SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS LENS: A STUDY ON CONSUMER PERCEIVED RISK TO SHARE INFORMATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS

Purpose of the study: This study focuses on understanding the potential unfavourable social media analytics practices (SMA) and how they may lead to the negative perception of consumer self-disclosure on social media sites and causing market discomfort for people. We also examined a framework regarding the SMA practices, and their impact on the customer’s trust to use social media networks. Methodology: Data were collected from 527 social media users with the help of an online questionnaire. Partial Least Squares Structural equation modeling—PLS-SEM was used using SmartPLS to validate the questionnaire and measure the hypothesized relationships between the constructs. Main Findings: The results show that perceived risk mediates the relationship between the perceived ethicality of social media analytics and the marketing discomfort of the consumers. Moreover, we also found that the negatively perceived ethicality of social media analytics leads to marketing discomfort of the consumers. This negative attitude impacts the consumer’s intention to purchase, interest in the product, and intention to be vulnerable toward the company. Applications of this study: These findings have practical utility for all types of organizations that use social media. This study is general for all social media sites. This study also provides direction for future research, such as managing the personal information of the social media users from being used by the organizations without consumer permission and developing ethical standards to use the consumer information for the marketing strategies. Novelty/Originality of this study: Social media analytics (SMA) gathered data from the social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and blogs, representing a massive room to utilize public data, and these lead towards the ethical concerns of the consumers. For this problem, we studied a complete framework to identify the major outcomes of the PESMA on the consumers' self-disclosure and marketing comfort.