Development of a Questionnaire on Consumer Behavior Motivation in Social Media

Abstract

The paper contains theoretical and methodological substantiation, as well as the data of the psychometric validation of the technique called “Questionnaire on Consumer Behavior Motivation in Social Media” (MCBSM Questionnaire). The relevance of this diagnostic tool is accounted for by the growing theoretical and practical demand aimed at uncovering the gist of the phenomenon referred to as “personality in online environment”. It is emphasized that the concept of personality as a subject of co-­existence is of special methodological and heuristic value. The personality implements its intentions in the developing existential spaces, one of which is a qualitatively new environment known as ‘social media space’. Convincing arguments are found to substantiate the necessity of interdisciplinary approach in analyzing customers’ behavior and their motivating determinants with resorting to economic psychology, resource analysis, social and psychological concepts and psychodynamic grounds. Having reviewed the latest researches in customers’ behavior motivation, the authors found strong theoretical arguments for developing a novel approach — a psycho-­diagnostic tool called “MCBSM Questionnaire”. To draw it up, they used questioning and a full cycle of the Questionnaire psychometric testing. As a result of factor analysis by the method of the main components with Varimax-­rotation, seven factors were identified (58.09% of the variance of the results), which allowed to confirm the presence of four types of motives (“personal identification”; “entertainment”; “social interaction”; “information search”), three of which (“entertainment”; “social interaction”; “information search”) include sub-­factors (sub-­scales). The motivation “entertainment” is formed by a combination of submotives “entertainment to relieve tension”; and “entertainment to escape from everyday life»; the motivation “social identification” includes the submotives “affiliation” and “social interaction”; the motivation “information search” is differentiated by the sub-­motives “consumer information” and “cognitive information”. Theoretical and methodological substantiation of the adopted approach to the development of methods for the diagnosis of consumer behavior motivation in social media, as well as psychometric verification data give grounds to consider MCBSM Questionnaire as an effective tool for identifying typological characteristics of individual motivational profiles of social media users as subjects of consumer behavior, and to focus the attention of consultants on the psychological “targets” of developing, supporting impact. The success of further studies of personality in the space of the virtual world requires the development of interdisciplinary analysis approach, in which psychological traditions and schools will unite with other Sciences of Man in a common search for the mysteries of modern life of the individual.