Examining The Mediating Effect of Brand Trust on Social Media Marketing and Electronic Word of Mouth

Abstract

Social media has been considered as one of the most popular medium of communication which connects a brand with customers. The availability of the internet and technology easily conveys the user's experience with a brand or a service through electronic word of mouth. The main purpose of the study is to understand the power of social media marketing activities on e-Word of mouth, with brand trust as a mediating factor. In order to study this, the following objectives were formulated by the researcher: To examine the effect of social media marketing activities on brand trust and also to investigate the association among social media marketing activities (entertainment, customization, interaction, trendiness), brand trust, and e-word of mouth. Finally, to find out the mediating role of brand trust between social media marketing activities and e-word of mouth, The target audience for this research is social media users, and based on convenience sampling using a structured questionnaire, data was collected from 390 respondents. IBM SPSS Statistics 20 was used for data analysis. Descriptive analysis, bivariate analysis, and Multivariate analysis were performed. There is a significant difference among age groups in the number of years of social media users with regard to the factors of brand trust. There is a positive correlation between all variables used in the study. Brand trust shows a good mediating role for Social Media Marketing activities and e-Word of Mouth. The researcher used four social media marketing activities to study the impact and mediating effect on brand trust and e-commerce. However, the research could be extended by using other social media marketing activities for brand enhancement.