6. Exploring the Relationship Between Perceived Benefits and Social Media Brands Using Discriminant Analysis

The objective of this study is to foster a greater understanding of social media users in India, with an emphasis on younger users. For our age group, we chose respondents mostly between twenty and thirty-five years of age. Two of the most-used social media in India today are LinkedIn and Facebook. But there are likely to be major differences in the way users perceive them and the benefits they provide. Online social networks are deemed to be equally suitable for formal and informal networks. Therefore, to find out what differences users perceive among them, user perceptions of one formal and one informal medium were investigated. Facebook represents the informal one and LinkedIn the formal one. A sample of 156 students at an Indian business school was chosen. They rated five characteristics/user benefits of the social medium. A statistically significant discriminant model resulted that can distinguish between the perceived benefits of LinkedIn and Facebook. Detailed results are in the following tables. The discriminant model with LinkedIn/Facebook as the dependent and five independent variables is significant.