Creative Commons

The provision of social support in third places has been widely studied by many of scholars in a variety of service settings (Jøsang et al., 2007; Dossani and Kenney, 2007; Rosenbaum, 2007). Traditional third places were defined by Oldenburg (1989) as social surroundings away from home or work. Similar environments hosting social interactions can also exist online, mainly as social networking sites. These settings are frequently visited by adolescents, which constitute the fastest growing user segment of those websites. The present study aimed to investigate this new type of setting, called ‘”e-third place”, seeking to find the factors that drive adolescents to seek social support in this setting. To this end, ten family disruptive incidents - that have been recorded to retrospectively affect adult behaviors (Moschis, 2007; Roberts et al., 2003a; Rindfleisch et al., 1997) - were utilized. Additionally, this study aimed to investigate future customer behavioral intentions deriving from this support provision. One of the most popular social networking sites in Europe, Facebook, was utilized as a research setting, while the age limits of the research population were set at 13 to 18 years old. The study utilized a survey questionnaire, the results of which were analyzed using quantitative, statistical methods. Results of the statistical analysis indicated that there is no statistically significant impact of the family disruptive events on the adolescents’ need for social support in Facebook. Nevertheless, those events seem to have an impact on some aspects of family communication, indicating that they might have an indirect impact on an adolescent’s need for social support. Additionally, the provision of such a support results in intensified use of Facebook, as well as feelings of increased customer satisfaction and propensity to generate positive word of mouth. More particularly, all three types of social support (instrumental, companionship and emotional support) are positively correlated with the time spent daily on Facebook activities. The provision of companionship and instrumental support positively impacts customer satisfaction, while positive word of mouth derives from the provision of companionship and emotional support. As regards the managerial implications of these findings, the present study confirms that managers should facilitate the provision of social support as it can contribute towards the financial success of the business.