Purpose -This paper seeks to demonstrate the importance of uses and gratifications theory to social media. By applying uses and gratifications theory, this paper will explore and discuss the uses and gratifications that consumer receive from using social media. This paper seeks to provide a better and more comprehensive understanding of why consumers use social media. Design/methodology/approach -Exploratory study was conducted. 25 in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals who use social media. Findings -This study identified ten uses and gratifications for using social media. The ten uses and gratifications are: social interaction, information seeking, pass time, entertainment, relaxation, communicatory utility, convenience utility, expression of opinion, information sharing, and surveillance/knowledge about others. Research limitations/implications -Limitations are small sample size. Research implications are that uses and gratifications theory has specific relevance to social media and should be given more prominence. Uses and gratifications theory helps explain the many and varied reasons why consumers use social media. Practical implications -This paper helps organizations to understand why consumers use social media and what gratifications they receive from social media. Originality/value -This paper makes the contribution that uses and gratifications theory has specific relevance and should be given more prominence within the area of social media. This paper also provides a rich and vivid understanding of why consumers use social media.

Team projects offer many pedagogical benefits, as is evident from their widespread use by marketing instructors. This article summarizes the major benefits of team projects, including new perspectives from educational research, and discusses a significant problem that can undermine these benefits, that of unequal team member contributions. The authors propose a reward structure with both individual and group grading components as a means to achieve the full potential of group assignments. The article concludes with a description of several techniques for individual evaluation.

Social media has increasingly been used to deal with personal and professional issues. Past studies note that individuals of different digital fluency present distinct technology use behaviors. Yet, limited research has explored how digital fluency affects individuals' motivations and the use of social media tools. Based on uses and gratifications theory and digital fluency literature, we develop a model to explore the relationship between digital fluency and social media use. We tested our model by analyzing 262 responses from WeChat users. Results show that digital natives (individuals of high digital fluency) tend to use WeChat to broaden social network while digital immigrants (individuals of low digital fluency) tend to enjoy WeChat use and to use WeChat to maintain ties with friends and fulfill their information needs. Our findings contribute to the literature by identifying the theoretical and practical roles of digital fluency in social media use.

No abstract

Since Horst (1941) first discussed and defined the suppressor variable in multiple regression/correlation, a number of more nearly precise definitions has been offered (Cohen and Cohen, 1975; Conger, 1974; Darlington, 1968; Velicer, 1978). This paper compares the different approaches to defining suppression, and illustrates the differences among them. Velicer's definition, which is based on the semi-partial correlation coefficient or usefulness and which is perhaps the least well known of the definitions, is shown to have several important practical advantages relative to the other definitions. The paper extends Velicer's usefulness definition to the general multiple predictor case and to analysis of variance (ANOVA) applications of multiple regression. A test for determining the significance of a suppressor effect is suggested, which is based on Velicer's definition of suppression.