Effects of Social Network Marketing (SNM) on

Consumer Purchase Behavior through Customer

Engagement

Nima Barhemmati and Azhar Ahmad

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), The National University of Malaysia

Email: [email protected]m, azah@ukm.edu.my

company substantially. This study is aimed to examine how

SNM will influence the ultimate consumer purchase

behavior among people who often use social networking

websites and to investigate the predicted relationships

among social network marketing activities, customer

engagement and consumer purchase behavior. A

quantitative survey was conducted among 50 respondents in

the campus of National University of Malaysia (UKM). The

results showed positive relationships between customer

engagement of social networking and their purchase

By passage of time and entering to the new era of

business and in particular marketing, all individuals in

every business field have believed that there have been

some initiatives and new ways that have great positive

impacts on their business. These new ways or new trends

influence especially on financial aspect of the company

which is the core purpose of launching business. Social

Media Marketing (SMM) is one of the most famous

marketing efforts where customers and stakeholders are

participants rather than viewers and each participating

who may be friends of the existing users of that particular

social network. Brands and customers are communicating

with each other without any restriction in time, place, and

medium so that old-fashioned one-way communication is

changed to interactive two-way direct communication [2].

Therefore, it is imperative for companies to be a part of

the social sphere to represent their company and interact

with their customers and companies who are not creating

customers through virtual world directly and indirectly

attached with the emotional bond shaped between

company and customer. Then, the result of this

engagement relates to the purchase behavior of those

customers through commitment and emotional evaluation

of the customer accordingly.

A. Definitions and Concepts

opinions, perspectives, insights, and media can be shared

nationalities with various backgrounds spend part of their

daily time on SM. In addition, social media are useful for

marketers and people working in advertising agencies

since consumers self-select into lifestyle groups that

make targeted marketing much easier [4].

to sites allowing users to create profiles on the site, to

post information and share that information and

communicate with other users of the site [5]. SN sites are

becoming increasingly more popular among people due

not. There are numerous SN sites on the Internet which

can be easily found by search engines. The numbers of

users and their popularity plus the amount of time every

appreciate such an opportunity to expose the company’s

goods or services in front of eyes of thousands, millions

and even billions of individuals who are engaged in these

communities, forums, blogs or social networks.

There is an obvious willingness for businesspersons

around the world to penetrate into places where density of

individuals is greater whether it is a physical market like

a bazaar or a virtual one like social networking sites.

Marketers have utilized various means to maintain the

brand loyalty of their customers, including brand

and is constantly increasing and companies would want

to expose their company’s goods or services in front of

eyes of thousands and millions and even billions of

individuals who are engaged in these communities,

forums, blogs or social networks. These websites are

effective for influencing and tracking consumer beliefs

and attitudes related to products and brands [8].

Customer engagement is an intimate long-term

relationship with the customer [9]-[10]-[11]-[12].

Consequently, customer engagement is something

high and is still increasing. Increasing interest in

customer engagement has paralleled the continued

evolution of the internet and the emergence of new digital

technologies and tools that has been dubbed Web 2.0,

especially social media like wikis, blogs, micro blogging

sites like Twitter, bookmarking sites like del.icio.us,

video sites like YouTube, virtual worlds like Second Life,

and social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and

LinkedIn (see, e.g. [13]). Among these social media, SN

in this study is predicted to influence the emotional

Internet and SN, who care about the way company

communicate and respect its audience whether physically

or virtually. “Traditional means of reaching consumers

through mass media has become less effective in recent

years” [15] and SNM is one of the newest methods

predicted to have a deeper impact on customers than the

traditional ways.

where the emotional bonds exist between the company

and the customer, there is a big opportunity for that

the customer’s purchase decision later. Although the

percentage of people that share their experiences at a

global level may be relatively small (many will do the

same online but with their circle of friends only in social

networks such as Facebook or Twitter), a much higher

percentage of users do read such comments and take them

into account when making purchase decisions [16]. It is

likely to have a better purchase behavior from the

engaged customer. In terms of effectiveness, research

shows that the modern techniques are much more

participating in the surveys. After a given time, the

questionnaires were collected from the respondents.

their time in Facebook.com. In addition, Google+ had the

second highest score among the options. Fig. 2, on the

other hand, represents number of hours respondents spent

on the social networks on a daily basis.

network marketing activities.

impacts social network marketing has on shaping an

according to the mean there is a positive but not so strong

relationship between them. As noted by Sashi (2012),

social media improves social engagement and create

better buyer-seller relationships [17].

B. Customer Engagement and Purchase Behavior

The calculated mean frequency demonstrates that the

emotional engagement shaped between customers and

company will lead to a positive purchasing behavior from

confirmed. Customer engagement is important in

understanding customers’ reaction to a particular product

paper has suggested what is possible, practical, and can

be done by marketing managers to increase their

advertisements’ effectiveness through social media by

knowing the type of engagement shaped in audience, the

shape of their emotional bond shapes and the effects on

consumer’s purchase behavior.

In addition, the study shows that based on the mean

analysis used in previous section, there’s a significant and

positive but weak correlation between social network

marketing activities and customer engagement. The

brands that use social media platforms to engage

consumers.

The study also indicated that there is a positive

correlation between customer engagement and consumer

purchase behavior. The engagement which was mainly

based on an emotional bond is directed to a better

consumer’s purchase behavior. This finding is backed by

[20] in which 68% of high-emotion people and 44% of

low-emotion felt very satisfied after interacting with their

affecting consumer purchase behavior in an online

shopping context. Based on the analyses done, both

hypotheses are confirmed.

study that is noteworthy. Results show that people with

various income levels are influenced similarly in terms of

consumer purchasing power and more importantly an

analysis also was done to test whether users are

influenced in social network marketing processes through

direct or indirect way and results represented that users

word-of-mouth offline, online, or both and the

measurement of no single path captures the story

adequately [22].

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

for this study and his assistance, support and guidance.

Besides, gratitude is extended to his parents and sister for

their support, encouragement and patience.

REFERENCES