THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING ON CUSTOMER

LOYALTY AMONGST UNIVERSITY STUDENTS.

ABSTRACT

Today, Social Media Marketing is among the best opportunities available for
marketers to connect with their potential customers. Global companies use
Social Media Marketing platforms to power their advertising campaign. Social
Media Marketing provides businesses stronger grounds to build customer
loyalty. The purpose of this research is to study the effect of Social Media
Marketing on Customer Loyalty among University students. This research is
based on the evidence from the Fashion Industry, as today Fashion Industry is
considered as a high value-added business with guaranteed high profit per unit
with loyal customers. The age group of University students from 18 to
26 years old plays a major role for marketers as they are the biggest users of
Social Media. Therefore, analyzing University students' loyalty towards social
media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube is important for
marketers to take into consideration in improving their marketing strategies.
The findings from the Pearson Correlation test showed that there is a significant
and positive relationship between independent variables i.e. Facebook,
Instagram, YouTube and dependent variable Customer Loyalty.

Keywords: customer loyalty, universality students, social media marketing and

social platforms.

INTRODUCTION

In the time of digitization, the significance of Social media marketing has

grown with different types and sizes of organizations following digital
marketing strategies globally
(Baltes, 2015). Social media is unique as it enables companies to build
relationships with
new and existing customers (Senders et al.,2013;Maddox, 2015). Social Media
usage is seen to be increasingly being used by Generation Y “Boomerang Kids”
(Balakrishnan et al.,2014). In the present world, everyone is associated with
each other in this vast network produced by the Internet. As said by Marshall
McLuhan, a philosopher of communication theory, “The new electronic
freedom re-makes the world in the
picture of a global village”. It lights up the lives of thousands of individuals by
spreading
information universally, making us global citizens (Technician, 2019). To
analyze the
 people spending time on social media platforms a survey conducted by Pew
Research Centre showed that 72% of high school students and 78% of college
students spend time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, indicating how much the
student community is interested in the virtual world of social networking
(Technician, 2019).
Today social media trends are increasing day by day among university students
as many students rely on social media for interactions and communication.
Social media connects everyone in a collaborative manner such as internet
forums, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, and video clips (Sajid et al, 2016). The
majority of users of social media are Youngsters, and they are considered as the
main target market for Social media (Hussain et al., 2012). This study aims at
determining the effect of social media marketing on customer loyalty amongst
university students, has a short product life cycle, huge product variety, volatile
and unpredictable demand and is today considered as a high value-added
business with guaranteed high profit per unit with loyal customers
(Kim et al, 2010).
Nowadays, the use of social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook is
evaluated as abusiness take-off tool as it has increased to almost all the luxury
fashion brands. This study emphasizes marketing on social media platforms
such as Instagram, Facebook and YouTube and how it leads to customer loyalty
amongst university students.

Customer Loyalty
The commitment by customers to repurchase a firm‟s product or service despite
competitors' efforts to lure them away is considered as Customer Loyalty
(Bilgin et al.,2018). Loyal customers have a positive approach to the company
and tend to repurchase products or services along with spreading positive
reviews to others. (Bowen et al.,2001). Customer Loyalty is measured in three
ways, behavioural measurements, attitudinal measurement, and composite
measurement. The repetition of purchase is considered as Behavioural Loyalty.
Customers under this category purchase more and are low price sensitive.
Attitudinal measurement reflects emotions and psychological attachment with
the brand that result in repeat purchase. Customers under this category have a
positive word of mouth about the brand, they recommend the brand to others
and encourage others to make a purchase. (Bilgin et al.,2018). The third
approach is composite measurement of loyalty which is also known as two-
dimensional composite measurement. It‟s a combination of behavioural and
attitudinal measurement. It measures customer‟s loyalty by their product
preferences, propensity of brand-switching, frequency of purchase, recency of
purchase and total amount of purchase (Jacoby et al., 1973).
Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg, graduate of Harvard University in 2004 created a social
networking service known as Facebook. Today, Facebook is
the biggest social network worldwide. In quarter of 2019, Facebook had more
than 2.5 billion active users and a total of 2.89 billion users using
the company's core product on a monthly basis such as Facebook, WhatsApp,
Instagram, and Messenger (Statista, 2020). Based on a research
in 2016, 90% of consumers spend their time on mobile apps and Facebook is
the most downloaded platform (Statista, 2020). Facebook
enables brands to build a direct relation with
their customers, while marketers emphasize on generating Facebook customers.
Facebook encourages new business set ups where advertisement on Facebook is
cheaper compared to advertising on Google and YouTube
(Dudharejia et al.,2017). Businesses can use Live to provide a behind the scene
experience to their customers, show them previews of the new products or
updates and promote their events online and this helpsbusinesses to get instant
feedback from their customers (Dudharejia et al.,2017).

Instagram
Instagram is considered as one of the largest social media platforms. Instagram
was launched on 6th October 2010, after two months of its
launch from a handful of users it was successful in targeting over a million
users and within a span of a week it soon became number one
photography app with 10,000 users (Eudaimonia2017). Based on research,
among all social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat,
Twitter, Instagram has the highest respondent base and people prefer to use
Instagram over other social platforms as they consider
Instagram as informative, cool, enjoyable,popular and creative (Eudaimonia
2017). Based on research conducted, Instagram has over 117.1 million monthly
active users and the average time that users spend is 45 minutes per
visit (Exchange4media, 2019). Instagram is a form of communication where
users share their updates by posting pictures and videos while
making them look attractive (Hu, et al.,2014).

YouTube
The purpose of YouTube was to create a social platform where people can
easily create and share short videos online. On a daily basis
YouTube has 2 billion views, while 51 % of viewers visit YouTube websites
weekly, 52% of 18–34 years age groups often share videos
posted on YouTube with other people(Terantino, et al., 2011). YouTube serves
as a medium to attract a niche market for marketers
 to promote their product and services. They useYouTube influencers to help
them increase theirsales. From 2012, YouTube has become powerful and it is
now a multi-billion dollar company. Inthe coming years, it is predicted that half
of the under 30s age group will not use Television subscription because of
YouTube (Engadget,2016). YouTube has introduced live streaming and each day
around 5 billion videos arewatched. The videos categorized asEntertainment
music, people and blogs have the highest shares of views (Statista, 2020).
YouTube has been watched by 1.3 billion people and in every minute 500 hours
of videos are uploaded (Engadget, 2016). Today YouTube is considered
as the biggest online video platform with 1.68 billion users in 2019.

PROBLEM STATEMENT:
There weren’t much past academic research to relate to and refer to in context
of the student regarding social media marketing’s impact on customer loyalty
amongst the university students . The one paper found, focused on the impact of
social media marketing on the customer oyalty of university students.
That study of Hossain & Sakib (2016), found if a brand provides relevant
contents to their brand it has the highest impact on the customer loyalty of
the university students. Furthermore, social media contents that are used for
marketing purpose when beneficial and popular also effects
students’ Customer loyalty.
Therefore, the challenge that marketers face over here is, ensuring that their
efforts for a successful social media marketing consisted
of contents as per university students liking in order to gain their customers
loyalty.
Due to lack of reliable data on this topic, this study was carried
forward by accumulating as much relevant information as possible to provide a
comprehensive analysis on this issue.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES:
The research objective are as follows;
1. Marketing on Facebook leads to customer loyalty amongst university
students.
2. Marketing on Instagram leads to customer loyalty amongst university
students.
 3. Marketing on YouTube leads to customer loyalty amongst university
student.
4. Analyze the overall impact of social media which affects the customers
loyalty amongst university students.
5. Analyze the role of social media marketing on customer loyalty.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
The research questions of the research are;

1. Does marketing on Facebook leads to customer loyalty amongst

university students?
2. Does marketing on Instagram leads to customer loyalty amongst
university student?
3. Does marketing on YouTube leads to customer loyalty amongst
university students?
4. Do rewards and promotional campaign hold a significant role in customer
loyalty?
5. Does customer service affect customer’s loyalty towards a brand?

RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS:
The following hypothesis is created below;

H1:There is a positive relationship between Facebook and customer loyalty

among university students.

H2:There is a positive relationship between Instagram and customer loyalty

among university students.

H3:There is a positive relationship between YouTube and Customer loyalty

among university students.

CONCLUSION:
The result indicates that if content of social media marketing are relevant to the
brand, then they have the highest impact on the university students.
In addition, beneficial and the popular content in social media marketing also
influences the students brand loyalty.
REFERENCE

1. Algesheimer, R., Dholakia, U.M. and Herrmann, A. (2005), “The social

influence of Brand community: evidence from European car clubs”,
Journal of Marketing, Vol. 69 No. 3, pp. 19-34.

2. Bradshaw, T., & Garrahan, M. (2008). “Rival forecast to catch YouTube”.

Financial Times. http://us. ft. com/ft gateway/super page. ft.

3. Brown, R. (2009). Public Relations and the Social Web: How to Use
Social Media and Web 2.0 in Communications. New Jersey: Kogan Page
Publishers.

4. Bowen, J. T., & Chen, S. L. (2001). The relationship between customer

loyalty and customer satisfaction. International journal of contemporary
hospitality management.

5. Byrne, B.M. (2013), Structural Equation Modelling with AMOS: Basic

Concepts, Applications, and Programming, Routledge, New York, NY.

6. Casalo, L. V., Flavian, C. and Ibanez-Sanchez, S., 2018. Influencers on

Instagram: Antecedents and consequences of opinion leadership. Journal
of Business Research. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.07.005

7. Chen, H., 2018. College-aged young consumers' perceptions of social

media marketing: The story of Instagram. Journal of Current Issues &
Research in Advertising, 39(1), pp.22-36.

8. Coon, M. (2010), Social Media Marketing: Successful Case Studies of

Businesses Using Facebook and YouTube With An In- Depth Look in the
Business Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,148, pp.177-185.

9. Bijmolt, T. H. A., Claassen, W., & Brus, B. (1998). Children are

Understanding of TV Advertising: Effect of Age, Gender, and Parental
Influence. Journal of Consumer Policy, 21, 171-194.

10.Gamboa, A.M. and Gonçalves, H.M., 2014. Customer loyalty through

social networks: Lessons from Zara on Facebook. Business horizons,
57(6), pp.709-717.
TABLE OF CONTENTS: PAGES

1. Introduction…………………………………………………. 1
 Customer loyalty.
 Facebook.
 Instagram.
 YouTube.

2. Problem statement……………………………………………2

3. Research objectives ………………………………………….3

4. Research questions……………………………………………4

5. Conclusion ……………………………………………………5

6. Reference ……………………………………………………..6