Too much information on Social Media : The effect of information overload on purchase intentions - a quantitative study.

Sammanfattning: Introduction: Information overload occurs when received information exceed the consumer's ability to process the information and the consumers are overwhelmed by the information. How the consumer can process the information and if the consumer will be overwhelmed depends on the quantity and quality of the information. There is a large amount of information on social media and social media is a crucial platform for companies to communicate to consumers, that can cause information overload, whereas the information consumer receives effects consumers purchase intentions. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explain the effect information overload in terms of quantity and quality of information on social media has on consumers purchase intentions. Conceptual: The theory regarding information overload was conceptualised with the theory of consumers purchase intentions. This lead to the two hypotheses; H1: Information overload in terms of quantity of information on social media has a positive effect on consumers purchase intentions; H2: Information overload in terms of quality of information on social media has a positive effect on consumers purchase intentions. Methodology: The research approach used was deductive with a quantitative nature. Following, a questionnaire was formed and shared online in order to gather data to meet the purpose. The sample used was convenience- and snowball sampling and consisted of social media users. After collecting the data, 173 responses could be used and the answers was then analysed to get the results. Result: Both hypotheses could be rejected. H1, did not have a effect on consumers purchase intentions and H2, had a negative effect on consumers purchase intentions. Conclusion: When putting information overload in a social media context and its effect on consumer purchase intentions, the results differs compared to previous research of information overload in terms of quantity of information but not regarding information overload in terms of quality of information.