The role of uses and gratifications in developing user satisfaction and positive electronic word of mouth(eWOM)on Facebook; A cross cultural study between South Korea and Tanzania
With the world today going digital, there is need to deeply understand why different social networking users opt to recommend different users across networks to a specific product or service offered through electronic word-of-mouth(eWOM). Through this platform people have the potential to reach a wide range of users within a short period.
This research therefore poses to investigate the role of the uses and gratifications in developing user satisfaction and hence enhance positive electronic word of mouth on Facebook with national culture as a moderator. To give us a clear insight of how we can test the moderating effect of culture, we decided to use Hofstede cultural dimensions of Individualism/collectivism, Uncertainty avoidance and Long/short-term orientation from the possible six of the Hofstede model to help in providing a better conclusion of how SNS users from South Korea and Tanzania are gratified.
Data was then collected using online and offline methods using a survey questionnaire representing a total sample size of 285 respondents from both countries. With the use of the structural equation modeling to examine our model and found out that there was a significant difference in the user’s motivation of joining and using social networking sites in the two countries. We also found out that culture is a very important antecedent of determining the user’s gratification of social networking sites.
