Use Behaviors and Website Experiences of Facebook Community
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2010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)
Use Behaviors and Website Experiences of Facebook Community
Ho, Hui-Yi Pan, Hung-Yuan
Dept. of Business Administration Dept. of Graphic Communications & Digital Publishing
Chinese Culture University Shih Hsin University
Taipei City, Taiwan Taipei City, Taiwan
huyho@sce.pccu.edu.tw ilovesmalllove@yahoo.com.tw
Abstract—With the rapid growth of internet-generation, online accounting for about 28.33% of total population in Taiwan,
friend-making pattern has gradually grown up, wherein, one third of the population is Facebook users on average. It
Facebook is one of the global social networking community is also shown by statistics that in the last three months from
that develops fastest in recent years. Therefore, this research February 2010 to May 2010, Facebook users rose from
attempts to investigate online friend-making pattern of
Facebook users and compare the relevancy between the use
about 5,745,974 to about 6,494,140 people with an increase
behavior and website experience of Facebook users on the of 748,166 users in just three months, showing the
theoretical basis of “experiential marketing” and in view of the popularity rate and growth rate of Facebook in Taiwan is
experience modules such as “sense experience”, “feel quite considerable (see Fig.2).
experience”, “think experience”, “act experience” and “relate Rich interconnections in Facebook also promotes users
experience.” The research findings indicate that in the to link messages of other platforms with Facebook, so that
experiential marketing module, some factors among the connectivity between communities is more strong, for
Facebook users’ demographic variables and use behaviors of instance, microblogging Plurk is a link connecting real-time
Facebook really have significant differences in website short message information with Facebook. Nyland
experience. This research provides operation mentioned that the message interaction behavior depended
recommendations related with on-line community platforms, on by high-level network community mode that is gradually
and hopefully provides reference about making future website growing at present is more popular than entertainment,
strategies or planning marketing activities for website therefore, the society needs these online communities to
operators. strengthen community connection, and enhance the
convenience of communication in order to achieve the
Keywords—component; facebook; social networking;
experiential marketing; virtual community purpose of linking the whole society by means of network
[2]. Facebook has higher connectivity in current internet
world, no matter the sub-communities gathered with
I. INTRODUCTION common interests, or fan groups of various brands can be
In recent years, virtual community has developed tracked and followed up through tendencies of Facebook
prosperously on the Internet, users can make friends with friends. Facebook also connects internal communities with
people sharing common interests, post up messages or external network communities by such higher community
comment on viewpoints of each other by means of online connectivity, so as to achieve the purpose of integrating the
community platform. Furthermore, users can also transcend community network society.
national boundaries, and further find friends with common Present society is a huge experiential context, each
interests all over the world. At present, several well-known article existing in our lives has experiential elements, the
global online community platforms such as Facebook, process of buying these articles by consumers is also an
Twitter, MySpace and Friendster, have already shown the experiential act. Schmitt explained “experience” as
trend of rapid growth in the past few years. Hitwise, a individual events occurred in response to certain
famous website for Internet research, announced in May, stimulations, which is an induced, instead of spontaneous,
2010 that at present, the top three global online community phenomenon through creation of a special medium. Schmitt
platforms are respectively Facebook (54.76%), Youtube also put forward the strategic experiential modules, showing
(15.33%) and Myspace (12.44%). It is shown by the result that experiential marketing is respectively composed of the
that current utilization rate of Facebook is far more than that “sense experience”, “feel experience”, “think experience”,
of other online community platforms (see Fig.1). “act experience” and “relate experience”, these elements
Upon the foundation of Facebook, only the users constitute a core concept of experiential marketing, and
with .edu email address can apply for accounts, but now it create different experiential forms for customers [3]. Chen
is no longer limited to be used by college students. In pointed out that the online retail industry that is gradually
September 2006, Facebook began to be popularized, and growing in recent years affects the orientations such as
gradually becomes a popular online community platform consumption context and time limitation and so on of
[1]. It is shown according to latest statistics of consumers’ online shopping utilizing a variety of
Facebakers.com, a network study institution, that at present, characteristics of the online virtual world [4].
a population of about 6,494,140 in Taiwan uses Facebook,
978-1-4244-7681-7/$26.00 C 2010 IEEE V1-379 Volume 12010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)
tremendous trend. For example, the behavior of stealing the
vegetables that used to be very popular in Taiwan society is
a virtual stealing behavior induced from the overimmersion
of the Facebook community in the HappyFarm game of the
Facebook. And these various website experiences generated
in Facebook are also the important causes of rapid
development of Facebook in Taiwan.
Therefore, this study aims at understanding whether the
strategic experiential modules of Facebook have certain
influence on user's behavior. In this study, whether the five
website experiences have influence on the use behavior of
Facebook is respectively discussed by means of the user’s
experiences in Facebook community. Research questions of
this study are as follows.
1) Are there differences among user's demographic
variables in the website experience of Facebook?
2) Are there differences among user's behavior on
Facebook in the website experience of Facebook?
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Facebook
Wu(2008) considered that virtual community arises from
placing the real world community into the virtual cyberspace
[5]. Facebook, one of the most popular social networking
Figure 1. Top 20 Social Networking Websites in the World
websites at present and originated in February 2004, was
Sources: http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard- founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a non-graduate alumni in
10133.html Harvard University, who originally only wanted to establish
an online directory for dorm mates, which then gradually
develops into services with the social networking function as
the main orientation. At first, Facebook only allowed
Harvard students to register, and could only be joined to use
through recommendation by MySpace users. After the
number of users was increasing, Facebook was opened to
other universities in the United States, and later even be
opened to general users without recommendations. Users
can build up personal information pages including photos,
interests and so on, exchange private or public messages,
and join in friends’ community through Facebook [6]. While
searching personal information of a wide range of users,
Facebook users can post up selective information such as
birthday, e-mail address, residential address, hometown,
Figure 2. Facebook User Growth in Taiwan
school information, interests, gender, relationship status,
calendar, favorite movies, music, books, online associations,
Sources: photos and so on, and exchange with other users [7].
http://www.facebakers.com/countries-with-facebook/TW/chart- Besides basic functions, Facebook also has functions
interval-1/ including The Wall, Pokes, Status, Gift, Marketplace,
Events and so on, in order to promote the interactions with
Facebook is a social networking community involving friends. In addition, the open platform of Facebook
not too many fiscal transactions, however, it can link and (http://developers.facebook.com/) started on May 24, 2007
interact with friends in real world or virtual world through can allow the third-party software developers to increase
many applications and interactive functions such as chat interconnection and interest by creating psychological tests,
rooms, Blogs, games, and photo albums, so as to induce games and interactive functions [8]. With the starting up of
different behaviors and concepts. These diversified “open applications platforms of Facebook”, games that
interactive functions may also probably induce different accounts for largest proportion of these applications at
effects, the dynamics of finding old friends or browsing boy- present allow users of Facebook to expand from students
or girl- friends form a special phenomenon as a result of the and traditional ethnic groups to attract social white collars
convenience of browsing Facebook. Online virtual exchange [9]. Through application programs, Facebook users again
of users with friends through a variety of games is also a
V1-380 Volume 12010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)
link with more friends sharing common interests, showing “strongly disagree”, “disagree”, “neither agree or disagree”,
that Facebook develops from the initial simplex list “agree” and “strongly agree”, which are respectively
integration orientation to functional orientation of making calibrated as 1 to 5 points. Section VI is devoted to the
friends. At present, interactive function model is further demographic variables, in which five questions are designed
induced by virtue of application programs, wherein, the in total including the user's gender, age, educational level,
contained patterns of alliance across industries make the occupation, and monthly income. Section VII is devoted to
future substantial development space of Facebook to have the use behavior of Facebook, in which four questions are
more competitively. designed in total including the everyday use time of
Facebook, group allowed to browse, use intention, invitation
B. Experiential Marketing frequency for making friends.
Holbrook and Hirschman defined “experience” as the
behavior of individual’s emotional expression induced from
the stimulation brought about by a product or brand [10] .
Schmitt believed that “experience” is a behavior that is
induced instead of spontaneous, which contains the whole
life essence and is usually caused by direct observation of or
participation in an event no matter the event is real or virtual.
Therefore, experience is accompanied with stimulation
sources, and these stimulations cover many inducing factors
in daily life, no matter visible or invisible, and individual‘s
experiential acts are induced from incentives [3].
Schmitt had designed a group of strategic experiential
marketing modules for experiential acts, which includes the
external stimulation of five senses, namely the “sense
marketing” providing aesthetic pleasure or satisfaction; “feel
marketing” that induces individuals to generate feelings
toward a company and brand by providing experience;
“think marketing” that promotes individuals to evaluate
enterprise and products through more elaborative and
Figure 3 Research framework
creative thinking; “act marketing” including the results
arising from the interactions with others, or experiences of
creating lifestyle-related behavior patterns; and “relate Issuing forms of questionnaires in this study are
marketing” that is generated by relating an individual to the classified into pre-testing and formal measurement, samples
broader social and cultural context reflected in a brand [3]. are selected mainly using convenience sampling method,
The greatest difference of “experiential marketing” from and whether the questionnaire content is modified or not is
“traditional marketing” lies in the narrow view on functional determined by the pre-testing. In the pre-testing of this study,
benefit of the product extended to general consumption a total of 81 questionnaires were issued to two classes of
context and brand experience [11]. With the progress of junior students of “A” University in accordance with actual
Internet in recent years, the global online retail industry is users of Facebook. And after the reliability of measurement
providing extremely great opportunity for future commerce tool was assured (Cronbach's α> 0.7), formal measurement
with planned growth, online experiential acts have become a was started. The process of collecting data of this study was
trend for modern people in new marketing times [4] from May 7 to May 17, 2010, issuing objects were Facebook
users in Taiwan, a total of 590 questionnaires were
III. RESEARCH METHODS recovered, 578 valid questionnaires were obtained with the
effective response rate as high as 98.0% after deletion of the
In this study, the following research framework (see Fig. questionnaires that were invalidly filled in.
3) is put forward with questionnaire survey method and by
reference to the conclusions of previous literatures, and the IV. RESULTS
difference of user’s demographic variables and use behavior
of Facebook in five website experiences of Facebook is A. Descriptive Statistics of Demographic Variables and
mainly discussed. Use Behavior of Facebook
Questionnaire in this study is classified into seven
Among effective samples of this research, female users
sections, in section I to section V, 5 questions are designed
are slightly more than male ones, wherein, female users
respectively in the light of five orientations, namely “sense
account for 59%, and male ones account for 41%. In respect
experience”, “feel experience”, “think experience”, “act
of age, people aged 19 to 22 occupy the highest proportion
experience” and “relate experience” of the “strategic
(58.7%), followed by those aged 23 to 30, who account for
experiential modules” put forward by Schmitt [3], with a
23.9%. As to the educational level, people with the
total of 25 questions, according to the modified
educational level of university (college) take the first place,
questionnaires of strategic experiential modules of Ho [12].
who account for 79.2%. In terms of occupation, students
This section is differentiated into five scales, namely
V1-381 Volume 12010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)
occupy the majority (73.0%). In the aspect of average C. Analysis of Variance of Facebook Use Behavior in
monthly income, the majority of people have the monthly Facebook Experiences
income of below 625 US dollars (69.7%), followed by those It is discovered through this research that Facebook users
with the monthly income of 626 to 1250 US dollars (21.1%), allowing to be browsed by different groups will have
showing that users’ average income is low. significant differences in website experience. The significant
In the use behaviors of Facebook, the average time spent difference is found in feel experience (p2010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)
In addition, it is discovered in this research that besides increase users’ setup of opening their browsing right to
relate experience, other four website experiences have others, and enhance their website experience.
significant differences in invitation frequency of unreal Finally, this research mainly discusses the practical
friends. Invitation frequency of unreal friends has significant research of experiential marketing on Facebook, if it needs
difference in sense experience (PYou can also read
