Motivações do consumidor da indústria dos serviços de saúde

: para a interação com as marcas dos serviços de saúde, no Facebook

Abstract

The main purpose of this dissertation is to study the motivations of the health services industry consumers to interact with health brands on Facebook. The consumers of this industry have some particularities that set them apart from consumers of other markets and, therefore, through the literature review, we tried to understand what influences this consumer to interact with health service brands on Facebook. In order to study the influence of the motivations presented in the literature – personal identity, social influence, search for information, reward and trust – along with the factors that specifically influence the interaction of consumers with health related brands – such as gender, age, education, financial situation and health condition – on Facebook, an exploratory quantitative study was developed and an online survey applied to 316 individuals. This research also tried to understand how important it is for a health brands to have a presence on Facebook, as well as the different types of interaction between health service consumers and the brands. The results points towards the existence of positive associations between the above mentioned motivations, and highlight the existence of significant differences in regard to what motives consumers of different genders to interact with brands, namely in what concerns the influence of the social influence and trust. This research showed that respondents are not yet comfortable interacting with health services brands through this platform, and those who do, only do it, mainly through the consumption of brand content or by contributing to the content created by the brand or other consumers.

Date of Award	17 Jun 2015
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Joana Machado (Supervisor) & João Luís Andrade Serra Moreira de Campos (Co-Supervisor)