How Culture Influences the "social" in Social Media: Socializing and Advertising on Smartphones in India and the United States

Sidharth Muralidharan, Carrie La Ferle, Yongjun Sung

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The importance of the mobile phone is evidenced by predictions that there will be 1.76 billion smartphone users worldwide at the start of 2015. A country that is spearheading this movement toward the digital era is India. To illustrate this, India is expected to surpass the United States in 2015 and record the second highest smartphone sales globally. Despite the rising penetration and adoption of smartphones, there is limited advertising research that sheds light on the Indian smartphone user. The current study aims to fill that void by cross-culturally comparing a national online panel of smartphone users from India (n=158) with users from the United States (n=114). Findings reveal that entertainment impacts Indians' attitudes toward smartphone advertising while informativeness is stronger for the American sample. Collectivism was found to be the driving force behind socializing activities on social networking sites for Indian consumers. Implications are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)356-360
Number of pages5
JournalCyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking
Volume18
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015 Jun 1

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright 2015, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 2015.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Social Psychology
  • Communication
  • Applied Psychology
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Science Applications

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