Abstract:
Social media is considered as a platform and channel through which the people communicate with each other and express their ideas, feelings and emotions. Social media has been playing an important role since the last two decades. The use of social media has brought change in the way how businesses interact and communicate with their customers. It also helps them to gain new customers and retain the existing customers. This study has analyzed the impact of social media marketing on the purchase related intentions of consumers and word of mouth, also exploring the role of brand perception as a moderating variable. How it impacts this aspect, would also be analyzed along with analyzing the role of brand perception in the fast-food sector of Pakistan as a moderator. For the analysis purposes, the nature of the relationship is considered deductive, as the impact of social media marketing on word of mouth and patronage intentions by analyzing brand perception as a moderator in fast food industry. In addition, the research type is quantitative, as the questionnaires are being filled by the customers of fast-food restaurants operating in twin cities. This data then went through multiple tests including Reliability test, Correlation test, and Regression test, with the help of a software to analyze the impact of variables. Other than collecting primary data, secondary data has also been analyzed in the form of existing literature on these specific topics, with the help of different journals and articles. In the light of all the results, it can be stated that Social Media Marketing does not have a direct impact on both Patronage Intensions and Word of Mouth. However, the moderating effect of Brand Perception has been found on these relations and therefore, the combined effect of moderators and independent variables has been found significant. It is suggested that for the future research if the qualitative study would have been done on these aspects inside of the quantitative this like happened in this study, it may provide better data and information. In this research will be able to conduct interviews from different professionals in the practical market and analyze and assess whether they are actually getting such kind of results or not. Moreover, compare that research with the existing results in the research
