<![CDATA[Saat ini, penggunaan media sosial seperti Facebook dan Twitter menunjukkan peningkatan pesat. Di Indonesia, Facebook menjadi salah satu media sosial dengan posisi keempat sebagai negara dengan pengguna terbanyak di dunia. Pada perkembangannya, media social membuka prospek pasar bagi para pemasar di dunia maya atau wirausaha digital. Karena itu, dibutuhkan pemahaman mendalam mengenai karakteristik pembeli online, bagaimana konsumen menginterpretasikan dan menerima stimuli berupa pesan dan informasi, yang di tahap selanjutnya dapat mempengaruhi keputusan pembelian. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memaparkan faktorfaktor yang dapat mempengaruhi kelompok konsumen usia muda dalam berbelanja di Facebook. Faktor karakteristik konsumen online yang diteliti difokuskan pada faktor psikologis. Sebanyak 15 konsumen pembelanja online dalam kelompok generasi Y (usia 2030 tahun) diwawancara dan diobservasi. Hasilnya, terdapat perbedaan antara kelompok pria dan wanita, di mana pria berbelanja karena factor keunikan produk serta layanan (reliabilitas dan keamanan berbelanja). Sementara bagi wanita, faktor kenyamanan merupakan hal yang utama. Kata Kunci: media sosial, facebook, online shopping, perilaku konsumen. Nowadays, social media like Facebook and Twitter, showed increasing number rapidly from time to time. In Indonesia, Facebook has become the largest social media, being the fourth place in user number in 2012, comparing to other countries. As a result, the development of social media provides a developing prospect for Emarketers and digitalentrepreneurs. If Emarketers know the insights on their buyers’ characteristic, they could get insights on how customers interpret and receive stimuli (messages/information), which could affect customers’ decisions. This paper focuses on interpreting factors which affect young people’s online shopping in Facebook, as well as finding consumers online characteristic factors which include cultural, social, personal and psychological factors. In this research, 15 consumers from various online shop in Facebook were interviewed and observed as informants. Those informants are in Y generation category (age 2030) who had experienced shops online, male and female, to see if there any differences between gender in their psychological characteristics. From interviews and observations, male andfemale have different perceptions; female’s reasons to buy are more because of convenience, while male’s reasons are mainly because of product uniqueness and customer service factor, such as reliability and security. Keywords: social media, facebook, online shopping, consumer behavior. To cite this article (7th APA style):Albert, A. & Hersinta, H. (2012). Shopping on Social Networking Sites: A Study on Facebook Consumers’ Psychological Characteristics. Journal Communication Spectrum, 2(2), 119-132 ]]>
