Abstract:
Social media has become an important tool for marketers to shape and influence the consumers’ behavior. Inherent ingredient of the social media is the interaction of consumers with other consumers as persons. Besides, the brand personality is a phenomenon which is evolved into the presentation of brands as persons (brand anthropomorphism) to accentuate the consumer’s person-to-person interaction. Literature reflects the impact of consumer interaction in social media on brand outcomes. But the current study postulates that, among the social media users, the social media engagement is a better measure to study the consumer behavior towards brand outcomes. This study analyzed the moderating role of brand anthropomorphism on the relationships of social media engagement and brand relationship quality, as well as analyzed the moderating role on the relationship of social media engagement and brand loyalty. Data was collected from 440 consumers of the fast moving consumer goods in Pakistan through snowball sampling. Data was analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in SmartPLS 3 software. Significant impact of social media interaction was found on the brand outcomes with moderating role of brand anthropomorphism. Future recommendations and managerial implications are also discussed.
