Özet:

Consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence is a personality trait that expresses the level of being influenced by others in individuals' brand or consumption preferences. Consumers who are highly susceptible to interpersonal influence tend to observe or collect information from the others before making a choice of a product or brand. In other words, consumers who are susceptible to this influence are looking for more approval. Researches on the subject generally focus on the consumption of products with high social visibility such as clothing, shoes, bags, jewelry and automobiles. Also age, gender and culture appear as factors that determine consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence. One of the concepts related to consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence is social comparison, first theorized by Leon Festinger. The individual's use of social comparison cues as self-evaluation criteria is also a factor affecting susceptibility to interpersonal influence. Social comparison, which can basically be expressed as individuals comparing themselves with others, includes two types, upward social comparison and downward social comparison. Upward social comparison is a comparison patch with those that the individual perceives to be superior to oneself. On the other hand, downward social comparison is a comparison patch with those that the individual perceives as less qualified than oneself. According to the researches there are an average of 50 million social media users in Turkey. The starting point of the research is that social media, which is used by more than half of the population, may be related to consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence and social comparison tendency; because recently, interpersonal communication has shifted to the social media platforms. Although social impact studies usually focus on the influence of the majority on the minority, everyone can become a source of social impact in social media where everyone can follow each other. The aim of the study is to reveal the relationship between social media usage habits of individuals and consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence and social comparison. The survey, which is a quantitative methodology, was used to obtain data. The survey form consists of 16 questions which are about people’s demographic characteristics and social media usage habits and 2 different scales. The Consumer Susceptibility to Interpersonal Influence Scale (SUSCEP) used in the study was developed in 1989 by William O. Bearden, Richard G. Netemeyer & Jesse E. Teel. The scale measures how much a person is influenced by others in consumption decisions. It consists of two dimensions; normative and informative. While the normative dimension measures the tendency of the individual to use products or brands to comply with the expectations of others. The informative dimension measures the tendency of the individual to obtain information about the products by observing others. The scale consists of 12 items and 7 statements ranging between strongly agree and strongly disagree. As a result of the factor analysis, 2 items were removed from the scale. Another scale used in the study is Attention to Social Comparison Information Scale developed by Lennox and Wolfe. The scale consists of 13 items and 5 statements ranging between always wrong and always true. 3 items in the scale were excluded from the scope of the study as a result of the factor analysis. Principal Components were used as a method in factor analysis, and Direct Oblimin factor rotation was preferred because a correlation was expected between scale expressions. In this study, in which purposive sampling was used, the data obtained from 385 participants who stated that they only use social media actively were included in the analysis, and the data of the participants who did not use social media actively were excluded from the analysis. The reliability and validity analysis of the data were made. According to the research findings, the social media user group with the highest social comparison average is Facebook users. The group who stated that they use social media platforms to follow the posts of others, compared to the group who did not use it for this purpose, consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence and social comparison average was higher. On the other hand, it is also among the research findings that there is a strong and positive significant relationship between consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence and social comparison, and that consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence has a significant effect on social comparison.

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