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TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK DATA COLLECTION ANALYSIS

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 5-9

Demographics Perceived Ease of Use Perceived Usefulness Trust Perceived Risk

CONCLUSION 10 BUSINESS STRATEGY CARD 11

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INTRODUCTION Community generated content, or social media, has become increasingly important over the past several years. Most of companies are taking serious advantage in the expansion of social media and social networking such as Web search, content recommendation services, marketing, ad targeting, etc. This creates a big opportunity in electronic commerce especially in online marketing context.

That’s the reason why governments, industries, and stockholders are very interested in social networking. For instance, industry polls potential consumers to understand product acceptance and politicians use polls to measure their popularity for elections and to monitor public sentiment before deciding on any issues. Thus, everyone are now transparent to the general public more than ever before. The amount for information available is critical for everybody. The internet creates an important platform for information exchange and sharing between the consumer and industries (e.g., governments and administrative bodies), as well as for many non-profit organizations. From the company’s standpoint, consultants and decision makers are keen to identify ways to make profit from the use of social networking websites like YouTube, Facebook, Second Life, Wikipedia and Twitter. With consumer generated contents and collaborations, the form of communication and relationships with consumers altered critically with the emergence of the famous phenomenon in social media sites today. Everyone can’t ignore the importance of social networking sites. In fact, social networking has reached hundreds of millions of users and has become a fruitful field for a variety of research efforts, since they offer an opportunity to study patterns of social interaction among a population larger than ever before. Information sharing site like Wikis, and other forms of user-generated content platform like Flickr and YouTube have become a major elements in influencing various aspects of consumer behavior, awareness, information acquisition, opinions, attitudes, purchase behavior, and post purchase communication and evaluation. With the high adoption levels of digital media by individuals as well as organizations the value of the traditional press has faded significantly. Online buyers are looking into social networks websites activities in order to gain information to make their decisions and using several online platforms to share their ideas about a product, services or brand.

Understanding consumer’s perception of computer mediated communication (CMC) in the social networks can play a key role for marketers to exploit marketing strategies and gain a competitive advantage. With social Network Sites, users are connected to each other by sharing their interests, discussing and recommending products or brands to their circle of friend.

Therefore, this paper will discuss on the understanding of consumer’s acceptance of social

network sites to use it for searching information and their future purchases.

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25%

44%

19%

10%

3%

Education Level

PhDMasterBachelor/Advanced DiplomaDiplomaOthers

27%

15%

12%12%

11%

10%

8%6%

Occupation

Students

Managerial Level

seniors

Executives

CEO/MDs

Professionals

Business Owners

Other

42%

38%

11%

9%

Income per month

Below RM3,000

Rm3,100-RM5,000

RM5,100-RM10,000

More than RM10,000