The Effect of Users' Interaction in Social Media on Purchasing By Brand Attitude and Subjective Norms

Social media are one of the latest achievements of information technology and also new approaches to marketing. On the other hand, the unlimited communication of users in these media leads to cross-effects on users. Social media has shifted power from company to individuals and communities, or creative users, which have had a very successful or catastrophic impact on well-known winners. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of user interaction in social media on buying intention by brand attitude and subjective norms. The present research is applied in a purposeful and survey-analytical type. The research instrument was a questionnaire and Cronbach's alpha coefficient for all dimensions and variables was higher than 0.7. The questionnaires were distributed among 252 members of the social media community who were familiar with the brand and received information from a particular brand. In order to analyze the data, structural equations were used. The results of this study showed that peer pressure and reference group pressure have a positive and significant effect on attitudes toward brand and subjective norms. Also, two variables of attitude toward brand and subjective norms have a positive and significant effect on the intention to purchase. In addition, the role of mediation of two variables of attitude toward brand and subjective norms between the three peer pressure variables, the pressure of reference groups and the intention to purchase were confirmed. Therefore, ten research hypotheses were confirmed.