Linking Social Media Engagement with Customer Relationships and Brand Loyalty: A Consumer-based Perspective

Social media has changed the dynamics of marketing communication from monologue to interactive dialogue. This interaction has enabled the marketers to engage the consumers for favourable brand outcomes, dominantly the brand loyalty. The study examines the mediating effects of customer-brand relationship and customer-company relationship between the social media consumer engagement and brand loyalty; linked through the social-identity theory. This empirical research is based on the analysis of responses from the consumers of the banking sector. A total of 243 respondents were selected through the snowball sampling technique to gather data on structured questionnaire.  Analysis was conducted using structural equation modelling technique in Smart PLS 3 software. Results indicate the stronger impact of social media cognitive and affective engagement on the customer-company relationship, while customer-brand relationship is largely impacted by social media behavioural engagement. Moreover, effect of cognitive engagement is lesser than the effective engagement towards the brand related outcomes. Building the customer-brand and customer-company relationship is important along with investing on the customer engagement initiatives. Engagement should be emphasized from three perspectives of cognition, affect and behaviour rather than merely from the behavioural perspective. Customer-brand relationship is more effective for favourable outcomes than the customer-company relationship. Based on empirical evidence, this study adds to the literature by studying the mediating role of customer-brand and customer-company relationship between the relationship of social media consumer engagement and the brand loyalty.