The social media effect on Brand and consumer relationship theory’s

In recent years the businesses have embraced social media wholeheartedly, using it as

an important tool for collaborating and engaging with the customers. Limitless data is

exploited by the marketers produced by social media in order to create an insightful picture of

clients faster and through networking generate genuine and long-lasting loyalty. According to

Sashi (2012) the social media power continues construct unabated and it has stimulated

marketers with its ability to improve customer satisfaction and service, to drive meaningful

communications between companies and consumers, and also to get client engaged in

creating value and in generating content proactively (Sashi, 2012). According to Jeoan and

Kim (2016) so many features of our routine life has been affected by the constant

inaugurations of media platforms and exponential growth of the Internet (Jeon and Kim,

2012). According to Crittenden, Rohm & Hanna (2011) social media’s unique aspects and its

immense fame have transformed the marketing practices, for example, promotion and

advertising (Crittenden, Rohm & Hanna, 2011).

Customer behaviour has been influenced by social media from information attainment

to the post-buying behaviour, for example dissatisfaction behaviour or statements and

Internet usage patterns (Laroche et al., 2012). According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010)

social media can be descrbied as an internet-based application group that creates the

technological and ideological Web 2.0 foundation, and moreover it enables the exchange and

creation of the content that is user generated (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p.61). It was stated

by Ko and Kim (2010) that social media could change reputations of brand. They identified

that a large percentage of survey people commented on brand’s blog products looked in

favour of brands, which had blogs. It was found by DEI Worldwide (2008) that forty five

percent of people seeking information through sites of social media were word-to-mouth

active communicators; sixty percent revealed that they will use sites of social media to give
information of brand performance and product to other customers; and seventy percent of

people used the sites of social media to gain knowledge and moreover this knowledge

contributed to the decision of eventual purchase in forty nine percent of situations. The

platform of social media is interactive inherently, and it offers extensive chances for brands

and customers to form links, whether by facilitating the idea’s exchange, providing a

discourse space, or delivering consumer assistance. According to Muntinga (2011) social

interaction can be defined as when customers participate on the social media of brands to

fulfill the same users with the objective of discussing specific products. According to

Daugherty (2008) these types of social interactions encourages the consumer-generated

content creation. According to Aaker (1996) the marketing strategies’ routine execution and

the marketing mix strategies’ implementation is taken into account by customers to present a

brand’s behaviour. Brands consequently could alter their nature in consumer’s mind from

being passive merely to a more engaged and active partner.

According to Hudson (2015) when this happens, the brand is considered by

consumers as their extensions and therefore considerably its significance grows in their lives

(Hudson et al. 2015). Marketers have transformed their marketing visions, emphasizing on

maintaining and building a needed brand and consumer relationship through social media

interaction to leverage the engagement and interactive social media dimensions. In spite of

the importance of relationship forming in digital world and branding, very little is understood

about how consumer relationships is related to the social media with brands, and moreover

whether brand relationships based on social media is related to the desired results, for

example, customer recommendations and satisfaction. Avery and Fournier (2011) warned

brands to become aware of the involvement of social media because the brands may be social

media’s uninvited crashers, implying that creating relationships of brand by social media

platform is complicated than encouraging simply more interactions. Particularly global

brands are puzzled by these questions that are suffering from multi-cultural clients. However,

in both consumer markets and in business, building brand and customer relationship needs

marketing mix adaptation to take benefit of new tools and technologies to serve and

understand customers better. According to Thackeray (2008) the opportunity is provided by

social media to connect with consumers using better-of social media with higher reach

(Thackeray, et al. 2008). In activities of social media the increase related to the consumer and

brand interactions is influencing progressively the way in which customers and brands

communicate.

According to Singh (2013) one cause for the constant social media’s effect on strategy

of brand is that during the era of internet individuals born and developed have been socialized

in order to trust and rely on online communications as compared to the offline sources.

Managers and researchers should identify the customers, even younger customers, remain

engaged and connected with brand across several other platforms of communication, whereas

this focus to the social media is necessary. According to Mariani and Samodra (2014) this is

applicable particularly to Millennial those people born and raised in era of internet and whose

attitudes and behaviours on social media platform, including their brand preferences and

evaluations, are influenced by peer(Mariani and Samodra, 2014). According to Haenlein and

Kaplan (2010) the social media has several benefits because it is useful in connection

customers to businesses, build relationships and also foster those links at low cost and in

timely manner. According to Armstrong and Hagel (1997) other social media’s functions

involve influencing and affecting end behaviour, attitudes, and perceptions, while bringing

together similar nature people (Armstrong and Hagel, 1997). It was pointed by Laroche

(2012) that in an online atmosphere people like the concept of joining, creating, and

contributing to meet the needs of being socially connected, belongingness, and simply

enjoying or recognized interactions with other similar nature people. The much higher
efficiency level of social media as compared to the other traditional channels of

communication promoted leaders of industry to state that organisations should participate in

YouTube, Facebook to succeed in online communication era (Haenlein & Kaplan,

2010).Therefore according to Williams (2008) more industries attempt to take advantage

from social media platform as they could be used to forms strategy, follow other’s directions

or accept their responsibilities in managing strategy of others (Williams, 2008). For

companies social media platform provide chance to interact and engage with current and

potential customers, to build significant meaningful links with customers, and to encourage

sense of confidence of client relationship, specifically in business environment of today when

loyalty of customer could vanish at smallest mistakes that additionally could have online

propagation additionally of their unsuccessful encounter with any specific company, brand,

service, or product. This research pursues to investigate more about brand-customer

relationships on platforms of social media by discovering the theoretical foundations that

drive development of relationship and value they give to the firms.

The theory of Par Social Interaction (PSI) is helpful in explaining the success of brand

in producing strong links with clients by social media platforms and it also provides

understanding on how to save feelings of intimate relationship in light of growing movement

towards the automation of response. Two message components, which transfer from

conventional environment of PSI to the social media platform, openness in communication,

and perceived interactivity by using this theoretical perspective, are examined. This research

similar to a real-life association, proposes that PSI could cause positive relationship results,

especially willingness to share information and increased loyalty intentions. It was suggested

by Stever (2011) that “the par asocial interaction model” could be implemented to describe

the associations that vlog-viewing customers establish with influencers of vlogger, whereby

emotional attachment changes in much the similar way as when relationships that are face to
face are prompted. According to Powell, Perse, and Rubin (1985) vlog viewers reflect their

vlogging equivalent as a trustworthy and reliable source of information and opinion when

such relationships strengthen and develop (Powell, Perse, & Rubin, 1985). Moreover, it was

indicated by multiple studies that this type of emotional interactions could alter effectively

the brand attributes and product perception and therefore go on to alter the behavioral

intentions. According to McCain and McCroskey (1974) social attractiveness referred as

likability of media person (Frederick et al., 2012). The brand relationship quality concept was

proposed firstly by Fournier (1998) in order to measure the durability, stability, and strength

of this important consumer-brand relationship. Since it has been used widely by the

marketers, it has appealed interest from academics too (Smit, 2007). According to Sirgy

(2008) self-congruity theory associates a perception of consumer of any specific brand to the

real functional value, which is derived from that specific brand and also its symbolic

intangible meaning (Sirgy, 2008). According to Wang (2015) this match between brand and

customer emerges from image congruity, however regularly people select brands and

products that are relevant directly to their own perception and which usually symbolise any

particular identity.
You tube and vlog impact on consumers

According to Turner (1993) celebrities of vlog who are responsive and

communicative on social media platform produce an impression to the users of media that

they act as they were in peer’s circles (Wohl and Horton, 1956, p.215). If user of media have

some resemblance with person of media and thus also like her or him then it is likely to

develop PSI between them (Turner, 1993; McHugh and Rubin, 1987; Rubin and Perse, 1989;

Watkins and Lee, 2016; Rubin and Eyal, 2003; Martin and Ballantine, 2005). According to

Frederick (2012) in social media context, attitude homophily is used to forecast PSI between

Twitter followers and famous athletes and between followers and luxury brand vloggers on

YouTube(Frederick et al., 2012).

Relationship-building Objective: Media is used by people not for just entertainment but to

fulfill their relationship needs (Pentina and Zhang, 2012; Rubin et al., 1985; Miller and

Madianou, 2013). According to Yuan (2016) social media platform is a useful tool for people

to stay connected with other people and also to maintain durable associations (Yuan et al.,

2016). According to Step and Rubin (2000) as aims direct attention, individuals who are

motivated more to develop links with vloggers incline to pay more focus to the cues about

their associations. According to Wohl and Horton (1956), motive of relationship-building is

associated positively with PSI.

Spent time on social media: According to Wohl and Horton (1956), PSI grows in ways,

which are same to how friendship establishes (Horton and Wohl, 1956). According to Rubin

(1985) just as interpersonal links develop over time, also it takes time for the PSI to establish

(Rubin, 1985). According to Cho and Chung (2017), when users of media are exposed to the

personal information of media persons for long time, then they feel intimate with and familiar

with the personas that facilitates the PSI development (Cho and Chung, 2017). According to
Frederick (2012) PSI could be forecasted by spent time on both social media and traditional

media (Frederick et al., 2012).