Food Selfies and Impression Management: Motivational Drivers of Food Picture Sharing on Social Media

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bachelor_Okkonen_Ada_2019.pdf (1.31 MB)

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School of Business | Bachelor's thesis
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Date

2019

Department

Mikkelin kampus

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

(Mikkeli) Bachelor’s Program in International Business

Language

en

Pages

49 + 9

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Abstract

Objectives: The main objectives of this study were to explore the underlying motives of food selfie posting, such as communication and documentation, suggested by previous research. Additionally, this study explored whether people post food selfies to manage their self-presentations and aimed to find out if impression management is a relevant motivator of food selfie posting. This study explored the food selfie sharing phenomenon as a whole to understand why people post pictures of food on social media. Summary: Literature on impression management, eating and food selfie sharing was explored to create a conceptual framework for the study. Next, a survey measuring five different food selfie sharing motives’ connection to food selfie sharing behavior and the relationship between impression management and food selfie sharing behavior was conducted. A sample of N = 145 was gathered for the data analysis. Conclusions: The study indicates that people share food selfies mostly because of two motives: documentation and personal satisfaction. However, the different motives do not seem to predict food selfie sharing behavior. Impression management was found to predict the number of social media sites one shares food selfies on. However, further research on the topic is needed to affirm whether people use food selfie sharing as an impression management tactic.

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Thesis advisor

Shukla, Paurav

Keywords

impression management, consumer behavior, marketing, food selfie, social media

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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201910135650

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[kand] Kauppakorkeakoulu / BIZ (Open Access)