Summary

SOURCE: IntelligentHQ

The economic principle I’m exploring is “Institutions are the ¨rules of the game¨ that influence choices.”
My research question to help me study the economic principle is “How does the social media site instagram influence users to buy specific products?”

In my last 5 blog posts, I learned a lot about this topic. I learned how instagram uses ads to promote products, how they use celebrity endorsements, and how people like to stay on instagram to feel “in the loop” and connected to their friends.

In my first blog post, I learned how Instagram tailors their ads specifically to each user. According to the article in business.com, instagram targets its ads based on certain traits which include gender, age group, and interests. Additionally, since Instagram is owned by facebook, if you have a facebook and link it to your instagram, it will have more information on your likes and dislikes.

In my second blog post, I learned that instagram tries to tailor their ads to not only the specific person, but the younger generation in general because they are the highest users of instagram. In order to tailer to youth, they get celebrities to endorse products using their platform.

In my third blog post, I learned why instagram is so addictive to people. According to an article published in Business Insider titled “The Psychology of Why Instagram is so Addictive”, Baer states that “capturing images has been habit-forming for over a century”, and it stems from the anxiety that “if we don’t capture this moment it will disappear forever”.

In my last blog post, I explored Snapchat, and why it is also one of the leading forms of social media. I learned from J.J. Delacruz, a graduate student at Texas Tech University in the US, that “People use Snapchat a lot because of its entertainment and functional needs."

In conclusion, I learned a lot about social media, specifically Instagram, and how it is so successful.