Motivations behind liking: Implications of Facebook brand community behavior on purchase intentions

Companies' Facebook pages have emerged as a commonly used marketing channel but consumers' underlying motivations to use these pages and their effect on members' intentions to purchase the host company's products are currently unclear. The present study examines consumers' hedonic and utilitarian motivations to use company-hosted Facebook pages in relation to the community usage behavior (browsing vs. contribution), and the relationship between usage behavior and purchase intentions. By using data collected from 1161 members of a travel agency's Facebook page, the author finds that hedonic motivations indicate a higher propensity to contribute to the community while utilitarian motivations relate more strongly with only browsing the community page. The results also demonstrate that browsing has a stronger relationship with purchase intentions than contribution. The results offer insight into interpreting consumers' behavior in brand communities and give implications on what kind of content induces purchase intentions the most.