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Abstract

As a result of the rise of the digital market, social media has emerged as one of the most popular marketing tools. Consumers today increasingly rely on social media when shopping, and thus it can influence consumer behavior and purchasing decisions. Similarly, a growing number of wood products companies are using a variety of social media approaches for their marketing efforts as they seek to remain competitive in the digital marketplace. Although previous studies have examined social media use by wood products companies, none have examined social media use by wood products consumers. Wood products companies can design more effective social media marketing efforts if they understand the decision process of potential customers with regards to social media. Thus, a survey was conducted in 2017 to investigate factors affecting social media adoption among wood products consumers in the U.S. in the context of private social media use or business-to-consumers (B2C) context. The results show that social media adoption by consumers is influenced by the ease of use and perceived usefulness of social media, product characteristics, demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, income) and situational factors (e.g., community type). Understanding the factors that motivate wood products consumers' social media adoption is important when developing and designing social media marketing strategies that target consumers' needs.

Social Acceptance of Forest-Based Bioeconomy—Swedish Consumers’ Perspectives on a Low Carbon Transition

“…Geels, Sovacool, Schwanen and Sorrell [30] argue that, because of the limited incentives for private actors to engage in low carbon transitions, public policy is needed to create the economic conditions to support successful development and implementation of low carbon innovations on the market. Examples of suitable policy instruments are regulations, taxes, subsidies and standards [30] and the use of social media [49].…”