• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, June 12, 2013

Most Americans who use social media have “liked” a brand on social media, with 57% affirming this behavior, according to a new global survey from Adobe. That makes Americans a bit more brand-friendly than social media users in Australia, where 54% said they have liked a brand on social media, but a bit less than social media users in South Korea, where 59% reported liking a brand. Social media users in Germany and France were much less likely to lo like a brand on social media, at 33% and 38%, respectively.

When asked why they like brands on social media, 53% of U.S. respondents who like brands said they do so because they regularly buy the brand’s products or services, while 46% said they do it for a promotion, 39% said they like what the brand stands for, and 38% said they like the brand’s personality and style.

By comparison, relatively few U.S. respondents who like brands said they do so because they aspire to buy the brand (17%) or because the company asked them to (13%). And while U.S. social media users are friendly to brands on social media, that doesn’t mean their views are influenced by social media: even fewer (5%) said they liked a brand because their friends liked it.

Indeed, American social media users were mostly unmoved by their friends’ brand preferences: the largest group (35%) said that seeing their friends “like” a brand had no effect on them. However 29% said they would at least check out the product, while 14% said they would visit the product’s Web site, and 11% said they would visit its social media page.