Effect of Social Media Adoption and Media Needs on Online Purchase Behavior: The Moderator Roles of Media Type, Gender, Age

Penetration of smartphones and increasing use of social media on always-on devices has attracted the attention of enterprises and organizations to benefit from such platforms for better understanding of customers’ needs and more effectively communicate with potential consumers. For this purpose, the present study investigates the impact of social media adoption and media needs on online purchasing behavior. This study has also examined the moderating role of media type, gender and age in the relationship between variables of social media adoption and online purchasing behavior. A total of 410 questionnaires were collected on social media such as Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp. SEM technique using PLS used as the analytical method to empirically test the proposed hypotheses. Results show that the effects of tension dimension on online purchasing behavior is mediated by social media adoption. Moreover, the effects of social media adoption on online purchasing behavior are moderated by age and medium type based on Multi-Group Analysis. The IPMA matrix shows that social media adoption had the highest importance, but the lowest performance. This study is significant in terms of innovation due to the use of new indicators effective in the area of statistical analyses. The use of FIMIX, CTA, permutation test, MGA, and IPMA matrix analyses is part of it.