Abstract:
As social media has witnessed a great uptake in the past decade, marketers are now focusing their marketing efforts largely on these platforms in order to approach their target market in a more efficient manner. While previous studies have been carried out to inspect the influence of social media marketing on consumer buying decisions and mediating role and cognitive consumer engagement separately, this research focuses on determining the impact of each of these variables on one another, and how they eventually impact a consumer’s decision-making process. This study is significant as it explores the behavioral patterns of customers, and the techniques that could be employed by marketing professionals running Fast Food Restaurants or interested in it, to turn potential customers into actual ones, a conundrum faced by all modern businesses in an age of oversaturated markets led by the empowered consumer. The study is empirical in nature and uses a quantitative approach. Structured questionnaires were distributed among the consumers of Fast Food Restaurants in Twin Cities (Islamabad and Rawalpindi) and the results were recorded for analysis. After our research, author formed three hypotheses; Social Media Marketing has a positive impact on consumer buying decision, Social Media Marketing has a positive impact on cognitive component of consumer engagement, and Cognitive component of consumer engagement has a positive impact on consumer buying decision. All the hypothesis was accepted.
