ABSTRACT
Social media platforms are used quite often in individuals’ daily lives. Social media content can be generated by both consumers and firms. Content generated by consumers, however, is considered sincerer than those generated by firms. On the one hand, because firm-generated content from social media mainly provides information, it makes it possible to have a specific amount of information about a brand. On the other hand, consumer-generated content is more reliable and, therefore, can play a prestige-boosting role. Per the concept of conformity, individuals could aim to be recognised by society by copying the behaviours of others, and they could also exhibit snobbish behaviours with the desire of proving that they are different from others. These two different cases may affect content in social media platforms, in both brand awareness and brand prestige. Social media sharing, within the scope of an event, could play a significant role in final event choices. Clearly, social media content could act as an antecedent variable for event choices, and this could direct awareness and prestige before individuals decide on an event. Nevertheless, this draws attention to the fact that the literature has a limited number of studies on how social media sharing affects the antecedent variables that lead to preferences. It was observed that events where individuals would most likely immortalise the moment, through sharing of photographs and videos with their friends and families, were not examined in detail in the literature. The present study was conducted to make theoretical proposals to fill this gap.
