Nathaniel Roco

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How and why people use yelp

Research Question: How do people use Yelp and why do they use Yelp? My data shows that people use Yelp as an information seeking use.

Hypothesis: I think people use Yelp as place to gather information and use it for their own advantages. My data shows that people use it for information seeking but also for convenience.

Methods. I used a research survey, focus group, and interviews for my data. Challenges was trying to gather people for the focus group. I stressed about this the most. The way I gathered people for my focus group was when there was a gathering for my uncle, my cousins were willing to participate. The reason I chose them was because they would take this seriously. I got about 40 surveys through going the Yelp talk and posting it on my Facebook. I used surveymonkey and found it very helpful. The interviews were much easier. I used my friends that were highly involved in Yelp. I had to bribe all four of them with lunch. That was very inconvenient but you gotta get this done am I right. Trying to graduate.

I think Yelp is a blend of information and convenience that go into one use. It’s interesting to note that both are kind of the same while being very different uses. I think the uses and gratification theory needs to work on their uses and specify about the two uses. I felt like that it was convenient that all the information was on Yelp and a lot of my data shared the same thinking. The two uses were the reasons why people use it.