Social media facilitated learning and parents' purchase intentions of non-academic tutoring services for children

Chinese parents have increasingly invested in children's non-academic development, which forms new consumer markets. This study draws on social learning theory and the supplementary tutoring literature to examine whether and how three outcomes of social media facilitated social learning (i.e., observed perfectionism, observed parent image, and trust in peer word of mouth) influence parents' purchase intentions of non-academic supplementary tutoring services for their children. Results based on the multiple regression analyses of 398 parents' responses from 15 non-academic supplementary tutoring agencies confirmed eight of ten hypotheses in our conceptual framework. The findings shed light on parents' conformity and comparison mechanisms during social media-facilitated social learning, with theoretical implications to research regarding social learning, perfectionism, word of mouth, vulnerability, trust transfer, and practical implications about social media-facilitated learning regarding parent image, parents' anxiety about children's development and the impact of educational policy on the supplementary tutoring market.