Consumer’s Social Media Use on Smartphones for Restaurant Decision-making Process: Focusing on SoCoMo marketing

Based on the importance of SoCoMo (Social Context Mobile) marketing, this study investigates consumers’ activities and the usefulness of social media on smartphones when deciding on a restaurant. More importantly, this research takes into account the three different stages of consumers’ consumption (pre-, during, and post purchasing) separately to understand the heterogeneity in consumers’ usage of social media, and considered a situational factor (types of restaurant they visited) to identify different functions of social media according to different decision tasks. In order to highlight the “authenticity” of the findings, the ground theory approach was adopted and conducted for this study to address the goal of identifying themes based on the descriptions created by the actual respondents. Thus, this study provides a foundation for the understanding of consumers’ restaurant decision-making behaviour in advanced information technology, and offers practical implications for marketers to develop effective social media marketing and suggest persuasive communication.