Why Do People Return to Video Platforms? Millennials and Centennials on TikTok

Abstract

While some social networks like Facebook are losing interest among digital influencers, TikTok continues to grow, capturing and impacting centennials and millennials alike. This situation highlights the new generations’ increasing interest in short video formats, which are also becoming a new window of communication between companies and consumers. TikTok allows users to create, share, and discover short, user-generated videos in hopes of attracting viewers. But it is necessary to understand the variables that attract and engage users of these particular social networks. This article analyses the variables of continuance motivation, video sharing behaviour, and video creation capabilities, which allow users to enjoy such networks, and service providers and companies to obtain results from them. The aim is to understand how these variables motivate social media users to return to and spend more time on this video-sharing platform. This is measured through the stickiness variable. In this context—and due to the particular relevance of the topic—the authors also aim to reveal any potential differences in the behaviour of centennials and millennials when using TikTok. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was conducted through a questionnaire answered by 2,301 millennials and centennials who use TikTok. The data were analysed through a structural equation model to measure the relevance of each of the variables to stickiness. The results provide guidelines for improving research on video social media platforms, as well as an opportunity to explore the importance of the selected variables to the stickiness variable across different user segments.

Exploring The Relationhsip between Motivation and Vocabulary Use among Tick-Tock Users

“…Figure 6 shows the percentage for Tik Tok usage frequency. The categories were replicated from (Cuesta-Valino, 2022). 75% claimed they used Tik Tok every day.…”

“We Should Be Talking About This More”

“…The short video length, however, was considered one of the drivers of success for the platform at its launch. In fact, for the Generation Z and Millennial users, that constitute the majority of the platform's audience, the short-form video format is what motivates them to continue using TikTok (Cuesta-Valiño et al, 2022). In addition, data from a survey conducted by the platform indicated that almost 50 percent of users found videos longer than a minute were stressful, with a third of users watching videos online at double speed (Stokel-Walker, 2022)…”

Exploring the determinants of continuous intention in TikTok from the perspective of social influence: a mixed approach of SEM and fsQCA

“…The development of TikTok is still in its infancy. It is generally considered that the investigation into TikTok began in 2020 (Cuesta-Valino et al, 2022). Only a few studies attempt to adopt limited theoretical models to explore individuals' behavioral intentions in TikTok (e.g.…”

“…Only a few studies attempt to adopt limited theoretical models to explore individuals' behavioral intentions in TikTok (e.g. purchase and adoption), including the uses and gratification (U&G) theory (Cuesta-Valino et al, 2022;Meng & Leung, 2021;Scherr & Wang, 2021), affordance theory (Song et al, 2021) and human-computer interaction theory (Wang, 2020), which mainly focus on the features of TikTok. For example, several researchers proposed TikTok affords several technological features such as live streaming, searching, meta-voicing (Song et al, 2021), personalized recommendation algorithms and easy-to-use editing (Du, Liechty, Santos, & Park, 2020).…”

“…Most prior studies investigated the social attributes of TikTok, such as interactivity (Zhang, Xu, & Ye, 2022), entertainment (Meng & Leung, 2021;Zhang et al, 2022) and socially rewarding self-presentation (Scherr & Wang, 2021). These pioneering studies proposed that a social streaming app (Xu & Tayyab, 2021), such as TikTok, can exert a strong influence on individual perception and motives for their usage (Song et al, 2021), attachment (Wang, Yang, & Zhang, 2021), stickiness (Cuesta-Valino et al, 2022) and purchase intention (Zhao & Wang, 2020). However, there is still a paucity of scientifically empirical studies to uncover the rationale behind users' perceptions, attitudes and behaviors towards TikTok.…”