The Nexuses Between Social Media Marketing Activities and Consumers' Engagement Behaviour: A Two-Wave Time-Lagged Study

Yunfeng Shang; Hina Rehman; Khalid Mehmood; Aidi Xu; Yaser Iftikhar; Yifei Wang; Ridhima Sharma

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.811282

The Nexuses Between Social Media Marketing Activities and Consumers' Engagement Behaviour: A Two-Wave Time-Lagged Study

Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 20:13:811282. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.811282. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Yunfeng Shang¹, Hina Rehman², Khalid Mehmood³, Aidi Xu⁴, Yaser Iftikhar⁵, Yifei Wang⁶, Ridhima Sharma⁷

Affiliations

¹ School of Hospitality, Zhejiang Yuexiu University, Shaoxing, China.
² Faculty of Management Sciences, National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad, Pakistan.
³ Key Research Base Project of Humanities and Social Sciences of Universities in Hubei Province, Research Center of Hubei Micro and Small Enterprises Development, School of Economics and Management, Hubei Engineering University, Xiaogan, China.
⁴ School of International Business, Zhejiang Yuexiu University, Shaoxing, China.
⁵ Armed Forces Post Graduate Medical Institute (AFPGMI), National University of Medical Sciences (NUMS), Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
⁶ School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
⁷ Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, New Delhi, India.

Abstract

This study examined how social media marketing activities (SMMA) influence consumers' engagement behaviour in developing countries. Based on the stimulus-organism-response theory, we examined the effect of SMMA on consumers' engagement intention and further investigated the moderating effect of social media sales intensity. The study employed a time-lagged design with two waves to confirm the hypothesised framework. The study findings showed that SMMA positively influence consumers' engagement intention and engagement behaviour. In addition, social media sales intensity strengthens the link between engagement intention and engagement behaviour. This study adds to the literature on social media and discusses its practical implications.

Keywords: engagement behaviour; engagement intention; perceived social media marketing activities; social media sales intensity; stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework.