Maria Petrescu

Social media use (SMU) is increasingly central to consumer–brand engagement; however, consumers routinely describe it as both a source of connection and utility and a driver of loss of control and diminished well‐being. This research advances an integrative duality framework that reconciles perceived value and behavioral addiction through a dialectical mechanism in which consumers cycle through value (thesis), experienced costs (antithesis), and imperfect syntheses, such as boundary setting, platform switching, and abstinence attempts. Using a three‐study, multi‐method design, we show convergent evidence that net‐benefit models do not fully capture SMU outcomes: mixed emotions and ambivalent evaluations frequently co‐occur within the same accounts and persist across contexts, including discourse about quitting. Theoretically, the study amends net‐benefit accounts of engagement by specifying a dialectical mechanism, perceived value (thesis), experienced cost (antithesis), and imperfect synthesis, that explains why consumer ambivalence toward platforms persists instead of resolving. The framework's originality lies in treating ambivalence as a structural property of platform engagement.

Marketing research began deliberating the benefits and challenges of technology adoption by salespersons decades ago, discussing motivations to use and adopt new tools, as well as their effects on ...