The Effects of Social Media Marketing Antecedents on Social Media Marketing, Brand Loyalty and Purchase Intention: A Customer Perspective

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore the effects of the antecedents of social media marketing, brand loyalty and purchase intention. Furthermore, the study aims at investigating the effect of social media marketing on brand loyalty and purchase intention. Finally, the study seeks to identify the effect of brand loyalty on purchase intention. In order to achieve the study objectives, a questionnaire was developed based on prior literature and a sample of customers consisting of 500 participants was selected in order to collect the required data. The model of the study was developed theoretically and then tested using structural equation modeling. The results confirmed that social media antecedents significantly affect three constructs: social media marketing, brand loyalty and customer purchase intention. In line with numerous previous studies, the results indicated that social media marketing significantly affects both brand loyalty and customer purchase intention. Finally, the findings showed that brand loyalty has a significant effect on customer purchase intention. Based on these results, it was concluded that organizations should pay more attention to the antecedents of social media marketing since it has direct effects on social media marketing application, brand loyalty and customer purchase intention. Despite the importance of these results, the study is still limited to measurements used to evaluate constructs, since these measurements were built on a small number of indicators, its cross-sectional design and a little number of antecedents being explored. Considering these limitations in the future might reveal different results. However, since the effect degree of social media marketing application is greater than the degree of the same construct on brand loyalty and purchase intention, social marketing application was not approved to play a mediating role between theses constructs. Hence, the major contribution of this study is that social media antecedents are no less important than the application of social media marketing itself. In other words, for organizations to ensure an effective application of social media marketing, an eye on its antecedents would bring the benefits of social media marketing into the light, which, in turn, would affect brand loyalty and customer purchase intention. Corresponding author: Bader Almohaimmeed Email addresses of the corresponding author: bmam@qu.edu.sa First submission received: 16th September 2018 Revised submission received: 1st December 2018 Accepted: 28th December 2018 Introduction A new tool of communication was introduced in the early 2000s, which became widely known as social media. The main feature of this tool is interaction among users (Singh & RatnaSinha, 2017). Therefore, it is regarded as a tool that has the greatest influence on organizations communication with customers and the public (Parveen, 2012). In fact, one of the most important drivers for organizations to utilize social media is the large number of people who use social media applications such as Facebook (Sharif, Troshani, & Davidson, 2015). According to Zahoor and Qureshi (2017), social media refers to web technologies utilized for interaction with public communities. Tuten and Solomon (2015) stated that a new ‘“p” was emerging and added to the marketing mix Ps’ with the introduction of social media to become the five Ps, which are product, price, promotion, place, participation or social media marketing. They Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 13 Issue 4 July 2019 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 147 defined the fifth ‘P’ as an application of social media technologies to build an environment in which the intended value is created to fulfill stakeholders’ requirements. Since organizations seek to build brand loyalty, one of the means that can be utilized to achieve this goal was social media (Erdogmus & Cicek, 2012) due to its benefits over traditional marketing means. Examples of these benefits include increased levels of organizational performance (Alarcón, Rialp, & Rialp, 2015), brand loyalty (Tatar & ErenErdoğmuş, 2016), user consumption patterns (Thoene, 2012) and purchasing behaviors of consumers (Hayta, 2013). Consequently, the positive effect of social media marketing on constructs such as brand loyalty and purchase intention were well reported in the literature. However, relationships between the antecedents of social media marketing, social media marketing, brand loyalty and customer purchase intention had not gained great attention from researchers to be studied in the same model in local organizations. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore effects among the antecedents of social media marketing, social media marketing, brand loyalty and customer purchase intention in order to understand the real effect of these factors when tested simultaneously in one model. The study is organized into seven sections. The following section sheds light on social media marketing. Section three shows the development of study hypotheses and model. Section four displays the methodology used in the study. Data analysis and results are illustrated in section five, followed by discussion and conclusion in section six. Finally, implications, limitations and recommendations for future research are clarified in section seven. Social Media Marketing Definitions of social media found in the literature, in general, are grounded on two crucial pillars: the Internet and public interaction. Zahoor and Qureshi (2017) defined social media as web technologies utilized to interact with public communities. Interest in social media in the marketing domain has gained increased attention due to the potential effect of these technologies on customer behavior. Additionally, organizations’ interest in social media is derived by numerous benefits organizations can achieve such as reducing cost, increasing profitability, sharing knowledge and building business partnerships (Neti, 2011). Hence, researchers have studied social media and social media marketing in different domains such as the impact of social media on customers (Hajli, 2013); effects of social media marketing on online consumer behavior (Vinerean, Cetina, & Tichindelean, 2013); the effect of social media marketing on online shopping (Mohammadpour, Roshandel Arbatani, Hassan Holipour, Farzianpour, & Hosseini, 2014), social media strategies (Bajpai, Pandey and Shriwas, 2012); creative strategies in social media marketing (Ashley & Tuten, 2015); impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty and purchase intention (Balakrishnan, Dahnil, & Yi, 2014); antecedents of social media marketing application (Brech, Messer, Schee, Rauschnabel, & Ivens , 2017); foundations of social media marketing (Constantinides, 2014); effectiveness of social media such as Facebook advertising in enhancing purchase intention (Dehghani & Tumer, 2015); impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty (Erdogmus & Cicek, 2012); antecedents of social media analysis (Guede, Curiel, & Antonovica, 2017); the impact of user interactions in social media on brand awareness and purchase intention (Hutter, Hautz, Dennhardt, & Füller, 2013); corporate reputation and customer behavioral intentions (Keh & Xie, 2008) social media marketing and brand equity (Zahoor & Qureshi, 2017). Hypotheses and Study Model Development Antecedents of SMM and SMM Recent research on social media marketing (SMM) designated several factors that have vital influences on SMM. In one study on the interaction between universities and fans, Brech et al. (2017) marked out two of these factors: university reputation and frequency of updates. Leung, Bai and Mehmet Erdem (2017) made a reference to the content type of social media. Their study was on the social media marketing of hotels, i.e., Facebook, and found that the most effective types of messages were those related to product, brand and involvement but not those related to reward and promotions. Product involvement and attitude towards the community and interest in online interaction are identified by Dessaert (2017) as these factors have an impact on social media engagement. Moreover, Odoom, Anning-Dorson and Acheampong (2017) distinguished two types of social media motivations: product-based and serviceoriented. Brink (2017) described open, collaborative business model and distributed leadership as the two Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 13 Issue 4 July 2019 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 148 antecedents of SSM. Furthermore, word of mouth communication done using electronic means to promote products or services is called viral marketing via social media (Guede et al., 2017). On the basis of these findings, the first hypothesis of this study was formulated in order to explore the effect of ten social media antecedents on strategic social media marketing: H1: SMM antecedents significantly affect SMM. Table 1. Examples of SMM Antecedents Found in the Literature No. SMM antecedents Authors 1 Organization reputation Brech et al. (2017) 2 Frequency of social media updates 3 SMM content type Leung et al. (2017) 4 Product involvement Dessaert (2017) 5 Attitude towards community 6 Interest in online interaction 7 Social media motivations Odoom et al. (2017) 8 Open collaborative business model Brink (2017) 9 Distributed leadership 10 Brand communication via viral marketing Guede et al. (2017) SMM and Brand Loyalty Ismail (2017) studied the influence of SMM activities on brand loyalty and found that the former has a significant impact on the latter. Erdogmus and Cicek (2012) found a significant impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty, particularly when a brand encompasses popular as well as relevant content publicized on different platforms. Balakrishnan et al. (2014) found a positive impact of SMM o