The impact of perceived social media marketing activities on brand equity and purchase intentions: An investigation regarding consumers' attachment to social media and social media usage frequency

Although there is research regarding the impact of social media marketing activities on brand equity and purchase intentions in the literature, scant information is available about attachment to social media which is a concept that may influence social media marketing activities. Furthermore, considering the positive effect of social media marketing activities on brand equity and purchase intentions, social media usage frequency may have a moderating effect which is also insufficiently studied in the literature. Consequently, the main aims of this thesis are: (1) to investigate the positive impact of attachment to social media on social media marketing activities and (2) to investigate the negative moderating effect of social media usage frequency in the context of the positive effect of social media marketing activities on brand equity and purchase intentions. Data is collected from college students studying in Antalya and two important brands are selected from technology industry regarding the context of the research. The research is conducted on 907 useable consumer level data. The hypotheses are tested with structural equation modeling. The result of the study indicates that consumers' attachment to social media positively affects perceived social media marketing activities. Another important result is that regarding the positive effect of social media marketing activities on brand equity and purchase intentions, social media usage frequency has a negative moderating effect. The results of the research provides significant contributions to the literature and business by enlightening the attachment to social media and social media usage frequency concepts with respect to the conceptual relationships of social media marketing activities, brand equity and purchase intentions and guiding marketers in the context of creating more effective and efficient marketing strategies through considering the relationships between the related concepts.