Abstract:
This research study shades light on the effectiveness of online social networking sites in
the context of interactive digital marketing and virtual brand community and the
influence of users’ motivation to engage in social media marketing.
The study methodology and design is explanatory as the numerical data and theoretical
background was already established and existed. It further investigates by reviewing past
researches and explain the existing theory by adopting convenient sampling technique
and targeting students of Karachi as sample population.
The conceptual framework consisted of user motivation for online social networking and
their perception, attitude and participation intent towards advertising and virtual brand
community.
Two types of user motivation are taken into account; social online capital and
psychological well-being and two aspects of social media marketing; interactive digital
advertising and virtual brand community. The targeted social networking site for data
collection was Facebook and a survey conducted from 176 university students in Karachi
reveals that respondents tend to differ and favor virtual brand communities’ more than
interactive digital advertisement.
These results have key implications to understand the beliefs of growth is social media
and digital marketing scenario by assessing online social capital of social media users and
how their perception, attitude and intention to participate differs. Promoting Marketers’
orientation is very challenging under the context where two beliefs exist but valid data
and information provided both the advantages and disadvantages.
