In your Face(book) users! En studie om socialt login och människans strävan efter konsistens
Concern about personal privacy continues to grow among online users along with the fact that new technologies help online companies to share user's private information. Still the usage of online entities such as social networks and e-commerce sites continue to increase. This raises the question of why online users act in such a contradictory and irrational way.Our study examines what impact one recently developed application called social login, which is provided by several social networks and used by millions of online companies, has on consumer's evaluation of online brands when they are primed for various types of information concerning privacy issues. Our assumptions are built up on the theory of cognitive, dissonance and suggest that there will be no differences in evaluation of the brands due to the human need to rationalize their existing behavior and attitudes when they receive new or contradicting information. The potential effects are measured by a manipulation presented in a survey distributed in an online environment to a sample of users (n=,154). The collected data is analysed in the statistical program SPSS. The results are in line with our hypothesis showing that no changes in attitude or behavior occur towards the online brands regardless the type of primed information. The results also show an expected change in attitude towards the application social login. Implications for online companies, limitations and suggestions for further research are presented in this study.