DIGITAL ADVERTISEMENT & BUILDING VIRTUAL BRANDING COMMUNITY

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.