Abstract:
Internet and social networking have become a part of people’s daily
lives all around the world. Social media has inspired the people by
providing tremendous benefits to ease their day to day activities.
People in the world use at least one form of social media. Among
them, youngers (age range 20-29) is more attracted towards the
social media and spend more time on social media sites. Generation
Y is more familiar with internet and social networking and
represent the highest social media usage in Sri Lanka. The present
study investigates the influence of informativeness, interactivity,
entertainment and credibility of social media advertising on
purchase intention. This descriptive study was conducted using 384
respondents from Kurunegala district, representing generation
using convenience sampling and data was collected through
questionnaires. Cronbach alpha values for all the variables were
more than 0.7 therefore, there’s a higher internal consistency of
research and the questionnaire. Based on the correlation analysis,
it indicates that there is a higher positive association between the
variables. Base on the regression the present study found that there
is significant positive impact of those four factors on purchase
intention of Generation Y in Kurunegala District. Therefore, the
researcher recommends corporations to utilize four types of social
media platforms which are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and
LinkedIn for enhancing purchase intentions, as social media
advertising is more effective for the organization which sell, and
manufacturing goods and services mostly consumed by young men
and women because majority of the social media users tend to be
younger.
