Business, Marketing

In recent years, social media usage has been rapidly increasing in Turkey and the reasons and
motivations of consumers’ using social media have become frequently discussed topics. Reports about
the social media usage in Turkey indicate that Facebook with more than 32 million users is the most
popular social networking site (SNC) and Twitter with daily average 8 million tweets follows Facebook
(TTNET, 2013). According to Socialbakers reports (2010), Turkey is in the fourth position of the top
ten countries on Facebook and Ä°stanbul is the third city in the world among the top ten Facebook
cities (Socialbakers, 2012). The largest age group of Facebook in Turkey is currently 18-24 (34%),
followed by the users in the age of 25-34(30%). Even though the social media usage becomes an
inevitable habit among the youths as it can be easily seen from the statistics, there is still not a
systematic research about this topic. Therefore, in this research we attempt to identify why university
students use the social media and which needs they try to fulfill by using social media. For this reason,
uses and gratifications theory has been applied to explain the research question. This research has been
carried out in Anadolu University which is in one of the most important student cities of Turkey,
EskiĹźehir. The data has been collected from the 450 college students of Anadolu University by face to
face questionnaires. There are nearly equal number of students from every faculty of Anadolu
University and this students comes from different cities all around Turkey. The findings indicate that
the college students mostly use Facebook and Twitter among the online social networking sites. By
using SCNs, they mostly communicate with their friends who they have face to face contact with
(93%), followed by class mates (78%), family members (59%), online friends that they only know each
other from SCNs (23%), and strangers (13%) respectively. Furthermore, the research revealed students
have 11 different reasons for use of social media. Students use social media primarily for socialization,
entertainment, presenting their status, access and getting some material gains. The findings of this
study shed light on why college students use and participate in SNSs. This study expands the use of
uses-and-gratification theory to the social media by affirming the appropriateness of it in the social
media. Practically, the findings of the study suggest that marketers using SNSs should apply strategies
by taking the primary reasons of SNSs into consideration in order to attract young people. They use
SNSs mostly for socialization, entertainment and status presentation, so marketers should develop
strategies that address these reasons mostly. Future research may be related with older users of SNSs
and their reasons and motivations of use. Moreover, effectiveness of marketing strategies targeted
young people related with the reasons of use SNSs might be searched.

Abstract
Social networking sites affecting millions of users worldwide
have become an important part of the business
strategies. This situation reveals a better understanding
of the behaviors, expectations and interactions in the
social networking sites of the young adults between 18
to 24 ages that are the most important user group of
social networks and expected to become active consumers
in the near future. This study aims to classify social
networking sites users between 18-24 ages based on
their gratifications obtained from these sites and define
the profiles of each cluster. The study was conducted in
Anadolu University with 447 college students and the
gratifications obtained from the social networking sites
are grouped under 11 factors based on the Uses and
Gratifications Theory including socialization, entertainment,
status seeking, convenience/easy access, benefit
from marketing/sales promotions, coordination, escape,
seeking information, making/seeking friends, share,
learning friends’ life. Based on the cluster analysis
using these 11 factors the young adults were classified
under four groups named “addicts, haunters, communicators
and distants”. Significant differences were found
between the clusters’ on the gratifications obtained
and activities in the social networking sites.
Keywords: Social Networking Sites, Social Media,
User Types, Young Adults, Uses and Gratifications
Theory, Cluster Analysis

The purpose of the study is to examine digital literacy competences and learning habits of
learners enrolled in the open and distance education system of Anadolu University in
Turkey. Data were gathered from 20.172 open and distance learners through a survey which
included four parts: demographic information, abilities to use digital technologies, learning
habits, preferences in using digital technologies for learning purposes. Principal Component
Factor Analysis was applied in order to group and classify the attitudes and statements of
the learners in their personal learning preferences, problem solving skills, project work
skills, and abilities to use digital tools for learning purposes. Their personal learning
preferences produced five factors: visual, auditory, dependent, collaborative, and readingwriting
learning styles. According to the results of the study, learners believe that they have
problem solving and project working skills to deal with educational difficulties. However,
they seem to have only basic competences of digital literacy and the skills to use information
and communication technologies at a basic level. They need training on how to use digital
tools more efficiently for learning purposes. Further research is needed to explore how to
increase the use of digital tools for the purpose of effective learning and also how to design
learning environments to improve digital literacy of open and distance learners.

A mobile app is a computer (software) program designed to run on smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices (Wikipedia). The increased use of mobile devices and mobile Internet has led to an explosion of the development and download of mobile applications. Businesses started competing to have a mobile application to gain competitive advantage or stay competitive. But despite the success of some, the majority of mobile applications fails outright or is not as successful as expected. So this study aims to define the factors that affect user satisfaction as a success measure of mobile applications. I/S Success Model is used as a basis for this study, and the model is expanded with the constructs related to flow. The research framework includes seven antecedents (system reliability and design, perceived ease of use, content usefulness, content quality, focused attention, perceived enjoyment, and flow) of user satisfaction that were derived from existing information systems, m-commerce and applications literature. The structural equation modeling (SEM) method was applied to evaluate the hypothesized relationships among the constructs in the theoretical model developed. The results of the study showed that system quality and information quality are important determinants of user satisfaction, but flow does not have a direct influence on user satisfaction. The most striking finding of this study is that perceived enjoyment is a significant determinant of satisfaction with mobile applications. Based on the findings, companies involved in m-commerce should focus on not only to improve the usefulness or quality of the system but also the design features of the applications that enhance enjoyment and the experience must also be considered carefully.

Consumer Engagement is increasingly becoming one of the important issues in the competitive business environment and with its unique features and structure, Social Networking Sites offer an upper advantage to build consumer brand relationships and instant consumer engagement. This study set out to determine the consequences of consumer engagement in social networking sites. Consumer engagement was viewed as a multi-dimensional concept comprising behavioral, cognitive and emotional dimensions and as such the hypotheses were aimed at determining how each of the three dimensions of consumer engagement affect the individual consequences of consumer engagement such as brand loyalty, satisfaction, commitment and trust. The study used a quantitative research design. It used a questionnaire survey to collect data from university students. Facebook is chosen as a case for this study. 400 questionnaires were collected and the analyses were conducted with the 387 valid questionnaire. The results suggest that emotional and behavioral engagement dimensions were significant predictors for brand loyalty; emotional engagement for satisfaction, cognitive and behavioral engagement for commitment, while behavioral and emotional engagement dimensions were found to be significant predictors for trust.

şekilde rekabetçi ticaret ortamındaki önemli konulardan biri haline gelmektedir. Hem araştırmacılar hem de uygulamacılar farklı kanallar aracılığı ile tüketici bağlılığının nasıl geliştirilebileceğine odaklanmaktadırlar. Sosyal ağların ortaya çıkması tüketici davranışlarında ve marka ilişkilerinde önemli derecede değişime neden olmuştur. Eşsiz özellikleri ve yapısı ile Sosyal Ağ Siteleri, tüketici ve marka ilişkisi ve anlık tüketici bağlılığı oluşturmak için üst düzey bir avantaj sunmaktadır. Araştırmacılar ve uygulamacıların tüketici bağlılığına çok önem vermesine ragmen, hala bağlılığın tüketici davranışlarını nasıl etkilediğinin anlaşılmasına ihtiyaç vardır. Bu yüzden, bu araştırma SNS'de tüketici bağlılığının sonuçlarını belirlemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Ayrıca araştırma tüketici bağlılığını davranışsal, bilişsel ve duygusal boyutları kapsayan çok boyutlu bir kavram olarak incelemektedir ve bu bağlamda tüketici bağlılığının bu üç boyutunun marka sadakati, tatmin, taahhüt ve güven gibi biresel sonuçları nasıl etkilediğini belirlemek amaçlanmaktadır. Araştırmada nicel araştırma deseni kullanılmakta ve araştırma için geliştirilen hipotezlere dayanan bir model geliştirilmiştir. Veri toplamak için anket kullanılmıştır ve anket. Anadolu Üniversitesi yaz okulu öğrencilerine uygulanmıştır. Bu araştırmada durum olarak Facebook seçilmiştir. 400 anket ile very toplanmış ve 387 geçerli anket analize tabi tutulmuştur. Araştırma verileri SPSS versiyon 20.0 ile analiz edilmiştir. iv Sonuçlar göstermektedir ki, duygusal ve davranışsal tüketici bağlılığı boyutları marka sadakati için; duygusal tüketici bağlılığı tatmin için; bilişsel ve davranışsal tüketici bağlılığı taahhüt için; davranışsal ve duygusal bağlılık boyutları ise güven için önemli göstergelerdir. Özet olarak çalışma marka sadakati, tatmin, taahhüt ve güvenin Facebook gibi bir online platforda tüketici bağlılığının muhtemel sonuçları olduğunu göstermektedir. the competitive business environment. Both researches and practitioners are focusing on how consumer engagement can be enhanced through different channels. The emergence of social networks has significantly caused a shift in consumer behaviors and brand relationships. With its unique features and structure, Social Networking Sites (SNS) offer an upper advantage to build consumer brand relationships and instant consumer engagement. Although researchers and practitioners are giving so much importance to consumer engagement, there is still a need to understand how engagement affects consumer behavior. Therefore, this study set out to determine the consequences of consumer engagement in SNS. It further viewed consumer engagement as a multi-dimensional concept comprising behavioral, cognitive and emotional dimensions and as such the hypotheses were aimed at determining how each of the three dimensions of consumer engagement affect the individual consequences of consumer engagement such as brand loyalty, satisfaction, commitment and trust in SNS. The study used a quantitative research design and developed a model that was based on the hypotheses developed vi for the study. It used a questionnaire survey to collect data from Anadolu University students in summer school. Facebook is chosen as a case for this study. 400 questionnaires were collected and the analyses were conducted with the 387 valid questionnaire. The research data was analyzed by SPSS program 20.0 version.