The Consequences of Consumer Engagement in Social Networking Sites

Abstract

Consumer Engagement is increasingly becoming one of the important issues in the competitive business environment and with its unique features and structure, Social Networking Sites offer an upper advantage to build consumer brand relationships and instant consumer engagement. This study set out to determine the consequences of consumer engagement in social networking sites. Consumer engagement was viewed as a multi-dimensional concept comprising behavioral, cognitive and emotional dimensions and as such the hypotheses were aimed at determining how each of the three dimensions of consumer engagement affect the individual consequences of consumer engagement such as brand loyalty, satisfaction, commitment and trust. The study used a quantitative research design. It used a questionnaire survey to collect data from university students. Facebook is chosen as a case for this study. 400 questionnaires were collected and the analyses were conducted with the 387 valid questionnaire. The results suggest that emotional and behavioral engagement dimensions were significant predictors for brand loyalty; emotional engagement for satisfaction, cognitive and behavioral engagement for commitment, while behavioral and emotional engagement dimensions were found to be significant predictors for trust.

Consumer Engagement is increasingly becoming one of the important issues in the competitive business environment and with its unique features and structure, Social Networking Sites offer an upper advantage to build consumer brand relationships and instant consumer engagement. This study set out to determine the consequences of consumer engagement in social networking sites. Consumer engagement was viewed as a multi-dimensional concept comprising behavioral, cognitive and emotional dimensions and as such the hypotheses were aimed at determining how each of the three dimensions of consumer engagement affect the individual consequences of consumer engagement such as brand loyalty, satisfaction, commitment and trust. The study used a quantitative research design. It used a questionnaire survey to collect data from university students. Facebook is chosen as a case for this study. 400 questionnaires were collected and the analyses were conducted with the 387 valid questionnaire. The results suggest that emotional and behavioral engagement dimensions were significant predictors for brand loyalty; emotional engagement for satisfaction, cognitive and behavioral engagement for commitment, while behavioral and emotional engagement dimensions were found to be significant predictors for trust.