The Impact of Social Media Marketing on Customer Loyalty

Abstract: Background: To date, there have been several studies conducted on how social media marketing affects customer loyalty. However, they have been narrowed down to specific areas, such as luxury fashion, the airplane industry, and so on. Therefore, there is a literature gap on how social media marketing affects customer loyalty in general. This research seeks to fill that gap though investigating how certain characteristics of social media marketing activities affect customer loyalty in general. Purpose:  The purpose of this paper is to describe the effects social media marketing has on customer loyalty. Methodology:  This research will be conducted by gathering quantitative data through a cross-sectional research design. A survey was performed based on the theoretical concepts in the theoretical framework, which seeks to test the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable. An operationalization was created to showcase the theoretical grounds for each question, where each question is bound to a concept/variable. Students in ages 18-30 were used to define the sample population for this research. Conclusion: The purpose of this paper was to describe the effects social media marketing has on customer loyalty. Due to H1 and H2 being approved, and H3 and H4 being rejected, this paper provides evidence that there is a significant positive impact of the SMMA characteristics of entertainment and interaction on customer loyalty. It was also established that there were two SMMA characteristics that did not have a significant positive relationship with customer loyalty; trendiness and customization.