The Effect of Social Media Addiction on Consumer Behavior: A Cultural Comparison of Spain and the United States

Chambers, Margaret (2018) The Effect of Social Media Addiction on Consumer Behavior: A Cultural Comparison of Spain and the United States. Undergraduate thesis, under the direction of Rachel Smith from Marketing, University of Mississippi.

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Abstract

This paper will look at the new issue of social media addiction, how it has affected consumers’ behaviors and their interactions with companies, and whether cultural components play a role in this. It will specifically look at the differences between the Spanish and American cultures. I conducted literature searches from the databases in the University of Mississippi library. I researched social interaction theories, social media, The Addiction Theory, and compared the two cultures. The second source of research I used was primary observational research conducted while I lived in Barcelona for five weeks. The observations were made at different points of the day and in different locations in attempts to gather the most diverse and accurate data. The findings uncovered the differences between how everyday Spaniards and American use social media and how the businesses use it to target their consumers. It also showed what cultural aspects affect social media use and can affect the propensity to get addicted to something. The results of this paper ended up defining the minor differences between the cultures social media use and addiction.

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