초록/요약

The purpose of the study is to investigate how users' behaviors and motivations of Taiwanese Instagram brand accounts influence the flow and the brand attitude. In addition, this study aims to identify how self-disclosure, an assumed cultural characteristic of Taiwan, affects the relationship between the flow and the brand attitude. Including five research questions, the online survey was translated into Chinese and carried out by Taiwan Trend Research, which is an independent online survey company. The survey was taken place in Taipei, Taiwan; and the target group was adults over the age of 20 who had experiences with Instagram brand accounts. For the further analysis, the effective sample size was 223, of which the most active users of Instagram brand accounts were people in their 20s to mid 30s. Research results are summarized in the following section. First, regarding the usage types, users' passive usages all have significantly positive influences on their attitudes towards the brands. In addition, the active users' behaviors only affect positively on their attitudes towards the brand itself. Four user motivations for Instagram brand accounts include "social interaction," "information utility," "entertainment," and "brand liking." Overall, it implies that the higher "brand liking" increases the amount of users, their attitudes towards the brand itself as well as their purchase intentions. Second, not only active and passive usages have positive effects on the flow, but also the usage motivations of "social interaction" have. Yet, it revealed that users' motivations of "information utility" impact negatively on the flow. Third, users' flows among Instagram brand accounts are proved to have large positive influences on brand attitudes, attitudes towards the brand itself, and brand purchase intentions. Moreover, the motivation of "social interaction" has not only a positive influence on the brand purchase intention but a partial mediated effect also exists between two factors, considering the flow as the mediated variable. Finally, the relationship among the users' flows of Instagram brand account, the brand attitude and the purchase intention has a moderating effect only on the depth of self-disclosure. That is, the higher level of self-disclosure leads to the higher brand attitude whilst the inverse relationship shows in the group with the low flow. Similarly, such cause-and-effect relationship can be observed with the brand purchase intention. To sum up, the practical implication from this research is that Instagram brand account users have tendency towards passive usage (i.e. going over posts), meaning that brand PR mangers are encouraged to create broad contents to enhance user engagement.