Influence of Credible Social Media Marketing

The provided document is a solved assignment that examines the influence of credible social media marketing on purchase intentions for clothing brands, specifically focusing on females in Pakistan. The assignment draws from relevant literature and research studies to investigate how social media marketing affects consumer behavior, brand image, and customer loyalty.

Social Media Marketing – A Purchase Simulator
1 Introduction:
In the modern world use of electronic media has become an important source of
information in our daily life. Technological advancement took its major leap with the advent
of 4G in Pakistan (Valecha, 2015). Technology development and use of ICT in electronic
media makes it more attractive and approachable as well as more influential for everyone
(Duggan, Ellison, Lampe, Lenhart, & Madden, 2015). Pakistan is no exception where we are
seeing social media has set its trend in different fields and environments; like politics,
education, marketing, business, entertainment, news, and information. With 65% of our
population being under 35 years of age and 50% under 22 years of age (Pakistan Bureau of
Statistics 2021), Pakistan seems to be a perfect growing ground for the rise of social media
growth as a platform for marketing and influencing mainly because of young population
having access to the internet. Marketing experts believe that due to an exponential growth of
the key components such as smart phone users, social media platforms, tele density, internet
coverage etc. social media marketing is rapidly taking over the conventional marketing spend
with an increase in the size of pie in three years (Hussain, 2020).
Today social media is considered as the fastest online tool to reach consumers with
the purpose of creating brand awareness, brand image and educate customer about the
availability of the products (Dey, Haque, & Khurdiya, 2011), (Keller, Parameswaran, &
Jacob, 2011). With consumers spending more and more time on social media an increasing
share of communication happens through social media networks which comprise of online
community in which users with common interest and needs share information (Hashimzade,
Myles, Page, & Rablen, 2014). Because of these communication consumers are increasingly

transforming from being passive participants in the marketing to and active creator and
influencer of the market (Kozinets, De Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010).
Social media marketing is further emerging role of consumer in the marketing and
more and more companies are recognizing the value of the engaging consumer through social
media marketing to involve consumer early on by increasing their trust in the brands,
continually reintroducing the product, increase the awareness and image of the brand and
enhancing the social component of the product itself by creating the electronic word of
mouth; thus shaping and influencing the consumers’ buying intentions (Kozinets, De Valck,
Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010) (Muntinga, Moorman, & & Smit, 2011). Using this innovative
approach of the marketing it is now possible for companies and brands to connect with
consumers without any limitation in time, location and means of communication as the social
media facilitates a two-way communication instead of the traditional one-way
communication (Kim & Ko, 2012). Jack Ma, who is the founder of the huge Chinese e-
commerce firm, Alibaba, has declared that failure to utilize the social network platform as a
media to interact with consumers and other business associates or prospects and potentials
may lead brands to be excluded from the industry, thereby, losing their position in the market
(Barhemmati & Ahmad, 2015).
Despite the importance of the social media marketing and its impact on the various
sector of commerce majority research have focused on the impact of social media on
education and very few researches have been conducted on the role of social media and its
impact on the consumers (Nawaz, Abbas, Javed, Mughal, & Nabeel, 2015). Despite the
increase practical importance of the social media and its impact on the consumers purchase
intention, (Fournier & Lee, 2009) ; (Ngai, Taoa, & Moon, 2015); (Dessart, Veloutsou, &
Morgan-Thomas, 2015) the aspect of how social media marketing influence customer's
purchase intention remains under researched. Given this lack of research, the present study

attempts to investigate the role of social media marketing as purchase stimulator by studying
the impact of factors such as brand awareness, brand image, customer trust and word of
mouth on the purchase intention of customers in Pakistan.
2 Literature Review
2.1 Consumer Purchase Intention
Purchase intention is evolving from the term intention. Consumers’ Purchase
intention is regarded as an element of a consumers’ cognitive behavior revealing the way an
individual intends to purchase a specific brand (Su. & Huang, 2011). The purchase intention
is an integral part of the purchase decision making process whereby the consumer develops a
definitive readiness to proceed towards a product or brand (Dodds, Monroe, & Grewal,
1991); (Wells, Valacich, & Hess, 2011); (Wang & Chang, 2013)).
Marketing literature present many studies that focus on the factors that contribute to
the effectiveness of online advertisements and affect consumer purchasing intention from the
perspective of developing countries (Neha & & Manoj, 2013) (Nochai & Nochai, 2011)
(Mohammed, Ashraf, & Mohammed, 2012). It is fair to conclude that consumers’ purchase
intention can predict what products of brand customer will buy when they do shopping
(Herrera & Flavian, 2006). Moorman ( (Moorman, Deshpande, & Zaltman, 1993), found that
consumer loyal towards a particular products and brands indicates a positive purchase
intention and may result in the probability of actual purchase.
2.2 Social Media and Social Media Marketing
(Safko & D.K. Brake, 2009) define social media as “activities, practices and behavior
among the communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and
opinion using conversational media.” Whereas, social media marketing refers to “the
utilization of social media technologies, channels, and software to create, communicate,

deliver, and exchange offerings that have value for an organization's stakeholders” (Tuten &
Solomon, 2017). Social media marketing is usually used as a one common word to refer to
the use of online application program, platform, or mass media tool to facilitate
communication, collaboration, or sharing information among users in general and direct
sales, customer gain, and customer retaining for a business (Bilgin, 2018) hence it is
considered as one of the successful marketing strategies used by businesses today to generate
digital word of mouth for customers (Karman, 2017).
Recent social media literature finds that social media is a widely adopted marketing
medium in today’s world ( (Kapoor, et al., 2018). In addition to being a medium for
communication with consumers, social media provides an effective marketing medium to
employ relationship marketing opportunities for brands to engage and build long term
relationships with consumers (Kang & Kim, 2017); (Kamboj, Sarmah, Gupta, & Dwivedi,
2018). More and more businesses are promoting products and services, providing instant
support and/or creating a community of consumers of the brand to share information about
the brand and creating awareness within their community of people (Erdogmus & Çiçek,
2012).Social media marketing uses the cultural context of social context, including social
networks (e.g. YouTube, Myspace and Facebook), virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life, There,
and Kuneva), social news sites (e.g. Digg and del.icio.us), and social opinion-sharing sites
(e.g. Eopinions), to meet branding and communication objectives” (Ashley & Tuten, 2015);
(T.L., 2008). In this context, the social media marketing activities are considered as a subset
of online marketing activities including web-based promotion, online advertising campaigns
and etc to coverts consumers into marketers and advertisers and encourage more users within
their own communities or social media networks (Akar & Topçu, 2011). As the social media
marketing is becoming more popular, consumers can follow their favorite brands on social
media to stay informed of the latest products, to receive discounts, to access to special

promotions and to get to know more news regarding the company. When engaged
successfully with the brand, consumers are in contact with brands and products by reading,
writing, watching, commenting, "Liking", sharing, and in many other different ways. Due to
its peculiar nature social media marketing requires special attention and strategy building to
achieve brand image and loyalty, i.e., firms need to focus on building connection instead of
trying to sell. (Bernhardt, Mays, & Hall, 2012).
Marketing literature has a fair share of studies that support the role of social media
marketing in enhancing the impact of promotional activities on consumers’ perception and
awareness of the brand. For instance, Duffett (Duffett, 2015) argues that the efficiency and
effectiveness of social media advertising activities largely depend on how customers could
perceive and formulate their attitudes toward such activities. Similarly, Mir (2012) concluded
that favorable consumer attitude relates to the ads posted on the social media through various
social media platform which contribute to shaping the consumers’ behavior. Moreover,
(Muntinga, Moorman, & & Smit, 2011) suggested that social media based promotional could
lead to reach different marketing goals for companies (i.e., customer experience, perception,
awareness, knowledge, preferences, intention to buy, and actual purchasing). In a recent
study conducted by Mirabi, Akbariyeh, and Tahmasebifard (2015), it is found that factors
such as product quality, brand and advertisement can be the most important factors that
contribute to consumer’s purchase intention. These factors especially social media marketing
activities suggests that firms can use social media marketing as one of the platforms to
generate consumers’ purchase intention. (Chang, Cheung, & Lai, 2005)) discussed the role of
social network marketing on purchase intention and identify more than 80 variables as
antecedents of consumer purchase intention. The growth of social media platform has come
out as one of the factors that has provided consumers’ information relating to their brand and
thus creates and build their preference and choice of purchase. Some of the studies have

shown that there has been a significant positive relationship between the social media
marketing and the consumers’ purchase intentions (Bilal & Shehzad, 2014); (Husnain &
Toor, 2017); (Saher, Ramzan, Faheem, & Rafique., 2016). Hence, it can be hypothesized
that:
H1: Social Media Marketing Mediums have positive significant impact on purchase
intention
2.3 Brand Image
Brand image refers to the consumers’ mental image of the brand (Dobni & Zinkhan,
1990). This includes any meaning that consumer assigns to the specific attributes of the
product and services of the brand. Keller (1993) defines brand image as “the perception about
a brand as reflected by the brand association held in customers’ memory”. (Low & Lamb,
2000)refer to brand as the reasoned or emotional perception consumers attach to certain
product or service of the brand. (Bhat & Reddy, 1998) further divide the brand image into its
functional and symbolic images however, for this study focuses on brand Image as a whole
construct. Brands put in effort to create a strong image in the mind of people so that they can
recognize the given product based on their own perception of its identity. In addition to
creating brand recognition companies also put in strategy in place to create a specific image
or to be looked upon in certain way. In order to do this, brands form all forms of interaction
with the consumers and vise-versa. This brand image can outline how they release a product,
the type of product they released, the type of advertising they do, and the type of customers
they serve (Koubaa, 2007). This suggests that the more efforts put into creating the brand
image, its reputation and attributes in consumers’ mind there are more changes to engage
consumers’ reaction and purchasing behavior (Chowdhury & Andaleeh, 2007). Positive
brand image exceeds customers’ expectations whereas, a negative experience can create a

lasting impact on the consumers’ experience of the brand.(MSG, 2014). So, we can
hypothesize that:
H2: There is a positive and significant relationship between brand image and
purchase intention of customers
2.4 Word of Mouth
Word of mouth WOM is very common and essential promotion tool that deals with
the process of transferring the information and views from one person to another though oral
communication (Godes & Mayzlin, 2009) . WOM is generated when an actual, former or
potential customer gave any negative or positive word or report about a brand or product
(Berger & Scwartz, 2011). (Hennig‐Thurau, 2004) defined Word-of-Mouth as being: “Any
positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about the
product or company which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions”. Word
of mouth has been considered as one of the most effect channel for dissemination of
information. People like to share their experiences and feeling with their colleagues, friends
and family (Dwayne, K., & Gwinner, 2001). Consumers who experience the brand or product
once they like to spread the information and views that guide purchasers towards different
brand and products (Dwayne, K., & Gwinner, 2001). s (Murray, 1991) found out that people
generally have greater trust on WOM from a personal information source and they like to
consider that information in making pre purchase intentions. Several studies show that the
word of mouth has a huge significance in influencing the purchase making decision of a
consumer. Positive word of mouth influences the consumers to get inclined towards a
particular product or service whereas negative word of mouth creates a level of suspicion
among the consumers to purchase a product and keeps them away from certain products.
(Cheema & Kaikati, 2010). Moreover, it is also found that the content of WOM has
significant impact on the customers purchase decision. Since, consumers perceive their

knowledge to be inadequate as compared to other customer they actively seek information
from the existing users of the brand or product (Dwayne, K., & Gwinner, 2001). Hence, it is
hypothesized that:
H3: There is a positive and significant relationship between word of mouth and
purchase intention of customers
2.5 Customers Trust
Consumers’ trust can be defined as “a consumer’s willingness to rely on the brand in
the face of risk because of expectations that the brand will cause positive outcomes” (Lau &
Lee, 1999). While developing the trust in the brand itself, consumers expect that the brand
will consistently meet or exceed the consumer’s expectations which in turns results in a long-
term consumer loyalty Dahlgren (2011). It is important to note that consumer puts in their
trust in the brand and companies nurture that trust by building and maintain the brand trust as
a basis for long-term customer relationship” (Burmann et al., 2009). (Saglam & Saglam,
2016) maintained in their study that both brand trust and brand loyalty have deeper impact
and positive effect on consumers’ buying intentions. Also, they determined that the brand
trust has a positive effect on brand loyalty. Moreover, brand trust has been found as the most
effective factor for smartphones brands in the purchase intensions. Hence, it is hypothesized
that:
H4: There is a positive and significant relationship between Customers Trust and
purchase intention of customers
2.6 Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is the strength of a brand’s presence in consumers’ minds and is an
important component of brand equity (Aaker, 1991). Several level of brand awareness has
been identified in marketing literature ranging from mere recognition of the brand to the

brand dominance in consumers’ lifestyle which refers to the presence of only brand recalled
by a consumer. Hence, brand awareness establishes the ability of the potential buyer to
recognize and recall that a brand is a member of a certain product category” (1991, p. 61).
Brand awareness also recognizes whether the consumers establish an association with
the brand or its image (Padhy and Sawlikar (2018). (Aaker, 1991) suggests that it is due to
the value created by the association of the consumer with the brand that provides the
consumer a reason to make the purchasing decision. The essence of brand awareness is
consumers’ perceived association of the brand image with the product quality (Grewal,
Krishna, Baker, & Borin, 1998). Several studies have shown strong evidence in favor of
linear relationship between brand awareness and product quality whereby higher brand
awareness means a higher perceived product quality ( (Monroe, 1990); (Grewal, Monroe, &
Krishnan, 1998). (Aaker, 1991) mentioned that a brand with high awareness and good image
can promote brand loyalty to the consumers and higher the brand awareness is, the higher the
brand trust and purchase intentions are to the consumers. In another study, (Kamin & Marks,
1991) concluded that consumers typically have higher purchase intentions with a familiar
brand i.e., a well-known brand will have a higher purchase intention than a lesser-known
brand. (Aaker, 1991), (De Mooij & Hofstede, 2002) and (Kwong, Yu, Leung, & Wang, 2009)
also concluded in the similar direction that in order for positive purchase intentions to
develop, the consumers must have a positive feeling to the brand. Hence, we can hypothesize
that:
H5: There is a positive and significant relationship between brand awareness and
purchase intention of customers

Bibliography
Valecha, D. L. (2015, July - September 2015). 3G and 4G impact on Pakistan and Challenges
of Ensure Quality. International Journal of Computer Science and Information
Technology Research, 3(3), 210-232.
Duggan, M., Ellison, N. B., Lampe, C., Lenhart, A., & Madden, M. (2015). Social media
update 2014. Pew Research Center-media.myworshiptimes22.com.
Hussain, N. (2020). The rise of Social Media Marketing. The Business and Finance Weekly
Dawn Newspaper.
Dey, L., Haque, S. M., & Khurdiya, A. S. (2011). Acquiring competitive intelligence from
social media. joint workshop on multilingual OCR and analytics for noisy
unstructured text data (p. 3). ACM.
Keller, K. L., Parameswaran, M. G., & Jacob, I. (2011). Strategic brand management:
Building, measuring, and managing brand equity. Pearson Education India.
Hashimzade, N., Myles, G. D., Page, F., & Rablen, M. D. (2014). Social networks and
occupational choice: The endogenous formation of attitudes and beliefs about tax
compliance. Journal Of Economic Psychology(40), 134–146.
Kozinets, R., De Valck, K., Wojnicki, A., & Wilner, S. (2010). Networked narratives:
understanding wordof-mouth marketing in online communities. Journal of Marketing,
71-89.
Muntinga, D., Moorman, M., & & Smit, E. (2011). Introducing COBRAs: Exploring
motivations for brand-related social media use. International Journal of Advertising,
13-46.
Kim, A., & Ko, E. (2012). Do social media marketing activities enhance customer equity? An
empirical study of luxury fashion brand. Journal of Business Research, 65(10), 1480-
1486.

Barhemmati, N., & Ahmad, A. (2015). Effects of social network marketing (SNM) on
consumer purchase behavior through customer engagement. Journal of Advanced
Management Science,, 307-311.
Nawaz, A., Abbas, G., Javed, M., Mughal, N., & Nabeel, M. (2015). Impact of social media
and voice of customer (voc) in decision making process an empirical study of higher
education institutions of Pakistan. Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, 1069-
1075.
Fournier, S., & Lee, L. (2009). Getting brand communities right. Harvard Business Review,
105-112.
Ngai, E., Taoa, S., & Moon, K. (2015). Social media research: Theories, constructs, and
conceptual frameworks. International Journal of Information Management,, 33-44.
Dessart, L., Veloutsou, C., & Morgan-Thomas, A. (2015). Consumer engagement in online
brand communities: A social media perspective. Journal of Product and Brand
Management, 28-42.
Tuten, T., & Solomon, M. (2017). Social Media Marketing. Sage.
Kapoor, K., Tamilmani, K., Rana, N., Patil, P., Dwivedi, Y., & Nerur, S. (2018). Advances in
social media research: past, present and future. Information Systems Frontiers , 531–
558.
Kang, J.-Y. M., & Kim, J. (2017). Online customer relationship marketing tactics through
social media and perceived customer retention orientation of the green retailer.
Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 1361-2026.
Kamboj, S., Sarmah, B., Gupta, S., & Dwivedi, Y. (2018). Examining branding co-creation in
brand communities on social media: Applying the paradigm of Stimulus-Organism-
Response Author links open overlay panel. International Journal of Information
Management, 169-185.

Bilgin, Y. (2018). The effect of social media marketing activities on brand awareness, brand
image and brand loyalty. Business & Management Studies: An International Journal,,
128-148.
Karman, A. M. (2017). The impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty. Annals of
Applied Sport Science, 73–80.
Safko, L., & D.K. Brake. (2009). The Social Media Bible. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons
Inc.
Erdogmus, I. E., & Çiçek, M. (2012). The impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty.
International Strategic Management Conference (pp. 1353-1360). Turkey: Procedia -
Social and Behavioral Sciences 58.
Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology and
Marketing, 15-27.
T.L., T. (2008). Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0 World. London:
Greenwood Publishing Group.
Akar, E., & Topçu, B. (2011). An examination of the factors influencing consumers’ attitudes
toward social media marketing. Journal of Internet Commerce, 35-67.
Bernhardt, J. M., Mays, D., & Hall, A. K. (2012). Social marketing at the right place and
right time with new media . Journal of Social Marketing, 2042-6763. From
https://mashable.com/2009/09/22/social-media-business/:
https://mashable.com/2009/09/22/social-media-business/
Duffett, R. G. (2015). Facebook advertising’s influence on intention-topurchase and purchase
amongst Millennials. . Internet Research,, 498- 526.

Su., & Huang. (2011). Research on Online Shopping Intention of Undergraduate Consumer
in ChinaBased on the Theory of Planned Behavior. International Business Research,
86-92.
Dodds, W., Monroe, K., & Grewal, D. (1991). Effects of price, brand, and store information
on buyers’ product evaluation. Journal of Marketing Research, 307-319.
Wells, J., Valacich, J., & Hess, T. (2011). What signal are you sending? How website quality
influences perceptions of product quality and purchase intentions. MIS Quarterly,
373-396.
Wang, J., & Chang, C. (2013). How online social ties and productrelated risks influence
purchase intentions: A Facebook experiment. . Electronic Commerce Research and
Applications, 337-346.
Neha, S., & & Manoj, V. (2013). Impact of sales promotion tools on consumer’s purchase
decision towards white good (refrigerator) at Durg and Bhilai Region of CG, India.
Research Journal of Management Sciences, 10-14.
Nochai, R., & Nochai, T. (2011). The influence of sale promotion factors on purchase
decisions: A case study of portable Pcs in Thailand. International Proceedings of
Economics Development and Research, 130-134.
Mohammed, B., Ashraf, & Mohammed, A. (2012). How Do Online Advertisements Affects
Consumer Purchasing Intention: Empirical Evidence from a Developing Country.
European Journal of Business and Management Journal, 208-218.
Herrera, C. F., & Flavian, C. (2006). Intrinsic and extrinsic quality attributes, loyalty and
buying intention: An analysis for a PDO product. British Food Journal , 646-662.
Moorman, C., Deshpande, R., & Zaltman, G. (1993). Factors affecting trust in market
research relationships. Journal of marketing, 57.

Bilal, A., & Shehzad. (2014). Role of social media and social networks in consumer decision
making: A case of the garment sector. International Journal of Multidisciplinary
Sciences and Engineering, 1-9.
Husnain, M., & Toor, A. (2017). The Impact of Social Network Marketing on Consumer
Purchase Intention in Pakistan: Consumer Engagement as a Mediator. Asian Journal
of Business and Accounting, 167-199.
Saher, Ramzan, Faheem, & Rafique. (2016). Influence of Credible Social Media Marketing
on Purchase Intentions of Females of Pakistan for Clothing Brand. International
Journal of business Management, 151.
Chang, M., Cheung, W., & Lai, V. (2005). Literature Derived Reference Models for the
Adoption of Online Shopping. Information and Management, 543-559.
Dobni, D., & Zinkhan, G. (1990). In search of brand image: A foundation analysis. ACR
North American Advances,.
Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand
equity. Journal of marketing, , 1-22.
Low, G., & Lamb, C. (2000). The measurement and dimensionality of brand associations.
Journal of product & brand management,.
Bhat, S., & Reddy, S. (1998). Symbolic and functional positioning of brands. Journal of
consumer marketing.
Grewal, D., Krishna, R., Baker, J., & Borin, N. (1998). The effect of store name, brand name,
and price discount on consumers' evaluation and purchase intentions. Journal of
Retailing, 331-352.
Monroe, K. B. (1990). Pricing: Makign Profitable Decisions. New York: McGraw Hill.

Grewal, D., Monroe, K., & Krishnan, R. (1998). The effect of price comparison advertising
on buyers perception of acquisitoin value, transaction value and behavioral intention.
Journal of Marketing, 46-59.
Kamin, M., & Marks, L. J. (1991). The perception of Kosher as third part certification claim
in advertising for familiar and unfamiliar brands. Journal of Academy of Marketing
Science, 177-185.
Aaker, J. (1991). he negative attraction effect? A study of the attraction effect under
judgment and choice. CR North American Advances.
De Mooij, M., & Hofstede, G. (2002). Convergence and divergence in consumer behavior:
implications for international retailing. Journal of retailing, 61-69.
Kwong, K. K., Yu, W. Y., Leung, J. W., & Wang, K. (2009). Attitude toward counterfeits
and ethnic groups: Comparing Chinese and Western consumers purchasing
counterfeits. Journal of Euromarketing, , 157-168.
Lau, G. T., & Lee, S. H. (1999). Consumers' trust in a brand and the link to brand loyalty.
ournal of Market-Focused Management, 341-370.
Saglam, B. C., & Saglam, M. (2016). The Effect of Brand Trust and Brand Loyalty on
Consumer Purchase Intention: The Study in The Smartphone Market,. International
Journal of Research in Business and Social Science, 34-43.
Murray, K. (1991). A test of services marketing theory: consumer information acquisition
activities. Journal of Marketing, 10-25.
Godes, D., & Mayzlin, D. (2009). Firm-Created Word-of-Mouth Communication: Evidence
from a Field Test. Marketing Science, 721–739.
Berger, J., & Scwartz, M. (2011). What Drives Immediate and Ongoing Word of Mouth?
Journal of Marketing Research, 869-880.

Hennig‐Thurau, T. (2004). Customer orientation of service employees: Its impact on
customer satisfaction, commitment, and retention. International journal of service
industry management.
Cheema, A., & Kaikati, A. M. (2010). The Effect of Need for Uniqueness on Word of Mouth.
Journal of Marketing Research,, 553–563.
Dwayne, D., K., P. G., & Gwinner, S. (2001). Generating positive word-of-mouth
communication through customer-employee relationships. International Journal of
Service and Management,, 44-59.