Thesis Defense – Işıl Büdeyri Turan

PhD THESIS DEFENSE

“The Effects Of Climate On Social Media Engagement”

Işıl Büdeyri Turan, Ph.D. in Business Administration

Date: 16.05.2024

Time: 16:00

Location: : Özyeğin University Çekmeköy Campus AB2 301

PhD Thesis Committee:

Prof. Dr. M. Tolga Akçura, Özyeğin University

Assoc. Prof. Dr. M. Berk Ataman, Özyeğin University

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kıvılcım Döğerlioğlu Demir, Özyeğin University

Prof. Dr. Koen Pauwels, Northeastern University

Prof. Dr. S. Sriram, University of Michigan

ABSTRACT:

User-generated content drives engagement, crucial for brand performance. Social media engagement is influenced by individual mood, preferences, and environmental cues, including temperature. Despite its impact, the specific influence of temperature on user engagement remains unclear. This thesis investigates temperature's impact on user engagement and its interaction with social media campaigns. The focus is on temperature due to its overwhelming influence on social media engagement compared to other climate variables such as cloudiness, air pressure, wind speed and humidity. Through a controlled experiment and empirical study spanning five and a half years, the research reveals several key findings: extremely high temperatures decrease user engagement by reducing happiness levels; high temperatures have a greater impact than low temperatures. The detrimental impact of high temperatures is significant on post creation, but not on liking, commenting, and sharing behaviors, indicating content creation behavior is more sensitive to high temperatures than content contribution behavior. A specific dataset composed of user-generated content quantifies the negative impact of high temperatures and shows that a social media campaign during extreme heat mitigates its adverse effects by only 36.7%; and campaign effectiveness decreases by 29.2% during extremely hot weather. This study is the first to comprehensively explore the effects of extreme temperatures on user engagement. The implications extend to researchers, social media managers, and campaign planners, providing insights for enhancing engagement strategies in varying temperature conditions.

BIO:

Işıl Büdeyri Turan is a graduate of American Robert College and received her Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in International Relations from Istanbul University, Istanbul, Türkiye, in 2003. She completed her first Master of Arts (MA) degree in European Integration from the University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom, in 2005, attaining Jean Monnet Scholarship. She received her second MA degree in Production Management and Marketing from Marmara University, Istanbul, Türkiye, in 2011. She has worked in leading marketing research agencies in Türkiye. Throughout her employment, she has held executive roles involving account management, team management, project management, and sales. She possesses extensive experience in utilizing brand tracking and health, advertising research (including advertising effectiveness and pre-posttests), A/B testing involving product, concept, and packaging tests, claim tests, usage and attitude surveys, in-store excellence research, and customer and employee satisfaction research. With over 10 years of expertise in account management, she has worked across various sectors including fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), telecommunications, white goods, small home appliances, and banking and finance sectors. She started her Ph.D. education at Özyeğin University Graduate School of Business, in 2018, with a specialization in Quantitative Marketing and Modeling under the supervision of Prof. Dr. M. Tolga Akçura. She has represented Özyeğin University in distinguished marketing conferences such as ISMS Marketing Science Conference (2021, 2022, 2023), European Marketing Academy Conferences (EMAC; Regional 2019, Annual 2022), and Marketing Dynamics conference (2022), presenting her academic work. She possesses Doctoral Consortium Honors attained in 2022 and 2023 ISMS Marketing Science Conferences. She has two publications, and research interests in social media engagement, branding, advertising, and artificial intelligence, and employs an extensive range of methodologies involving time-series analysis, vector autoregression models, machine learning, experimental and qualitative research.