2019 ASHS Annual Conference

Social media are the most widely used new media for consumers today. With the coming of social media era, florists have adopted social media for marketing purposes. However, there are few academic studies to evaluate the results of the adoption of social media marketing in the florist industry. It results in the difficulty of developing appropriate strategies to enhance the efficiency of social media marketing for florists. To address the deficiency, this study aimed to explore: (1) the motivation for florists to adopt social media marketing; 2) the efficacy perceived by florists as adopting social media in their business operations; 3) the obstacles for florists in the adoption of social media marketing. Data were collected from the depth interviews with fourteen managers who have been operating Facebook fan pages for their floral shops. The study results indicated that the motivations for the florists to adopt social media were: 1) adapting to consumers’ social media usage trends, 2) increasing the exposure of the flower shops, and 3) demonstrating the floral creation ability of the flower shops. In addition, the most experienced use benefits of social media marketing for florists were: 1) developing new customers, and 2) enhancing corporate image. However, florists were facing the obstacle of resource incapacity and fans’ disloyalty in their Facebook fan page operations. Based on the study results, we suggest that florists should develop promotion strategies to increase fans’ engagements to florists’ Facebook fan pages.