Engaging young customers through interactive social media marketing: a comparison of customers and practitioners perspective on how companies in Pakistan utilize facebook

Abstract

This research is about the role of social media in engaging customers, and providing a two-way communication platform for the companies and customers to interact with each other. The aspect of customer engagement is studied from the Company’s perspective. The effectiveness of this engagement is tested by the customer’s actions. The social media platform selected for this study is Facebook. Facebook is extensively being used by the youth of Pakistan, and all the companies in Pakistan are adopting Facebook as a free platform to interact with the customers, and promote their company and products. The results conclude that Facebook presents a huge potential for the companies to engage customers in Pakistan, some companies are utilizing it effectively, but most of them are still in the adoption stage and are not utilizing its full potential yet. However the trend towards Facebook is progressive. The entrepreneurs and home-based businesses are successful in targeting their customers through Facebook, and are attaining huge benefits by effectively engaging customers.