IMPACT OF USER GENERATED CONTENT ON CONSUMER PURCHASE INTENTION

Abstract

The objectives of the thesis were: to analyse the essence of UGC, to describe consumer purchase intention and to determine the connection between UGC and consumer purchase intention. The objectives of the thesis were based on the main goal of the thesis project which was to define the role of UGC created by Facebook users on the modern businesses in the context of Company X.

The thesis project consists of two main parts: a secondary research and a primary research. The secondary research of the thesis project is based on books, articles, library databases, and collected from media market sources and different reports. The theoretical framework of the thesis project includes marketing communication, the explanation of social media networks and UGC which is content created by non-professionals publicly over the Internet. Furthermore, a customer purchase intention is described as well. For the primary research the quantitative research method was chosen during the thesis studies for the implementation of the thesis in the form of a survey. The questionnaire was made using ‘Webropol’ programme. The link to the survey was sent via emails of customer database of a case-company, and the data was collected within the first two weeks of April 2018. The results of the thesis are provided for Company X.

The research results showed the answers for the questions regarding social media questions, UGC and Facebook use. It was analysed in order to reach the objectives and the main goal of the thesis project. The most common tendency in the results collected was: people have a level of trust in UGC, and their purchase intention could be influenced by a comment or review of a person, who has made a purchase already.