Title: Building customer engagement and brand loyalty through online social media: an exploratory study

Authors: Sombala Ningthoujam; Reshmi Manna; Vikas Gautam; Sandeep Chauhan

Addresses: Department of HR and OB, New Delhi Institute of Management, 60 & 50 (B&C), Tughlakabad Institutional Area, Behind Batra Hospital, New Delhi, Delhi 110062, India ' NTPC School of Business (NSB), B-1-C, Amaltash Marg, B Block, Sector 10, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India ' Department of Marketing and Strategy, ICFAI Business School Hyderabad (Deemed-to-be University), Donthanapalli, Shankerpally Road, Hyderabad, Telangana, 501203, India ' New Delhi Institute of Management, 60 & 50 (B&C), Tughlakabad Institutional Area, Behind Batra Hospital, New Delhi, Delhi, 110062, India

Abstract: Building and sustaining brand loyalty are one of the fundamental subjects of research for strategists and marketers for ages. Online social media has come in forefront to support it in recent times. The objective of the current study was to examine the relationships among online social media, customer engagement and brand loyalty. The study model was estimated by using higher order structural equation modelling with IBS AMOS 21.0. The results of our study demonstrated that online social media is an important predictor of customer engagement and has significant direct impact on customer engagement. Further results confirmed direct impact of customer engagement on brand loyalty. We also found significant difference across the level of customer engagement with reference to gender. This study concluded that the use of Facebook as online social media to connect and engage with customers leads to building brand loyalty. The primary data comprised of 167 respondents.

Keywords: customer engagement; Facebook; online social media; brand loyalty.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEMR.2020.106846

International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 2020 Vol.11 No.2, pp.143 - 160

Received: 17 Mar 2018
Accepted: 27 Aug 2018
Published online: 23 Apr 2020 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article