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Social media is referred to as consumer-dominated media that enables customers to converse online (Mangoldand Faulds 2009). There are many social media activities such as creating, modifying, discussing, and sharing Internet content (Kietzmann et al.

2011). Many types of platforms including blogging, microblogging, and social networks exist on social media (Hoffmanand Fodor 2010). In recent years, social networks have become incredibly popular. Social networks are generally defined as interactive communication environments that engage customers to express their opinions, exchange their experiences, disseminate messages, and share and reply to posts. We will discuss issues such as today news or characteristics of new products on close group of Facebook, Mobile 01 or other social network sites. These social

networks have created a transition in interpersonal communication—away from traditional face-to-face and word-of-mouth interaction toward new forms of online communication referred to as electronic word-of-mouth such as user-generated content (Goh et al. 2013; Mangoldand Faulds 2009). Previous studies have found that customers tend to trust user-generated content, such as recommendations of products reviews from customers on social media more than messages posted by businesses in traditional media (Goh et al. 2013). There is a shift of information control from business to customers (Mangoldand Faulds 2009). Customers feel empowered to spread of information. One customer agrees with the information and then shares it with others online. In some cases, hundreds of customers agree with the information and then separately share it with others online. Therefore, social media can rapidly facilitate information sharing on the social network (Stieglitzand Dang-Xuan 2013).

Messages resonate when information is shared among individuals. This resonance phenomenon means that people will provide feedback such as sharing or replying when they are interested and pay more attention to specific topics. Moreover, social media can influence various kinds of consumer behavior such as raise awareness, transfer information, express opinions, and purchasing behavior (Mangoldand Faulds 2009). Goh et al. (2013) indicate that word-of-mouth is one of the key drivers in customer purchases.

Social media is a social platform that is available to anyone with Internet access.

From the perspective of business, marketing on social media focuses on content that attracts attention from others and encourages them to share information. From the research of Goh et al. (2013), more then 1.5 million businesses set up fan pages on

social networks to reach and engage customers to spread information about their products and services. This form of word-of-mouth marketing refers to marketing that results naturally from social media rather than from paid media from corporations.

However, from the viewpoint of customers, resonance is more likely to occur on social networks, with more interaction and communication between individuals.

User-generated content, which is the observed output of consumers’ engagement, is typically called word-of-mouth buzz generated by customers and is mainly composed of social networks (Goh et al. 2013; Kaplanand Haenlein 2010). Previous researchers have found that user-generated content has a strong impact on market-generated content (Goh et al. 2013). People will observe the number of reviews, replies, and the number of people sharing in user-generated content before they make purchases (Goh et al. 2013). Goh et al. (2013) indicate that people are more likely to believe

user-generated content when they make repeat purchase decisions. Thus, comments or posts of specific messages of products from customers on social media may affect other customers purchase intentions and decisions. However, Riegner (2007) found that online word-of-mouth does not always result in the intention to buy. Sixty-one percent of users were influenced by offline sources such as browsing in a retail store rather than influenced by online word-of-mouth. This research suggested several reasons why consumers are not affected by online word-of-mouth (Riegner 2007).

First, consumers want to see and touch items that they want to buy (Riegner 2007).

Second, some user-generated content has too much emotional attachment to the product resulting in people not believing the reviews (Riegner 2007). Third, some personal and confidential details limit user-generated content on purchasing decisions (Riegner 2007). For example, some customer reviews about drug use would not directly affect other customer intentions to buy and use. The conclusion indicates that word-of-mouth does not affect individuals’ purchase intention. According to the above discussion, we want to learn whether customer resonance with another form of customer word-of-mouth behavior has an impact on intention to buy.

As a new communication paradigm, social media plays an important role in promoting information dissemination on social networks (Stieglitzand Dang-Xuan 2013). The purpose of this study is to investigate what drives people to share or reply to content on social networks while customers’ resonance arises and understand the impact of customer resonance on purchase intention. Below are the research questions we will investigate:

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RQ1. What factors may have an influence on customer resonance on a social network?

RQ2. What effects does customer resonance have on purchase intentions?

We want to have a better understanding of the use and gratification that users obtain from social networks when topics resonate with them. In order to do so, we created a research model based on a use and gratification perspective. We wanted to understand different types of gratification underlying social media usage. We predict that content gratification, social-relation gratification, and self-presentation

gratification will have an influence on customer resonance. Content gratification is based on the perspective of Kaplanand Haenlein (2010), who state that user-generated content is the main component for people using social media. Social networks are made up of varieties of individuals’ relations. Hence, social-relation gratification is based on the viewpoints of Chuand Kim (2011), who state that people who use social networks want to build and maintain social relations in their personal networks.

People who want to communicate with others create personal pages as a form of self-presentation. Based on the perspective of Schauand Gilly (2003), many activities on social networks could be viewed as a type of self-presentation. Once customer resonance is generated, we want to learn whether the resonance arising between customers has an impact on purchase intention. We will conceptualize and develop independent variables to explore different types of gratification, customer resonance, and purchase intentions.

The outline of the research is as follows. The first section provided a literature review on resonance with an emphasis on sharing and replying in customer online behavior regarding several factors arising from resonance and customer

online-purchase intentions. We also made some hypotheses. In the subsequent section, we then presented the methodology. Then we collected the data and analyzed it to make a conclusion.

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