Impact of Social Media Marketing on Brand Experience: A Study of Select Apparel Brands on Facebook

Social media (SM) is an important and emerging area of research, which is of interest to marketers and academicians. Researchers have been studying the impact of social media marketing (SMM) on dimensions such as consumer-based brand equity, purchase intentions, attitudes and others. However, there are insignificant number of studies that have investigated the influence of SMM on brand experience. In this study, content sharing and interaction have been identified as two important marketing activities carried out by organizations in virtual communities. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to investigate the impact of content sharing and interaction on four dimensions of brand experience (sensory, affective, behavioural and intellectual). A mall-intercept survey was used to collect the data and 300 respondents were targeted, which resulted in 205 complete responses. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was run on independent and dependent variables, which was followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to validate the scale. The measurement scale was found to be reliable as well as valid. To test the hypothesis, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used and eight hypotheses were tested. The results showed that the content sharing and interaction have a positive significant impact on sensory, affective, behavioural and intellectual experiences.