تلخیص
The evolution of social media as an interactive technology has
empowered and influenced the lives of millions; on personal,
organizational and global level. Its impression within the field of
marketing also remains unprecedented and is regarded as a basic
ingredient of enhancing consumer engagement online. The purpose of
this paper is to examine the role of branding within a social media
marketing (SMM) perspective. The study explores how social media
marketing activities build brand loyalty and how this relationship is
mediated through brand consciousness. The empirical investigation
involves a self-administered and a structured questionnaire, distributed
through a convenience sample of 320 under-graduate and graduate
students. Data analysis was conducted through SPSS 23.0 for
demographic comparisons and SmartPLS 3 for evaluating the
measurement and structural model of the study. The findings show that
social media marketing has a significant positive influence on brand
loyalty but this relationship is partially mediated by brand
consciousness. In the same manner, social media marketing exerts a
significant positive impact on brand consciousness and resultantly,
brand consciousness also exerts a significant positive impact on brand
loyalty. The results provide valuable insights for marketers in
integrating social media as a driving tool for developing brand
engagement strategies that not only provide awareness about
products/services but also generate a cult following for them. Although
the study faced limitations of choosing a specific demographic segment
and issues pertaining to generalizability, the proposed model directs
towards additional moderators and context based variables which
could provide more fruitful insights into consumer associations
within brand communities. The paper contributes to the
literature pertaining to social media through a branding perspective and also instigates the role of brand consciousness
in developing brand loyalty for an under researched context of
Pakistan.
Qazi Mohammed Ahmed, Ahmed Qazi, Iftikhar Hussain, Shahid Ahmed. (2019) Impact of Social Media Marketing on Brand Loyalty: The Mediating Role of Brand Consciousness , Journal of Managerial Sciences, Volume 13, Issue 2.
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