antidote to social isolation is cohesion and community (Friedman,
2017), which social media tools enable. Friedman’s observations are consistent with the
insights in our study, about the importance of these values to people today, and how they
are fulfilled with the help of social media, as reflected in the theme, “I don’t feel alone or
isolated; I feel accepted” (PS4). With these analyses, we answer the first two of our
supplementary research questions: what does Facebook mean to consumers? Does Facebook
meet fundamental needs of consumers? What are these?
We note the presence of important negative attributes in the HVM, as well as “non-
significant” ones and discuss these below, as they have important managerial implications.

Managerial implications
A major recommendation in recent reviews of DSM research in marketing has been to help
close the academic–practitioner gap in future research (Lamberton and Stephen, 2016;
Stephen, 2016). Means-end analysis can do just that, as we demonstrate in this research. It
can help in a wide range of marketing activities such as brand management, innovation,
segmentation, targeting, positioning and formulating product, competitive and promotional
strategy (Gutman, 1982, and Reynolds and Phillips, 2009 for discussions). Our research
demonstrates that Facebook is a means to multiple, self-relevant ends for consumers (the
QMR constellation of values satisfied). A brand is generally harder to substitute when associated
23,1 with multiple important values, and that is good news for Facebook. However, it needs to be
aware, that though it is currently the predominant social media platform, there are a number
of ascending competitors, including Instagram (owned by Facebook), YouTube, LinkedIn
and Snapchat that are vying for the attention of this demographic (Figure 3; Smith and
Anderson, 2018), and there are areas of vulnerability for Facebook.
188 In our study, about 32 per cent of respondents rated themselves as having either negative
or ambivalent attitudes to Facebook. Negative attributes, that explain why consumers
choose not to use Facebook, or why current users are dissatisfied, were also probed by our
laddering, hitherto not revealed in prior research. Pai and Arnott’s (2013) study did throw up
privacy as a non-significant attribute. Features social media managers need to pay special
attention to, based on our findings: “lack of privacy” (A6) “time-consuming” (A7) and “big
distraction” (A8), reflected in excerpts such as “I value my time” (Male, 21 years), “My time is
more valuably spent doing other things [. . .]” (Male, 26 years), “It’s overwhelming, all-
consuming. It’s a big distraction that I see lots of others waste their time on” (Female,
22 years) or “I couldn’t care less what others are doing at every hour of the day” (Female,
19 years). Facebook should act on these potential threats to prevent competitors from
eroding their lead position, and view them as opportunities to be explored. For example, the
perception of the overwhelming nature of the information in its newsfeed when a consumer
logs in to Facebook is useful input for designers. Ironically, it appears that Facebook’s ease
of use draws users in, but then confronts them with an overload of information they would
prefer to avoid. Its PU may, at some point in time, be outweighed by its being perceived as a
“waste of my valuable time” (V9), especially for users who are more task-oriented (V9). In
attempting to be all things to all people, its information complexity could become a threat,
with consumers potentially abandoning it for simpler competitors, such as Snapchat.
In interviews about the future of Facebook, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg,
has suggested that Facebook will increasingly provide more video and live content
(Ledermen, 2016), such as the Facebook Live feature. There is evidence in our study, that
this is not the strategic direction Facebook needs to take, as the onslaught of video, while
seen as entertaining by some (A12, non-significant), is perceived as overwhelming by
consumers, especially when content is not moderated. “I’m increasingly getting annoyed
with FB [. . .] It can be a cesspool of negativity, especially with its Facebook Live feature”
said a 22-year-old male, referring to video. “I hate it because of the things I see that I don’t
want to see,” stated a 20-year-old female, who added that she has migrated to using more of
Snapchat because of its relative manageability and ease of use. Facebook should rather
focus on the core values being satisfied for a majority of users, such as social acceptance and
togetherness (V5), and friendship and family ties (V1), refining the features that enable
these, such as sharing pictures and family news (A4, A3, A11), networking (A3) and being
easy to use (A3). As Instagram is under its umbrella, Facebook can conduct research to
uncover the values consumers are seeking to satisfy through that platform, and to build on
those further to make Instagram an attractive companion product to which younger users
can safely migrate, instead of losing them to Snapchat, as with our Starbucks brewed coffee-
to-cappuccino switch example earlier. In attempting to compete with YouTube for the video
audience, Facebook may end up losing frustrated and overwhelmed consumers from its
platform. A dedicated video-based spinoff can be considered. In the late maturity phase of
its life cycle, the strategic marketing error that Facebook may be prone to is packing an
increasing number of features onto its basic platform, instead of developing new and
differentiated products, as consumers become more diversified in their social media needs.
This is clearly an area for future research.
 Another salient reason for disliking Facebook was the attribute, “has nothing to interest Why do
me” (A9), which connected to the value “people in reality are more important to me than millennials use
through technology” (V11), which was, interestingly, also connected to V1, “friendship and
family.” The same value that motivates Facebook use, also accounts for its avoidance by a
Facebook?
segment of consumers, which prefers to use means other than social media to satisfy the
same value. Simplifying the basic platform and streamlining it for social use may help win
over these nonusers. Other than that, Facebook should consider this segment as laggards
who may eventually (albeit reluctantly) be persuaded by social pressures to become users. 189
A number of “non-significant” attributes are listed in Appendix. These, nevertheless,
came to the top of some (low-involvement) consumers’ minds when asked. A typical
respondent stated: “Why do I use Facebook? I’m not really sure; I just like to use it to see
videos and share stuff with friends and family” (Female, 21 years, whose evaluation of
Facebook was neutral). The 35.8 per cent of respondents in our study who reported being
neutral toward Facebook probably fell into the low-involvement category. They use
Facebook for its functionality, but do not have a deep relationship with it. Facebook should
research these consumers and their shallow MECs to try to transform them into having a
more high-involvement relationship with the brand. It should be wary of an increasing
number of consumers migrating toward neutral evaluations, as these consumers may cave
in to competitive pressure when a more attractive alternative comes along.
This research was conducted before the explosion of news about privacy and security
issues that Facebook is tangled with, in Europe and in the USA (in 2018). The lack of
privacy and authenticity (“fake news”) were mentioned as top-of-mind for some users in our
research (A6, V8, V17, non-significant). This is likely to have become an additional
vulnerability, and would make a suitable topic for a follow-up study that includes
competitors. With this analysis, we address our third supplementary research question:
What can Facebook marketers do to keep adding value to users’ experiences to continue to
meet their needs more effectively?

Theoretical contributions
This research offers several theoretical contributions to the marketing literature. Research
involving consumer behavior vis-à-vis DSM has thus far been largely exploratory in nature
(Whiting and Williams, 2013; Pai and Arnott, 2013) and has studied earlier manifestations of
Facebook. Over the past five years or so since these, Facebook has evolved and grown, and
its features have changed substantially. Our study updates these findings and takes them
from the exploratory realm to more of a confirmatory one. We summarize our contributions
here and discuss them below:

We uncover psychological drivers of consumer behavior on social media.

Moving beyond the limitations of TAM, a widely used current theoretical approach
to studying consumer adoption of technologies, we delve past the attributes of the
technology to understand why those are important.

We merge another theoretical approach used in consumer behavior study, the MEC,
with the TAM, to provide a complementary and more complete method of studying
consumers’ behavior on DSM. This has not been done before, as far as we are aware,
demonstrating that the MEC is able to begin where TAM leaves off, both widening
and deepening its scope.

We add to earlier findings by exposing perceived negative attributes of social media
that repel consumers, and probe to understand why these may be a concern for the
Facebook platform.
QMR DSM research in marketing has been fragmented (Lamberton and Stephen, 2016; Stephen,
23,1 2016), partly because the technologies which offer platforms for these change so rapidly.
One recommendation by these researchers for future research was to expand work
regarding consumers’ psychological experiences in the domain. In this research, we take the
focus off the technologies and shift it to a more enduring object: consumers and their
behaviors. We set out to understand why younger millennials use social media, probing
190 beyond surface-level attributes of technologies, such as their PU and ease of use, to uncover
deep motivations for their behaviors in DSM contexts. Our research revealed a constellation
of values, ultimate motivators of behavior, which are satisfied by Facebook, revealing a deep
and complex relationship that these consumers have with the platform. These were
pleasure, belongingness, inner harmony, friendship and family (all positive) and the
negative values that repelled consumers from Facebook: valuing spending time with people
in person rather than connecting via technology, and time and task being highly valued with
regards to Facebook being viewed as a waste of time. These findings support and add to Pai
and Arnott’s (2013) findings of values motivating Facebook use (belonging, reciprocity,
hedonism and self-esteem), and also extend their findings with the negative values
uncovered. In addition, our study confirms and extends Whiting and Williams’ (2013)
exploratory study of Facebook use with uses and gratification theory, in which they
uncovered gratifications such as social interaction (our “friendship and family” value),
communicatory utility (our attributes “easy tool to stay in touch” and “can share pictures”)
and convenience utility (our attributes “easy to use, convenient” and “convenient and
cheap”). We clarify that some of the gratifications thrown up by the uses and gratifications
approach tend to be surface-level factors, or what we term attributes (such as
communicatory and convenience utility, “pass time” and “entertainment”) and not true
motivations, which the MEC is able to reveal consistently.
A second contribution of our work is that it clarifies strengths and limitations of using
the TAM for studying technology use by consumers. The basic TAM approach predicts
adoption effectively using attributes of the technology, PU and PEU, as confirmed in our
study for the DSM context. However, researchers including DSM researchers in marketing,
often modify TAM, increasing its complexity and introducing context-specific factors that
limit generalizability (Wirtz and Gottel, 2016). TAM and its variants view technology as the
end-goal of consumer decision-making, failing to explain why consumers choose to adopt
and then continue to use a given technology, which would be of value in marketing. Our
research probes beyond the act of adoption, drilling down from important attributes of the
technology, to provide insights into why they are important. In general, for consumers, we
found that the technology is not an end, but more a means to self-relevant ends. Consumers,
for example, liked that Facebook was “easy to use” because it enabled them to know what
was up in each other’s lives, helping them to socialize and feel friendly, and thereby satisfy
their values of enjoying a good life. They found Facebook to be “useful” to help them stay
connected, therefore feel caring, helping satisfy their values of friendship and family. This
value in turn, was strongly connected to others – social acceptance, mental well-being, inner
harmony and peace. Our approach both broadened and deepened TAM’s scope, revealing
additional attributes of the technology important to consumers (e.g. “can make new friends”
and “share pictures”) and revealed the why’s behind their importance. For example, sharing
pictures was salient because it helped satisfy consumers’ values of belonging, friendship
and family, and staved off loneliness and isolation in the context of hectic lives requiring
much time to be spent away from loved ones. We thereby demonstrate how the quantitative
approach of TAM can be meshed with the qualitative approach of means-end theory to
provide insights into why consumers adopt and then continue to use a technology.
 Pai and Arnott (2013) paved the way for using MEC theory to study social media use. They Why do
combined UGT with MEC to provide insights into why consumers use social media platforms millennials use
such as Facebook, in an exploratory study. They suggest that their research method of
combining two approaches forms a workable basis for further research, a prescription we
Facebook?
follow in combining the structural modeling of TAM with a large-sample MEC laddering
study. In building on their study, we used Reynolds and Phillips’ (2009) detailed
recommendations for reporting standardized measures for the laddering process to help in
future study replications and to help evaluate data quality (Grunert and Grunert, 1995). 191
Reynolds and Gutman (1988) observe that adding a quantitative dimension to the analysis of
laddering data in this way uniquely positions this method as a generator of rich and reliable
information to build strategy with. Our study revealed similar values (pleasure and
belongingness) together with others (inner and relational harmony with family and friends).
We introduced consumers’ involvement with the object as a factor that can help provide
additional insights into why certain consumers use Facebook with little engagement, pointing
out that these consumers may be the first to defect if targeted by aggressive competitive action.
Motivations for not using Facebook were also discovered in our study, something that
has not been done so far: some consumers, who valued their time, found it time-consuming
and overwhelming. Privacy concerns were also voiced, and these are likely to be more
prominent in future research with the waves of negative publicity surfacing recently
regarding Facebook’s practices. Our HVM also portrayed a rich picture of interconnections
of psychosocial consequences and values, indicating the complex and deep relationship
users have with Facebook.
An additional contribution is using MEC insights to connect consumer behavior on social
media to users’ larger socio-cultural context, such as the opioid epidemic in the western world.

Methodological contributions
Our study is based on the belief that the bundle of attributes and benefits that represent any
technology is merely a means to the end of satisfying consumers’ deeper needs. We sought
to determine if we could knit these two factors – the attributes of a DSM technology and the
needs of consumers – into a common framework that can explain social media use. By
combining two different methodologies that have not been used together before, bringing
together the rigor of the quantitative SEM-based TAM, and the rich qualitative insights
afforded by the laddering of the MEC, we offer a potent and more holistic approach for
studying consumer behavior on DSM. We demonstrate how the two approaches are linked:
TAM’s basic predictors, PU and PEU appear among the salient attributes in the MEC. We
are then able to see why PU and PEU are important to consumers. We also bridge the
quantitative–qualitative research gap with a large-sample application of MEC, reporting
measures that can help in replication studies, following developments in laddering research
(Reynolds and Phillips, 2009). TAM, when used in different technology adoption contexts,
often becomes unwieldy, with variables added to improve its fit. Our approach suggests
stripping it back down to its essence, to help confirm what initially causes adoption, and
then meshing it with MEC to probe to uncover why those factors, and others, are important.
This approach can be used irrespective of the technology adopted, a factor that is
particularly important given the transient and constantly evolving nature of many DSM.
Future research can do just this, helping to validate this approach with other DSMM.
In general, such analysis contributes to better marketing because it encourages
marketers to “crawl into the skin of your customer, and see the world through her eyes,”
(Christensen et al., 2016, p. 64) asking the question as she does something: Why did she do it
that way? Christensen opines that in this age of big data and sophisticated analytical tools,
QMR successful innovation is still hit-and-miss because “data is not the phenomenon; it represents
23,1 the phenomenon but not very well” (p. xviii). Rather, a better understanding of the why’s
behind the data would help build better customer solutions and marketing strategies.
Probing beyond the data makes the information richer and more robust.

Conclusion
192 The core premise on which this research is built is that consumers do not adopt or buy
technology per se. They acquire technologies to help them live more fulfilled, contented lives
in their socio-cultural context. Consumer values, which are fundamental drivers of behavior,
according to means-end theory, can far better account for observed behaviors such
as adoption than the transient and superficial-level attributes that describe technologies. It
is not that attributes are unimportant; consumers certainly use these surface-level properties
for initial assessment and categorization of a product. But of greater influence are the values
that dictate their choice of, and continued behavior with them. Instagram may have the best
photo-sharing feature at present (an attribute). In the future, it may be beaten at this feature
by a competitor, whose aim is to make the market leader’s distinguishing attributes
superfluous, with a better–faster–cheaper principle. It may not be sustainable in the long
term for a firm to build its competitive advantage on such attributes. Instead, if a firm seeks
to drill down from important attributes, to unearth the consumer values that are connected
to these, it will discover a far more enduring basis for building successful strategy. If
Instagram understands that the important values being satisfied are belongingness, social
acceptance and togetherness, and that consumers are using it to combat social isolation in
an increasingly uncertain, turbulent social context, this finding can serve as input for
shaping more effective strategy. Such a strategy would speak directly to these values in
advertising; it would adopt a process of continuous improvement to the product, based on a
rich understanding of customer needs; it would aid understanding of competitive strengths
and weaknesses; it would develop new products and plan obsolescence of its current
offering. It would market better. Such a strategy adopts a customer-centric approach, eager
to be modified, based on the web of consumer values it aims to satisfy.
In this research, we demonstrated this in the context of understanding consumer use of
social media. We reiterated the validity of the TAM approach grafted into marketing, but
also discussed where it falls short. The laddering methodology helped dig up and map out
the constellation of consumer values that Facebook helps satisfy. Our conclusions are that
consumer use of social media is not really bound to the specific technology, although
consumers have a deep and complex relationship with Facebook. With this, more holistic
study of consumer behavior, we are also able to take into consideration the larger cultural
context of consumers, likening the approach to looking at the consumer through the lens of a
camera, but then zooming outward to include in the frame, their background. Though the
MEC approach probes deep, it also reflects in the depths of consumers’ personalities, their
socio-cultural environment.

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About the authors

Grace J. Ambrose, PhD, is a Lecturer in Marketing in the Lubar School of Business, University of
Wisconsin – Milwaukee. She is also Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Ekantha, an online
social business that seeks to uplift underprivileged village women through their handicrafts, using
the minimum-profit model of Nobel Peace Prize winner, and founder of Grameen Bank, Professor
Muhammad Yunus. Grace J. Ambrose is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: gracej@
uwm.edu
Juan (Gloria) Meng, PhD, is Professor of Marketing and Chair of the Department of Marketing and
International Business in the College of Business, Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Paul J. Ambrose, PhD, is Professor of Information Technology and Associate Dean in the College
of Business and Economics, University of Wisconsin – Whitewater.
 23,1

196
QMR

and codes
Table AI.
Laddering responses
Appendix

Attributes Functional consequences Psychosocial consequences Values

A1= “in” thing, popular, F1 = enables me to socialize PS1 = I can be/ feel friendly V1 = friendship and family
hip
A2 = event planning F2 = I can stay connected with PS2 = I feel efficient V2 = competence (in managing my social life)
friends and/or family near or and/ or relationships; capable
far away; avoid losing touch
A3 = easy tool to stay in F3 = I can be active PS3 = life is all about caring for people; I V3 = enjoy a good life/ every moment; gives me
touch; connectivity; can feel caring; helps me live out my self- pleasure
networking image
A3-1 = tool to reconnect F4 = I can know what’s up PS4 = I don’t feel alone or isolated; feel V4 = self-image; it’s who I am
(news); know more about what accepted
my friends are up to; know
each other’s lives
A4 = can share pictures F5 = negative; wastes my time PS5 = I have people to depend on when V5 = social acceptance, belongingness,
conveniently needed; connections can be useful to you togetherness
A5 = easy to use; F6 = helps me plan my social PS6 = I feel overwhelmed; it’s all- V5-1 = helps my good reputation
convenient; easier than life consuming; negative
phone calls or texting
A5-1 = convenient and F7 = it is helpful PS7 = I feel knowledgeable V6 = mental well-being, inner harmony, peace
cheap
A5-2 = automatically PS8 = I like spending time on activities V7 = ambition, can get on in life
organizes enabled by FB (e.g. photography)
A6*=lack of privacy V7-1= (negative) hinders my accomplishment
(negative)
A7 = time-consuming V8=(negative) value my privacy, be independent,
(negative) freedom
A8 = big distraction V9=(negative) time and task are valuable; it
(negative) wastes my valuable time
(continued)
Attributes Functional consequences Psychosocial consequences Values

A9 = has nothing to V10 = value exclusivity (being different);

interest me (negative) responsible and self-controlled
A10 = playing games V11 = people more important (value spending
time with people in reality than through
technology)
A11 = make new friends V12 = life is short; live it
A12 = entertainment V13 = in control; being secure
A13 = birthday V14 = happiness
greetings reminder
A14 = can write wall V15 = confident
posts
A15 = get product deals, V16 = stress-free life
coupons, business
information
V17 = fake; not authentic

Note: *Italic cells are negative

Table AI.
197
Facebook?
Why do
millennials use
Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further
reproduction prohibited without permission.