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Library collections promotion for preadolescents using social media marketing strategies

Ko-Chiu Wu (Department of Interaction Design, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan)
Tsung-Ying Yang (Microsoft Taiwan Corporation, Taipei, Taiwan)

Library Hi Tech

ISSN: 0737-8831

Article publication date: 29 April 2021

Issue publication date: 8 December 2022

1531

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore preadolescents' opinions of the social media marketing strategies hosted by libraries to promote collections.

Design/methodology/approach

An experimental Facebook page was created with posts containing interesting animations, games and book recommendations. A questionnaire survey was administered to 262 preadolescents between 11 and 13 years old to seek their opinions about the posts, and confirmatory factor analysis was used to measure their acceptance of the marketing strategies.

Findings

The authors examined the effects of five marketing strategies: word-of-mouth marketing, buzz marketing, event marketing, viral marketing and gamification marketing. In terms of sharing, word-of-mouth marketing proved the most popular, followed by buzz marketing. Participants were least accepting of viral marketing. The authors found that gamification marketing resulted in higher engagement than did event marketing. The preadolescent participants preferred engagement marketing strategies over information sharing strategies.

Originality/value

According to the uses and gratification theory, preadolescents seek, share and engage with information in ways that differ from other age groups. With specific reference to hedonic engagement by preadolescents, the authors built a two-fold model to describe the information-seeking behaviors of preadolescents from the perspective of marketing strategies. The study findings indicate that librarians who use Facebook to promote library collections should first employ gamification and word-of-mouth marketing to build trust with preadolescent users. Event and buzz marketing will then be more effective when applied within the context of this trust.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China, Taiwan for financially supporting this research under Contract No. MOST-106-2410-H-027-005.

Citation

Wu, K.-C. and Yang, T.-Y. (2022), "Library collections promotion for preadolescents using social media marketing strategies", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 40 No. 6, pp. 1671-1688. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-03-2020-0073

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

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