Virtual Conference Motivation and Technology Acceptance Model ( TAM ) Variables Affecting Social Media Usage by Market Mavens for Fashion-Related Information Provision

Market mavens—knowledgeable individuals who frequently gather and share information about goods and marketplaces (Feick & Price, 1987)—may extend their word-of-mouth (WOM) communication through online social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In general, this e[electronic]WOM has emerged as an impactful force, because opinions and experiences shared by consumers through e-WOM are trusted more than commercial messages (Kozinets, De Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010). Consequently, e-WOM has been found to have a significant influence on a consumer’s attitude towards products and brands, product choice decisions, and purchase decisions (Subramanian, 2018). Yet, false reviews and paid endorsements abound and diminish the perceived reliability of e-WOM (Boerman, Willemsen, & Van Der Aa, 2017; Teng, Khong, Goh, & Chong, 2014). Given a market maven’s product/marketplace knowledge, propensity to share this knowledge, and associated trustworthiness due to their altruistic motivations (Price, Feick, & Guskey, 1995; Walsh, Gwinner, & Swanson, 2004), market mavens may have a salient bearing on consumer purchase decisions. Yet, it appears there is scant research (e.g., Barns & Pressey, 2012) that examines a market maven’s tendency to use social media for information provision behavior (i.e., sharing information with others; Slama & Williams, 1990). Given eWOM’s impact and market mavens’ high fashion involvement tendencies (Hourigan & Bougoure, 2012), their use of social media to share fashion product/marketplace information is compelling and requires examination. Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide insight into factors affecting market mavens’ acceptance of social media as an instrument for fashion-related information provision.


Introduction
Market mavens-knowledgeable individuals who frequently gather and share information about goods and marketplaces (Feick & Price, 1987)-may extend their word-of-mouth (WOM) communication through online social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In general, this e[electronic]-WOM has emerged as an impactful force, because opinions and experiences shared by consumers through e-WOM are trusted more than commercial messages (Kozinets, De Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010). Consequently, e-WOM has been found to have a significant influence on a consumer's attitude towards products and brands, product choice decisions, and purchase decisions (Subramanian, 2018). Yet, false reviews and paid endorsements abound and diminish the perceived reliability of e-WOM (Boerman, Willemsen, & Van Der Aa, 2017;Teng, Khong, Goh, & Chong, 2014). Given a market maven's product/marketplace knowledge, propensity to share this knowledge, and associated trustworthiness due to their altruistic motivations (Price, Feick, & Guskey, 1995;Walsh, Gwinner, & Swanson, 2004), market mavens may have a salient bearing on consumer purchase decisions. Yet, it appears there is scant research (e.g., Barns & Pressey, 2012) that examines a market maven's tendency to use social media for information provision behavior (i.e., sharing information with others; Slama & Williams, 1990). Given e-WOM's impact and market mavens' high fashion involvement tendencies (Hourigan & Bougoure, 2012), their use of social media to share fashion product/marketplace information is compelling and requires examination. Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide insight into factors affecting market mavens' acceptance of social media as an instrument for fashion-related information provision.

Theoretical Background
Technology acceptance model (TAM) variables-perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived enjoyment associated with a technology (Davis, 1986;Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1992)have helped explain attitude and behavioral intentions towards using a technology. Thus, TAM was used to examine market mavens' social media acceptance for fashion-related information provision. Given that intrinsic motivations affect use of social media (Akrimi & Khemakhem, 2012), market mavens are motivated by pleasure from helping others and a sense of obligation to share marketplace information, and these motivations are seen as essential to understanding behavior of market mavens (Price et al., 1995;Walsh et al., 2004), the present study examined pleasure from helpfulness and sense of obligation as antecedent variables of social media acceptance. Moreover, given a market maven's tendency to be highly involved in fashion (Hourigan & Bougoure, 2012), the study examined the impact of fashion involvement on motivations for fashion-related information provision. Hence, the following hypotheses in Table 1 were

Methods and Results
An online survey containing adapted scales, distributed to a national sample of female alumni from a midwestern United States university, resulted in 840 usable responses. Females (between ages 23 and 70) were the focus of the study, because females are more likely than males to be market mavens (Goldsmith, Clark, & Goldsmith, 2006). Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with Mplus 8.1 to assess factor structures for the nine variables in the model (Figure 1). As a result, the fit indices for the measurement model verified a good fit to the data, x²(692) = 1571.77, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMR = 0.03. Composite reliabilities and Cronbach's values were greater than 0.81, which suggested reliability. All factor loadings were greater than 0.57, and all average variance extracted (AVE) in the model were greater than 0.60, which confirmed convergent validity. In addition, the higher values of the square root of the AVE than the correlations between variables verified discriminant validity.
Structural equation modeling's (SEM) structural model testing using a maximum likelihood estimation method, bootstrapping with 5,000 samples, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) was conducted to assess the hypotheses. Age of participants was controlled in the model. As a result, the model adequately fit the data, x²(735) = 1774.50, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMR = 0.05. All but five hypotheses (H5b, H6b, H7a, H10a, and H10b) were supported. The standardized coefficients for each path are indicated in Figure 1.

Conclusions and Discussions
Whereas research (Barns & Pressey, 2012) has confirmed that social media facilitates market mavens' dissemination of product/marketplace information, the results of the present study provide insight into potential conditions under which this is more likely to occur for fashion-related information. Regarding intentions to use social media for sharing this information, market mavens were motivated by both a sense of pleasure from helping and an obligation to share information, which offers fashion-related brands two potential approaches for encouraging e-WOM about their brand by market mavens. Neither involves monetary reward, which may be of particular relevance to cash-strapped, smaller firms. Whereas perceived usefulness of social media for sharing fashion-related information had the strongest impact of the three TAM (belief) variables on attitude toward social media usage for fashion-related information provision, perceived enjoyment was the only significant TAM variable affecting intentions to use social media for this e-WOM activity. This reinforces that fashion brands should emphasize pleasure from using social media features to foster e-WOM by market mavens. Future research may include other antecedent variables (e.g., extrinsic motivations) in this model or may examine social networks of market mavens and the relative impact of altruistic market mavens versus paid celebrities on product sales or brand image associations.