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Research Article Review: The Impact of Social Media Marketing on Brand Loyalty

            This paper presents a review of the article, The impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty by Erdoğmuş and Cicek (2012). The article aims at identifying the impact of social media marketing on consumer brand loyalty with the scope of the research comprising customers in Turkey who follow at least one brand on any of the social media platforms.

Summary of the Core Concepts and Conclusions

            Developing and maintaining brand loyalty has remained an essential objective for marketers for a long time. It is considered as the last element of consumer brand resonance signifying consumers’ level of identification and ultimate relationship with a brand. As a brand gains prominent and positive implications on a community of consumers, it becomes irreplaceable and irresistible, thus winning the consumers’ loyalty. Brand loyalty, in return, generates revenue, profitability and market share to the business, enabling it to compete and expand its operations in the marketplace effectively. Previously, marketers have used various means to build and maintain customer brand loyalty including classical marketing mix variable (Erdoğmuş & Cicek, 2012). Currently, marketers use social media and internet marketing to build brand loyalty. According to the authors of the article, social media marketing refers to the process that allows businesses to promote their services, products or websites through online social networks to reach a broader audience. This type of marketing reaches many people than traditional marketing channels making it vital in consumer brand building.

            According to Erdoğmuş and Cicek (2012), social media are practices among groups of people who interact online by sharing opinions, information and knowledge using conversational media. They are tools used for communication by communities of people online. Social media marketing offers businesses better ways to communicate with their customers to develop brand loyalty effectively. For instance, research by Info-graphics indicates that at least half of Facebook and Twitter users agree that they are more likely to purchase, talk about or recommend a firm’s products or service offerings after engaging with the firm on social media. Through social media, companies can promote services and products, offer instant support to customers and develop a community of online brand ambassadors. Furthermore, social media allows consumers to share information with their friends and family about the service and product brands. Such conversations provide businesses a cost-effective way to boost brand recognition and awareness thus increasing brand loyalty among consumers. This implies that social media enables companies to develop brand loyalty through community building, conversation, and networking.             

            Effective social media marketing requires a solid social media strategy to achieve brand image and loyalty. Unlike traditional methods, social media marketing involves relationship marketing where a business should change from ‘trying to sell to’ to developing connections with the customers (Erdoğmuş & Cicek, 2012). This involves sincere communication with the customers and being available to address their concerns at all times in all social media platforms.     

Research Conclusions

The research aims at determining and understanding the impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty creation from the consumers’ perspective. The results of the study are discussed below.

            Firstly, the result shows that advantageous campaigns on social media positively impact consumer brand loyalty. Businesses seeking to run effective marketing campaigns on social media must consider factors that attract customer loyalty and offer benefits, advantages, and value to customers.

            Secondly, consumer brand loyalty is also positively impacted by various platforms and applications the brand offers on social media. Consumers are always looking for variety and different ways of engaging with the brands on social media. Thus businesses must develop a variety of content and share them in deferent platforms to attract the interest of the consumers.

            Again, consumer brand loyalty is impacted by the relevance of the marketing content shared on social media platforms. Customers interest and preference changes with time; thus business should continuously update their marketing content based on the customers’ interest and current perspectives.

            Lastly, customer brand loyalty is affected by the type of marketing content a company shares online with its customers and potential customers.       

Critical Analysis

            The points discussed in the article concerning social media marketing and its impacts on consumer brand loyalty are valid. The valid fast point outlined by Erdoğmuş and Cicek (2012) is the difference between social media marketing and other traditional marketing methods in regards to building and maintaining brand loyalty. Telemarketing or print advertising which only geared towards making sales, social media marketing heavily involves building a relationship with the customers. Social media marketing strategy works effectively in building and maintaining consumer loyalty when there is a positive connection between the brand and the consumers. Similarly, it also allows customers to interact with companies and promote their product and service offering thus reducing costs incurred on creating brand awareness. Traditional methods on the other hand limits this interaction making it costly to promote brands.

            The argument that the brand loyalty of consumers is positively affected by advantageous social media marketing campaigns is also compelling. The theory of consumer behavior validates this point. The model of consumer behavior states that consumers always seem to use their limited resources to maximize their utility and satisfaction while reducing their opportunity cost (Solomon, Russell-Bennett, & Previte, 2012). This implies that consumers will react positively to social media marketing campaigns that offer value and specific advantages to them. For example, businesses that incorporate offers in their marketing efforts are more likely to attract and maintain loyalty from their customers.

            Again, brand loyalty of the customers depends on the different social media platforms affirm uses for its market activities. Currently, there are about 2.23 billion Facebook, 1.9 billion YouTube and 1 billion Instagram monthly users. A company must create a variety of marketing content and effectively exploit all of the available channels to reach a broader audience. Also, the material used in these channels must be relevant and exciting to create the required response from the consumers.

            Marketers can use the information revealed by the research to build and maintain brand loyalty from customers using social media marketing. Effective social media starts by creating a solid strategy. The strategy must consider all the factors that attract customer loyalty and offer benefits, advantages, and value to customers. When the characteristics and content of the marketing offers by a brand on social media capture the minds and hearts of consumers, brand loyalty follows. Marketers must ensure that these contents and characteristics are relevant, add value and are available in every social media platform.                 

            Even though the arguments presented in the article are valid, the authors failed to highlight any negative impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty. Social media marketing can also affect consumer brand loyalty negatively especially when the marketing content is inaccurate or offensive to a section of the target market. For example, the Italian fashion brand Gucci earlier this year was forced to drop its controversial jumper sale after criticism from customers on social media (Young, 2019). Such occurrences damage consumer loyalty and should have been identified in the article.