Segmentation of Social Media Users: A Means-End Chain Approach

The use of social media has risen dramatically over the past few years, and companies are spending more dollars than ever on social media. It has created great opportunities for users in terms of social interaction, knowledge sharing, entertainment, and online shopping. At the same time, social media has generated a new set of capabilities for marketers to collect data, test propositions, understand consumer reactions and communicate more effectively. Therefore, a better understanding of the profiles and preferences of social media users becomes inevitable for developing effective marketing strategies. This requires a detailed analysis of meaningful differences among segments. Only a few studies have attempted to differentiate among users employing either a customer-based or product-based approach. To address this issue, this study applies the means-end approach along with the laddering technique and cluster analysis for data collection and analysis. The proposed approach can provide a deeper understanding of user perceptions and preferences. The constructed model presents the connections between preferred attributes of social media platforms, the benefits obtained from these attributes and the personal values satisfied by those benefits. The study identified four distinct groups that vary according to their motivations for using social media platforms.