Designing a Conceptual Model of perceived social media advertising deception: using grounded theory approach

The growing evolution of social networks with intensified role in the business world and consequently in the advertising in one hand, and the ease of deception in such emerging media on the other hand, have increased the prevalence of deceptive advertising and false claims in the communication and commercial media. In this way, it is difficult for the audiences of social media ads to distinguish between the truthful and deceptive advertising and this can lead to distrust to social media advertising and reduced sales. In this regard, the present research aimed at providing a model for the perceived deception of social media advertising using grounded theory. For the purpose, in-depth and semi-structured interviews were performed among 15 people who had past deception related experiences in their purchase from social networks. Data analysis was undertaken using open coding method and MAXQDA 2020 software. Finally, the research conceptual model was designed based on 8 main categories, 15 sub-categories, and 71 concepts, and it was revealed that social media perceived usefulness and social media ads characteristics as “causes”, and media characteristics as “covariance” were effective on perceived deception. In this regard, customer knowledge and perceived trust were considered as “contingencies”. Consumer attitude was recognized as “condition”, and consumer characteristics was presented as contextual factor for such a process resulting in the occurrence of consumer psychological damage known as individual consequence of social media ads perceived deception.