Keywords

Facebook, Like Clicks, Product Information, Hedonic and Good Economic Value and Millennial.

Introduction

Social media networks, particularly Facebook, have remarkably influenced the lives of people, including entrepreneurs, in the past two decades. Social media networks encompasses of various technologies, including social networking, blogging, video sharing, microblogging, collaborative authoring, social tagging, bookmarking, scheduling and meeting tools (Nicholas & Rowlands, 2011). Social media networks have become a powerful platform to connect people as it allows virtual discussions and broadcasts of any type of content on the Internet (Bauer et al., 2005). Thus, social media networks, especially, Facebook, has become an important part of millennials life in terms of communication and these networks incorporate digital technologies in every aspect of millennials life. They have not seen the world without interactive digital technology, and digital technologies, which drive world homogeneity among the present generation. According to generational cohort theory (GCT), generations can be grouped into historical cycles bases on particular events that meld the attitudes and behaviour of the members of each cohort. Millennial are a homogeneous cohort, they grew up with digital technologies (Sanchez, et al., 2006); and exhibited connectivity and analogous approaches in their behaviour (Moore, 2012).

Lee (2017) revealed that 80% of the Malaysian population are members of Facebook; 94% of Facebook members search products from Facebook advertisements and 62% actually purchase products after seeing the advertisements; approximately 70% of Facebook users surf advertisements and 74% gain knowledge of products from reviews of advertisements. Since large numbers of people are members of the social media networks, the entrepreneurs’ take this as an opportunity to advertise their products in the Facebook platform and the millennials add “Like Clicks” on the Facebook advertisements. There is always a curiosity, what influences them to add “Like Clicks” in the Facebook advertisements? While many studies have showed that the comments on the advertisement influence the purchasing behaviour of the millennials, none of the empirical studies have shown the relationship between ‘Like Clicks’ and purchase intention of the products featured in Facebook advertisements. Therefore, there is need to investigate, the ‘Like Clicks ‘of the Facebook advertisements are genuinely influence the purchase intention among millennials.

RQ1 : What are the factors that influence the millennials to add “Like Clicks” of the Facebook
advertisements?

RQ2 : Do the “Like Clicks ” influence the millennials to buy the product ?

Literature Review

Previous studies have showed that social media advertisements strongly influence purchase decisions among Generation Y (Yadev et al., 2013); create brand awareness (Duffett, 2015) and develop positive attitude of purchase intention towards online advertising. Sharma (2013) reported that social media advertising may change the preferences of consumers’ choice; Yang (2012) conveyed that Facebook advertisements enhances attitude towards brand awareness among consumers and have considerable effect when their friends share these advertisements. Duffelt (2015) stated that social media networks has become a fundamental platform for every business and it has full potentials for communication with consumers and marketing. However, not all this studies determined the causes behind adding ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisements among millennials.

Product Information

Product information refers to the price of the product, quality of product information, features of the product, sales information, and update of the products. Previous studies have shown that product information is one of the strongest determinants of consumer intention to purchase a product (Wang & Sun, 2010; Thamaraiselvan et al., 2015). By adding ‘Like Click’ on Facebook advertisements, the user demonstrates high involvement and a positive attitude towards the content of the Facebook advertisements. This strong likelihood has potential effect on sales. Adequate information provided by the advertisements assist consumers to distinguish various company products from one another and motivated Facebook members to add ‘Like Click’ on advertisements. Advertisements create positive and negative responses among consumers depending on the content of the advertisement. The number of ‘Like Clicks’ on a Facebook advertisements will in enhance the consumers’ confidence to buy the products. Since, product information is the most important factor that increases ‘Like Clicks’, it is added as a construct in this study.

H1: Product information significantly influences the millennials to add ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisements.

Hedonism/Pleasure

Enjoyable, exciting and funny characters are the components of hedonism. According to Affective theory consumer, preferences will be based on pleasure, feeling or emotions that arise from a particular message (Gardner, 1985). Creative advertisements on Facebook stimulates emotions. Previous studies have stated that hedonistic advertisements capture the aesthetic enjoyment or emotional release of consumers (Azeem, 2012), satisfaction and enjoyment (Bowie & Chang, 2005), feelings of strong excitement (Griffin, 2006), as well as induce fun, joy and excitement (Moore, 2012). Since hedonic advertisements stimulate emotions, that may influence to add ’Like Clicks ‘on the Facebook, advertisements. Therefore, hedonism is added as a construct in this study.

H2: Hedonic/pleasure influences the millennials to add ‘Like click’ on the Facebook advertisements.

Good Economic Value

Advertising on the Facebook platform allows consumers to choose from a wide variety of products and compare the prices of the product from their home, whereby saving a significant amount of time and fuel cost for consumers. The good economic value of the product is an economic factor that accelerates the purchase intention of consumers (Wolin et al., 2002). However, Thamaraiselvan et al., (2005) found that the good for economic value of the product has an insignificant relationship with advertising value in India. Facebook advertisements always focus on the economic advantages they can offer to potential customers. Millennials are price picky generation; before they buy, they compare the prices in few websites of product. The number of ‘Like Clicks’ that the Facebook advertisements have influences consumers to choose products without searching, thereby saving a substantial amount of time.

H3: The good economic value of the product influences the millennials to add ‘Like click’ on the Facebook advertisements.

Like Clicks

The number of ‘Like Clicks’ depends on the attitude of consumers towards Facebook advertisements. Such an attitude is either a favourable or an unfavourable feeling towards adding ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisements. Powers et al., (2012) revealed that 20 percent of Facebook users’ decision on purchasing products depend on the comments of Facebook users. Facebook and Twitter comments influence the decisions of consumers on music festivals (Hudson & Hudson (2013). Reuters & Ipses (2012) found that one-fifth of Facebook members had actually purchased products by reviewing Facebook comments; this finding clearly showing that millennials are influenced by Facebook comments on advertisements. The number of ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisements is a key indicator of market report, which suggests consumers are most likely to purchase a product (Cruz & Mendelsohn, 2010).

Each ‘Like Click’ promotes a company product automatically, and its number measures the value of advertisements (Richardson et al., 2007; Bunker et al., 2013). Affective theory is based on the emotions of people. This affective response enables consumers to add ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisement or messages, which is a favourable affection. In Facebook, consumers believe that if advertisements inspire them, which is a more favourable affection than the former. ‘Like clicks’ create positive responses among consumers and increase the brand image. By contrast, negative comments damage the brand image (Logan et al., 2012). ‘Like Clicks’ increase, sales and market shares in a cos -effective manner and advertisements rapidly reach consumers. ‘Likes Clicks’ convince the peers and friends of consumers to check advertisements. The number of ‘Like Clicks’ adds the value of the advertisements. It shows the present position of the product. The more ‘Like Clicks’ add the value to the advertisements and it shows present position of particular product. Besides, the number of ‘Like Clicks’ increase the consumers intention to buy the product with self-assurance. By adding ‘Like clicks’ customers serve as marketers of a product and increase the intention to buy such products. Therefore, it is important to know, the reasons of adding ‘Like Clicks ‘on the advertisements and to determine the “Like Clicks” are genuinely influences the consumers to buy the products.

H4: The ‘Like clicks’ of Facebook advertisements motivate the intension to purchase the product among millennials.

Research Method

Quantitative method was used to collect data through survey questions and the collected data was analysed by using Adanco software through Partial Least Squares (PLS). The questionnaires were set on a five-point Likert scale on the following constructs. Product Information (4 items), Hedonism (4 items), Good for Economic Value (3 items), Add ‘Like Clicks’ (4 items) and Purchase Intention (3 items). The study collected the data from millennials who were born in between from 1994 to 2004 because they are grew up in the digital world and social media networks are vital for them. The survey questionnaires were sent to 800 students from various universities through social networks and only 250 questionnaires were returned without missing data.

Table 1 shows that all respondents are millennials and among the respondents 44.8 percent of them are females and 55.2 percent are males. This finding proves that data were distributed evenly across gender.

Table 1 Demographic Characteristics of the Respondents
Profile	Category	Frequency	Percentage
Gender	Female	112	44.8
	Male	138	55.2
Age	20 to 22	153	61.2
	23 to 25	97	38.8

Data Analysis and Results

Previous researches have confirmed that PLS–SEM is heavily used for data analysis in behavioural social science studies (Henseler & Chin, 2010). Therefore, this study adopts the PLS path modelling, which is known as convergence of interactive model. Table 2 depicts the latent constructs reliability of data. Composite reliability is measured using by Dijkstra–Henseler's rho (ρA), Jöreskog's rho (ρc), and Cronbach'salpha (α) in PLS. Dijkstra & Henseler (2015) declared that their rho (ρA) is the most reliable test for consistent reliability in PLS. The minimum score for consistent reliability is 0.7. Table 2 shows that all three components have more than 0.7, which is considered an acceptable consistency. Fornell & Lorcker (1981) stated that the minimum cut of value for each latent construct is 0.50. Items loading less than 0.50 are removed. Thus, the results confirmed the high reliability of the latent constructs. The AVE score is above 0.50 (Hair et al., 2017) and item loadings are above 0.70, which also confirming the high reliability of the constructs.

Table 2 Construct Reliability and Validity
Construct	Indicator	Item Loading	Dijkstra–Henseler's rho (ρA)	Jöreskog's rho (ρc)	Cronbach's alpha(α)	AVE
Product Information	PI1	0.970	0.903	0.883	0.886	0.660
	PI2	0.794
	PI3	0.637
	PI4	0.815
Hedonism	HP1	0.885	0.844	0.836	0.840	0.632
	HP2	0.741
	HP3	0.752
Good for Economic Value	GE1	0.729	0.843	0.833	0.832	0.627
	GE2	0.745
	GE3	0.891
Like Clicks	L1	0.651	0.761	0.745	0.747	0.597
	L2	0.620
	L4	0.827
Intention to Buy	IB1	0.844	0.802	0.800	0.799	0.667
	IB2	0.789

According to Henseler et al. (2016) HTMT value should be below 0.85 to 0.90 to have discrimination between constructs. Table 3 clearly shows there is no discriminant validity exists between the constructs.

Table 3 Discriminant Validity: Heterotrait-Monotrait  (HTMT) Ratio of Correlations
Construct	PI	HP	GE	Like Clicks	IB
PI
HP	0.8657
GE	0.5569	0.6368
Like Clicks	0.8309	0.8169	0.9174
IB	0.8683	0.8687	0.7409	0.7927

R² coefficient determination values of endogenous latent variables. The value of R² indicates that number of ‘Like Clicks ‘on Facebook advertisements are 0.859 (86%), whereas intention to buy behaviour is 0.522 (52%). This result shows that R2 85 percent of the variance in the number of ‘Like Clicks’ of Facebook advertisements can be explained by product information, hedonism and good economic value. R² intention to buy specifies that 52 percent of the model predicated by adding number of ‘Like Clicks’

Table 4 presents the structural path analysis and explains the direct effects of interference tested by two tailed tests. The statistical relationship of Product Information (H1) (t value =2.55, p<0.01), Hedonism (H2) (t value=1.15, p>0.05), Good for Economic Value (H3) t value =8.46, p<0.00), and ‘Like Clicks’ (H4) t value =13.69, p<0.000) support the intention to buy a product by adding ‘Like clicks’ of Facebook advertisements. In H2 the t value is less than 1.96 and Value is more than 0.05 the hypothesis is not supported.

Table 4 Structural Relationships and Hypothesis Result: Direct Effects Inference
		Mean value	Standard error	t-value	p-value (2-sided)	p-value (1-sided)
H1	PI -> Like Clicks	0.3721	0.1426	2.5455	0.0110	0.0055	Supported
H2	HP -> Like Clicks	0.1623	0.1474	1.1530	0.2490	0.1245	Not Supported
	GE -> Like Clicks	0.5559	0.0656	8.4576	0.0000	0.0000	Supported
H4	Like Clicks -> IB	0.7230	0.0528	13.6907	0.0000	0.0000	Supported

Discussion

This study examined the structural relationship among Product Information, Hedonism/Pleasure, Good Economy Value of the product, Adding ‘Like Clicks’ and Intention to buy a Product on Facebook advertisements. Based on the proposed model, the results supported that millennial add ‘Like Clicks’ based on product information and economic value of the product not on hedonism. The result confirmed that millennials are advice seekers from their Facebook friends, before they intend to buy any products and ‘Like Clicks’ genuinely influence the consumers’ to buy the product. The result is consistence with that of previous studies that claimed online purchasing influences on product information (Ling, 2010; Wolin et al., 2010); and good economic value of the product (Wolin et al., 2012; Powers et al., 2012; Reuters & Ipsos, 2012). Millennial are highly conscious of their spending. They like to compare product prices and usability, quality and value of product from the comments found in Facebook advertisements. However, the result contradicting with Thamaraiselvan et al. (2005) findings, that good economic value is not significant in India where as it is significant in Malaysia. It result shows that there is cultural difference in buying product among millennials. The hedonism does not significantly influence to add ‘Like Clicks ‘on the Facebook advertisements. One of the possible reasons is that millennial are highly cognizant when they add ‘Like Clicks ‘on the advertisements. They do not simply add “Like Clicks’ for pleasure, when they see advertisements on Facebook.

The Uses and Gratification Theory (UG) of has been used for decades as a main theory for the usage of social media research. According UG theory people, obtain gratifications through entertainment and informational on social media networks. Based on UG theory, the study confirmed that product information and economic value for money of the products are the satisfaction factors that gratifying the millennial to add ‘Like Clicks ‘to the Facebook advertisements.

Practical Implications

The study contributes empirical evidence on the intention to buy products based on adding ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisements among millennials. It clearly shows that millennials are more influenced by Facebook friends’ opinion when they buy their products. It is very important to unmask these cohort and Figure 1 out what makes the millennial to add ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisements to the entrepreneurs. Secondly, it adds to the body of knowledge on the reasons for adding ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisements. Many studies were conducted on social media networks advertisements regarding purchase intention. However, these studies did not focus on adding ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisements. Therefore, the present study facilitates the understanding of the reasons behind adding ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisements. The result confirmed that ‘Like Clicks’ are genuinely influence the purchasing intention of the products among millennials. The number of ‘Like Clicks’ plays a significant role in the decision making when they buy a product. Each ‘Like Clicks’ automatically promotes a company product. The result of the present study confirmed previous results of online advertisements and gave additional insights into why ‘Like Clicks’ are added on Facebook advertisements. Thirdly, the findings demonstrate that 52% of ‘Like Clicks’ are based on product information, such as quality, specialty and usability and good for economic value. Therefore, entrepreneurs should not take ‘Like Clicks’ lightly. Adding ‘Like Clicks’ on advertisements automatically motivates others to see such advertisements and may reach many consumers rapidly. Entrepreneurs’ should create an interesting advertisement, which provides quality information, such as product features, product usefulness, quality and durability of the product combined with reasonable prices. Fourthly, the study also confirmed that millennials are also cost and value conscious and they can access various online brands of the same types of product. Therefore, entrepreneurs should explain the cost, benefits, and specialty of their products in their advertisements. The number of ‘Like Clicks’ increase the value of advertisements, which ultimately increases sales the volume of sales. Thus, the study gives practical implications on how to increase the ‘Like Clicks’ on Facebook advertisements in order to increase the intention to buy the products among millennials.

Limitations and Future Research

The participants of this study are millennials. Hence this research recommends that future studies, compare, different countries and compare the factors influence them to add Like Clicks and the relationship with intention to buy the products. Moreover, this study focused on reasons of adding ‘Like Clicks’ on Face book advertisements. It would be interesting to investigate further on ‘Share Clicks’ and other commands on Face book advertisements.

Conclusion

The study concludes that product information and good economic value are factors that influence the millennials to add “Like Clicks” on the Facebook advertisements and fifty two percent of millennials have intention to buy the products based on the Facebook “Like Clicks”. It asserted that “Like Clicks” add value to the advertisements. Therefore, digital entrepreneurs should find the ways to increase the “Like Clicks” on their Facebook Advertisements to Increase the sales.

Appendix

Appendix 1
Like Clicks	5	4	3		2	1
Facebook information influences   me to  add Like Clicks
Hedonic is very important for me to  add Like Click
I just add Like Clicks on the Facebook advertisements
Good  Economic value   influences me to  add Like Click
Product Information
I would like to add Like Click when the information is useful
I would like to add Like  Click when the advertisements show a good package deal
I would like to add Like Click when the advertisement provides valuable  information
I would like to add Like Click, when advertisements have special features.
Hedonic/Pressure
If the advertisements in the Facebook are enjoyable I add Like Click
If the Facebook advertisements  contains a lot of  excitement and surprises then I add Like Clicks
Like Click of Facebook advertisements  contains funny characters and are  enjoyable.
Good  Economy Value
Like Clicks  on the  Facebook advertisements save my time in choosing products
Like Clicks in Facebooks give confidence to purchase the products
Like Clicks influence my purchase decisions
Intention to buy
Overall, I consider the Like Clicks in advertising a good thing
My general opinion of advertisements  is favorable for me to buy
Overall, Like Clicks influence me to buy the products

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