Impact of Social Media Marketing on Brand Loyalty in Lifestyle Category Products: Mediating Role of Customer Experience

Abstract

The social media marketing has emerged as one of the most powerful tools to enhance brand equity of the lifestyle products. Marketers are continuously exploring the new and innovative means of attracting customers toward their products by studying their preferences, convincing them for the purchase of lifestyle products. The present study examines the impact of social media marketing for improving the brand loyalty and assesses the mediating effect of customer experience on social media marketing and brand loyalty relationship for lifestyle products in the Indian context. In a survey of 259 respondents chosen at random, study reveals that social media marketing influences the brand loyalty and customer experience towards lifestyle products. Study further indicates that customer experience mediates the relationship between social media marketing and brand loyalty of lifestyle products. These findings indicate that lifestyle product marketing organizations should concentrate more on effective utilization of the social media platforms for brand positioning, facilitating information sharing, customer engagement, and develop meaningful customer relationship, which in turn has a tendency for business growth and sustainability. The effective social media marketing activities and memorable customer experiences will help company to face the competition successfully and cement the customers’ relationships with the brand and the company in general. Some of the limitations and scope of future research is also presented in the study.