Scrollande hjärnor, kalkylerade annonser: en studie om konsumenters attityder till algoritmisk marknadsföring i sociala medier och dess bakomliggande faktorer

Sammanfattning: Existing literature argues that with the commercialisation of the Internet, marketing has moved from a physical activity to a fluid and digital one. Over time, social media has become a central and important channel for reaching consumers, which has fundamentally changed the way marketing is conducted today. With this, consumer attitudes have become increasingly important for conducting strategic marketing activities. With consumers' widespread use of social media, marketers have turned to algorithms to influence and engage consumers. This study examines consumers' attitudes towards algorithmic marketing on social media. More specifically, we conducted an attitudinal-based survey with 197 respondents to examine first, what consumers' general attitudes towards algorithmic social media marketing is, based upon variables retrieved from the much developed and used Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). We could determine similar to previous research, that consumers generally hold negative attitudes towards algorithmic social media marketing, emphasizing the need to understand the underlying factors that influence these attitudes. Secondly, we examined how four underlying factors influence these attitudes, where we concluded that three factors of relevance, trust and integrity provided meaningful context in how attitudes arise and are anchored. While the underlying factor of knowledge could not show any significant correlation, this study nevertheless reinforces existing research on general attitudes towards algorithmic marketing and contributes to the field as it provides insights for future research to further study underlying factors and how knowledge may potentially influence attitudes.