An Investigation of Consumer Engagement through Social Media: A Retail Perspective of Pakistan.

Abstract

This research is extending the technology acceptance model to examine the gap and investigate the social (peer communication), affective (enjoyment) and cognitive (compatibility) factors affecting attitude and intentions of consumer engagement through social media: the retail firm perspective of Pakistan. The methodology of this research study shows that empirical research has been conducted and quantitative research method has been used. The hypothesis of the theoretical framework was tested by collecting data through questionnaire developed on Google Doc. Further the data collected was entered in the IBM SPSS for analysis of data and reliability, correlation and regression tests were run. 307 respondents participated in this research study. Convenience sampling technique is used for this research because the population of the study includes the citizen of Karachi, Lahore, twin cities of Pakistan that is Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The findings of this research study shows that consumer attitude to engage through social media with the retail brand has positive effect on consumer intention to engage through social media with the retail brands. Moreover, compatibility has a positive influence on consumer attitude to engage with the retail brand via social media. The research limitations for the research study is the time and resource constraints. The research is conducted in the time span of 4.5 months during corona virus pandemic. The data is only collected through online electronic medium like WhatsApp and Facebook messenger. This research only included three of the antecedents of consumer attitude. We only conducted research in Karachi, Lahore and twin cities of Pakistan because of accessibility so this research did not include responses outside these cities.