This thing of social media! Going business or socialisation? Solving the great dilemma

Abstract

Purpose

Social media has become a “thing” not just for its historical purpose of socialisation, but a multi-faceted platform of unpredictable possibilities. With the current high levels of actual usage, business on the platform has assumed different styles and has become one of the competing activities on this platform, creating a dilemma for the future. However, as social beings, we can manage such capricious adventure by means of research, to predict the possible destination before we are taken by surprise. One of such medium of studies is through the philosophies of the continuance intention theories. To this end, the purpose of this paper was to investigated some antecedents of social media that are capable of predicting the direction of this platform to test this theory of continuance intention, and the results from the predictive Smart PLS3 shows that the continuance intention for business on this platform will overtake socialisation to offer the biggest market among the elitist class in the near future, and not China, Nigeria or the NYSE.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses Predictive Smart PLS3 to analyse the continuance intention of social media platforms.

Findings

Predictive Smart PLS3 shows that the continuance intention for business on social media platform will overtake socialisation to offer the biggest market.

Research limitations/implications

The questions asked in this study focussed on buyers and not platform managers. As the continuance intention depends on the latter as well, it would have been better if their opinions were also sought to determine what will make them continue to provide social media.

Originality/value

This paper is among the first to do such a study.

Citation

Assensoh-Kodua, A. (2020), "This thing of social media! Going business or socialisation? Solving the great dilemma", Foresight, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 331-350. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-04-2019-0028