How Is the Personality of Facebook Customers?: Cloninger's Psychobiological Model of Temperament as a Predictor of SNSs

Introduction

During the last years, businesses have been living in a contemporary environment. Change is the word every single company is concerned. How to manage, how to adapt their processes as well as their competitive advantages, or even how to generate new ones from the velocity of change that we are living in are the major concerns. One of the main drivers of this change is technology. Not only it is evolving quicker but also it is getting more powerful. The 1990s were the times when technology grew significantly; it was everywhere, and it started to connect all of us around the globe. Companies began to make e-commerce. However, they were focused just on make their business more accessible. The 2000s were the times when technology rocketed. Technology allows us to connect truly with the globe, and social media provide people reviews about companies. Finally, the 2010s are the times when technology is fully integrated into our daily lives. Social businesses have been presented, and SNSs have been a reality (Wilms, 2012).

Social networking sites (SNSs) have been one of the drivers of the last huge changes. Currently, people usually communicate by on-line devices and, even more, they make it massively by SNSs. Therefore, the scientific community has started to study this phenomenon. Although there are many studies focused on SNSs, there is not one focused on the way Cloninger’s psychobiological model of temperament could predict the way people behave and use SNSs. It makes this study unique and fascinating for managers and the business community. Also, it opens new fields for further research.

Companies are clearly looking into SNSs as an opportunity to generate business. Not only to increase sales and traffic to their websites but also to build brand equity, as well as a way to communicate with their customers and potential customers. SNSs is a great channel to communicate with a potential customer because it is a social tool. Therefore, companies can make people participate in their communication. Some authors support the idea that social media has experienced incredible growth due to it placing the user as the primary character of the communication. It means conventional media uses the customer as a final user of the communication. It makes the flow just one directional; from the media to the users. On the other hand, SNSs allows users to be part of the information generator. They are not just the final users of the information; they are part of it.

The aim of this study is to analyze critically the relation between the Cloninger’s psychobiological model of temperament and the use of social networking sites (SNSs) by young adults. It is clearly focused on the way temperament, a part of personality, affects young adults regarding motivations, barriers, and usages of SNSs. Moreover, this study tends to close the gap of knowledge that exist on this area. SNSs are part of our daily activity, therefore, it has taken the attention and the curiosity of the author to deeply analyse this popular phenomenon. Also, the clear managerial application could be detected. The more companies could predict the use of SNSs the better they could fulfil the customer expectations.

This paper is composed of five main sections: literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion and recommendation. On the literature review, a critical analysis has been done on past studies and different point of views of other authors. A holistic analysis of different approaches has been covered: a social networking sites overview and current panorama, a review of the main predictors of SNS usage: personality, gender, age, self-identity, need to belong, ethnicity and culture diverse, motivational theory, and Cloninger psychobiological model of temperament. After this section, a descriptive of the methodology is introduced for supporting this study; the sample used, questions asked, analysis was done, as well as the secondary data collection. On the result section, extensive details of the results are commented. The interpretation of this analysis and data is done in the discussion section. Finally, conclusions and recommendations are presented.