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This study provides a framework to explain the attitude–intention gap in viewing advertisements in social networks. Going beyond the literal and evaluative inconsistency issues in measuring factors with theory of planned behavior (TPB), the authors propose and test a theoretical framework with possible moderators to the relationship between the attitude and behavioral intention.

Two surveys were conducted to test the theoretical framework, one with students and the other with working people in Hanoi, Vietnam. After testing measure reliabilities and validities, hypotheses were tested with regressions using SPSS.

In general, the attitude was still found to have a positive relationship with the behavioral intention. However, the attitude–intention gap still exists as trust in social network was found to moderate the relationship between the attitude and intention with the working people sample while trust in brands advertised facilitate the relationship with the student sample. Interestingly, involvement was not found to moderate the relationship.

Several practical implications can be recommended. In general, the marketing strategy for managers is still to develop positive attitude by consumers toward viewing advertisements. However, personalization strategy should be taken with care in advertisement in social network. Providing consumers with perceived privacy control may help enhance the advertisement effectiveness. Finally, building trusts, on or off the social network, should be optimized to increase the users' intention to view advertisements in social network.

This research offers a new explanation for the attitude–intention inconsistency in general and for viewing advertisements in social networks in particular. Going beyond the measurement issues, the research suggests looking at the process under that the attitude can be formed and activated to impact on the intention. Moreover, mixed findings from two comparable samples provide nuanced insights for different groups of consumers.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2021-0563.

Due to customers' extensive avoidance behavior, social commerce may be less successful than anticipated. This study investigates the underlying mechanism and antecedents that influence customers' avoidance of peer-generated advertisements.

Based on the general framework of avoidance behavior, we propose a theoretical model for the context of a mobile social network, with tie strength as the user-related factor and violation of shared language, advertisement relevance and information overload as contextual variables. Using survey data collected from 334 customers on WeChat, we empirically examine the research model and hypotheses.

Tie strength and advertisement relevance are negatively associated with avoidance behavior, whereas information overload and violation of shared language have significantly positive effects. Furthermore, tie strength weakens the negative relationship between violation of shared language and avoidance behavior but strengthens the positive relationship between advertisement relevance and avoidance behavior.

The findings extend understanding of advertisement avoidance behavior and can guide practitioners' improvement of advertising efficiency in mobile social networks.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of perceived enjoyment in advertising response in online social networks (OSN). The authors propose and test a structural model explaining response to OSN advertisements embracing perceived enjoyment, social influence and advertising-related variables.

Data were gathered through the application of a structured questionnaire to a sample of 126 students of the same scientific area (marketing and communication studies).

The results validate the proposed model and support nine out of ten hypotheses. The study supports the role of perceived enjoyment as a predictor of both social identity and group norms. Furthermore, social identity and group intention have a positive impact on perceived advertisement relevance. Finally, group intention towards advertisements and perceived advertisement relevance have a positive impact on perceived advertisement value, which in turn impacts positively on response to OSN advertisements.

The main limitation relates to the fact that the study mainly covered a population aged between 18-35 years old. Despite its relevance as a segment of OSN users, some caution needs to be taken in generalizing findings to a broader population.

These results provide important indications for firms aiming at fully exploiting the computer-mediated communication of OSNs. Specifically, we confirm the role of perceived enjoyment in reinforcing group dynamics and shaping group intentions towards advertising.

The main contribution of this study lies in the focus on perceived enjoyment as a predicting variable of social influence and advertising variables, thus impacting response to OSN advertisements.

The study aims to demonstrate the impact of social media users’ positive attitude towards the social networking sites (SNS) on the generation of a positive attitude towards social networking advertisements (SNA). A favourable attitude towards the SNA thus generated can positively influence brand attitude and purchase intention.

An online survey was conducted to collect relevant data using a structured questionnaire. Structural equation modelling was conducted using the statistical software AMOS 18.

Empirical analysis revealed the importance of brand advertisements on the social networks in inciting a positive attitude as well as a purchase intention for the brand in the SNS users’ minds.

The study has been conducted in the Indian context using Facebook as a model social networking site.

Social media being one of the most popular and user-friendly platforms for regular communications, marketers are suggested to allocate a sizeable share of the advertising budget for social media advertisements and customer engagement so as to help build a positive attitude towards the advertised brand in the SNS users’ minds.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the impact of users’ positive evaluation of SNS as an effective communication medium, on the generation of a positive attitude towards the SNA, has been dealt for the first time here.

This paper aims to report on lessons learnt from operating a location‐aware mobile social networking application, and critical functionalities that were deemed necessary in order to provide a pleasant user experience. As a result of user feedback, the authors enhanced their social networking system, G2G, with functionalities such as login with Facebook.com credentials without the need to sign up to their system first, and a much improved localization system that works across different mobile operators. Mobile advertisement was included for enhancing the user experience.

A modular approach has been followed for the system design. The original G2G system interfaced cleanly with the Facebook application programming interfaces (APIs) and the mobile advertisement subsystem through wrapper components.

The result was a much improved user experience as existing Facebook subscriptions facilitated new users to use the system. Mobile advertisement functionalities were seen as an essential add‐on. The aforementioned functionalities, combined with the ability to upload/search/download location‐aware multimedia notes, and a back‐end interface that allows advertisers to add location‐aware, personalized content, resulted in a significantly enhanced user experience as evidenced by higher user active participation to the system.

The enhanced system integrates seamelessly with Facebook (facilitating thus the entry of new users) and with a mobile advertisement platform, and provides for advanced security functionalities. Moreover, it supports Android‐based smart‐phones.

Customers are interested in finding service recommendations, reviews and word of mouth using social networking platforms. These service reviews are useful for enhancing service quality, level of information and engagement, and purchase intention of customers. The purpose of this paper is to uncover which social networking platform is more useful for the exchange of service reviews and how organizations are improving purchase intention as well as service quality in the light of customer’s reviews/experiences.

The study is exploratory in nature because it aims to understand the use of social networking platforms for enhancing service quality and the purchase intention of customers using a purposive sampling technique. To meet the objective of this study, non-directive and semi-structured interviews have been conducted with customers and marketing teams in the banking sector and internet service providers.

The results show that social networking websites are helpful in fostering responsiveness, awareness, assurance, reliability and empathy. However, respondents revealed serious concerns regarding the privacy of personal and financial information especially in the context of the banking sector. It has been found that official Facebook pages of service-providing organizations, open and closed local community Facebook groups, sponsored ads and promotional advertisements on Facebook, WhatsApp groups and YouTube video comments are more frequently used to exchange service reviews (i.e. influence the process of purchase decision) among friends, friends of friends, family members and the general public. The selected customers and market team respondents revealed that local community Facebook groups (i.e. open groups and closed groups) have gained prime importance for enhancing service quality and purchase decisions.

The effective and well-organized use of social networking platforms can foster service reviews, word of mouth, level of service awareness, interactive communication, intention to purchase, social influence, social trust and services quality. Furthermore, online social networking platforms require a lower level of advertisement costs and offer huge amounts of information, discussions, enquires, service stories, word of mouth, transactions and interactions of consumers.

The present study is exploratory in nature because it selects an under-researched issue regarding the use of social networking applications to enhance levels of purchase intention and service quality. There is limited literature which has combined the multiple constructs in a single study (i.e. social media platforms, cross-platform platforms, service quality and purchase intention of consumers). Most of the previous studies are dependent on various dimensions of service quality (i.e. “reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empath and tangibles”). However, the present study extracted that respondents have given more preferences of services awareness and privacy compared to traditional elements of service quality.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of using online advertising on the social networking site Facebook in encouraging university students to connect with their library's Facebook page.

A two‐month paid Facebook advertising campaign was conducted. Using the tools provided by Facebook Adverts, the campaign was targeted only at current students at the university who were not already connected with the library's Facebook page. At the conclusion of the campaign, the statistics recorded by Facebook Adverts were used to assess how effective the advertisement had been in attracting new connections.

The campaign statistics showed that the advertisement was shown frequently to the targeted user group, and that the click through rate for the advertisement was high. Furthermore, the advertisement accounted for over half of the new connections made to the library's Facebook page during the campaign period.

As the findings are based on the results of one campaign at a single institution, they cannot be used to make generalizations. However, the results may prompt further inquiry into the use of social network advertising in marketing academic libraries.

While previous studies have examined using Facebook as a free tool for marketing libraries, this paper explores the potentials of paid advertising on social networks. Given the finding that such advertising can have a significant positive impact for a relatively small financial outlay, practitioners could consider this as another means to build their own library's brand in a cost‐effective manner.

This study aims to empirically analyze the effects of marketing communications, such as advertisement/promotion and social network service (SNS) content, on consumer engagement (CE), brand trust and brand loyalty.

The study’s participants were 230 US and 376 Korean consumers who have used (i.e. contacted) a food service establishment (i.e. family restaurant) at least once before and who continue to use an SNS (e.g. Facebook and Instagram). This study conducted a hypothesis test using structural equation modeling analysis. In addition, hierarchical analysis was performed to further generalize and support the statistical analysis results.

Advertisement/promotion and SNS content have a statistically significant positive effect on CE. Advertisement/promotion has a statistically significant positive effect on brand trust, and SNS content has a statistically significant negative effect on brand trust. CE has a statistically significant positive effect on brand trust, and CE and brand trust have a statistically significant positive effect on brand loyalty. No statistically significant differences were shown between the US and Korean consumer groups (critical ratios for difference of path coefficient < ± 1.96). The hypothesis test results of the structural equation model analysis and hierarchical analysis were the same for the entire group.

The findings indicate that the overall mediating role of CE is important. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate which marketing communication channels are most effective in the restaurant sector.

While substantial scholarly attention has been given to children’s understanding of advertising in the context of traditional advertising channels, there is a gap in the literature with regard to children’s commercial awareness in the context of online social networking sites. This paper aims to seek to explore the nature and extent of advertising literacy among young consumers in the context of their use of social networking sites, namely, Facebook and Bebo.

A three-stage study was conducted with 12 to 14-year-old girls, using focus group discussions, participant observation and in-depth interviews.

The study illustrates that the increasingly blurred line between online advertising and other forms of online brand-related content is militating against the development of advertising and marketing literacy in young consumers. A key issue which is discussed is the extent to which the traditional conceptualisation of advertising literacy is “fit for purpose” in an online context.

The authors propose an alternative to the advertising literacy concept, namely, the Online Brand Communications literacy framework. This framework recognises the convergence of traditional online advertising and other forms of online brand content and also acknowledges that the messaging around a brand may originate from the brand owner in a variety of overt and covert forms. Equally, online consumers may also act as brand promoters when they engage in brand-related word-of-mouth.

YouTube has emerged as the most innovative social networking sites (SNS) with exclusive features at that time which allowed users to post, view, comment and link to videos on the site. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the way emotional appeals are being used in YouTube advertisements to promote their products by considering various big brands of different industries in emerging market like India. The advertisement that induces consumer’s emotions can cause subconscious reactions which supersede consumer’s logical and pragmatic responses to create the unbreakable bond with a brand.

The study has taken online video advertisements which were uploaded on YouTube by different companies. The advertisements considered for the study were selected on three criteria: having more than 1,00,000 subscribers; videos having Indian advertisements; and have released at least one popular advertisement of minimum 1,00,000 views monthly in the period January 1-December 31, 2016. Random sampling method was used. Content analysis of 150 video advertisements was done to assess the influence of positive and negative emotions on consumer engagement. Multiple regression method is used taking the stepwise method.

The present study focused on emotional aspects of the advertisement that induce consumer engagement through SNS. The marketing strategies mainly focus on rational aspects as well as emotional aspects. The study suggests that in emerging economy like India, people heavily rely on emotions rather than logical information regarding any goods or services; hence, we considered both positive and negative emotional aspects in the study so as to measure the influence of emotional appeals on consumer engagement. Positive emotional appeals like contentment, happiness and love have the positive influence on the consumer engagement. On the other hand, negative emotional appeals are negatively related to the consumer engagement.

The present study aims at measuring ripple effect of the emotional appeals on ads and also tries to compare the impact between positive and negative emotional appeals so that it becomes easy for the marketers to determine the context in which it can be applied. For this purpose, YouTube video ads from India have been taken as the object of study from different industries.