The impact of social media on consumers do age and gender moderate the effect of social media on trust

ISB-MBUS INFORMATION FORM
1. Name: Nguyễn Thị Đoan Thanh
2. Date of Birth: 30-Aug-1988

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3. Course year: MBUS 7.1
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0908700476

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6. Home address: 276/105/23 Thong Nhat, Ward 16, Go Vap, Ho Chi Minh
7. Occupation: Sales Manager

Position:

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9. Office location: Lot 1Pa4, Binh An Textile & Garment Industrial Zone, Binh Thang Ward,
Di An District, Binh Duong Province
10.

How have I changed after two years studying at ISB?

ISB provides me chance to study relevant issues and intelligent insight on business trends,
issues and the economy from a larger perspective. Programs are designed to utilize case
studies from a variety of sectors: human resource, supply chain, finance from Vietnam to
some well-known multinational companies to solidify business knowledge. More than that, I
have very good friendship with my teammates. Our group of 4 people looks like a family,
we support and share the good and bad times in life.
11. What I want to share with the juniors is:

Don’t try to meet traditional expectations of what your career and lives ought to look like
after graduation. You shouldn’t think that your MBA like an obligation but you should
consider this is wonderful opportunity to develop yourself and expand your network.
Moreover, you should seize chances to study how people resolve their problems as well as
what you learn from every subject then apply these valuable lessons to your daily work.
.Last but certainly not least, remember to expand and connect your instructors, classmates
and seniors because connection and network are powerful, essential and far-yielding.
WISHING YOU EVERY SUCCESS IN YOUR CHOSEN PATH!


CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM
Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc
-----o0o-----

BẢN CAM ĐOAN
Họ tên học viên: Nguyễn Thị Đoan Thanh
Ngày sinh : 30/08/1988

Nơi sinh : Vĩnh Long

Ngày trúng tuyển đầu vào năm : 2016
Là tác giả của đề tài luận văn : The impact of social media on consumers. Do age and
gender moderate the effect of social media on trust?
Giáo viên hướng dẫn : Đoàn Anh Tuấn
Ngành :

Mã số : 22160043

Bảo vệ luận văn ngày : 12/11/2018
Điểm bảo vệ luận văn : 8

Tôi cam đoan đã chỉnh sửa nội dung luận văn thạc sĩ kinh tế với đề tài trên, theo góp ý
của Hội đồng chấm luận văn thạc sĩ.
TP. Hồ Chí Minh, ngày tháng năm
Người cam đoan

Chủ tịch Hội đồng chấm luận văn

(Ký và ghi rõ họ tên)

(Ký và ghi rõ họ tên)

Nguyễn Thị Đoan Thanh

Hội đồng chấm luận văn 05 (năm) thành viên gồm :
Chủ tịch :……………………………………………………………………..
Phản biện 1:…………………………………………………………………..
Phản biện 2: ………………………………………………………………….
Thư ký : ………………………………………………………………………
Ủy Viên : …………………………………………………………………….


CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM
Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc
-----o0o-----

BẢNG TỔNG HỢP NỘI DUNG CHỈNH SỬA LUẬN VĂN SAU BẢO VỆ

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CONSUMERS. DO AGE AND
GENDER MODERATE THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON TRUST
STT

Nhận xét của Hội đồng

Nội dung điều chỉnh

1

Check the grammar of the title of
the thesis

The impact of social media on consumers. Do age and gender
moderate the effect of social media on trust?

2

In the introduction session, the Add 3 more sentences to support the reason and research objectives
author should discuss how could
the research objectives/goals had
been set. The research objectives
(on page 12) were given but do
not strongly link to the previous
paragraphs.
Why does the author investigate
Add more 5 sentences to explain why the author investigate the
the moderating effect of age and
moderating effect of age and gender
gender? Does the investigation
fill a research gap? This should
be more in the introduction
section.

H2a and H2b need to be argued
Separated H2a and then H2b. At the same time, I also revised the
separately. H2a should show the
hypotheses as below:
direction of the moderating
H2a: Relationship between social media and trust will be affected
effect, negative or positive. H2b
should be stated more clearly.

3

4

Số trang trong
luận văn
1 and 2

12

12

22&23


I’m not sure what does
“moderated by gender” mean.

by age.
H2b: Relationship between social media and trust will be affected
by gender

5

6

7

8

9

The author uses social network
Add more 4 sentences to support how to check legitimacy of the
to invite informants to
sample (9 rows)
participate in the survey using a
convenient approach. How can
we check the legitimacy of the
sample?
The sample and results of
Remove office staff, students, household and manager. During
qualitative pilot study is a bit
interview in person with respondents, the author also upload the link
vague. It should be stated clearer
in Facebook. Within short time (12 hours) more respondents in
the opinions of 30 respondents
Facebook answered questions than interview directly
(office staff, students, household,
manager)
The author should discuss the

Add 1 sentence to predict the implication withdraw from the sample
sample characteristics. What is
characteristics
the potential implication
withdrawn from the sample
characteristics.
The unsupported moderating
Add 1 more sentence to discuss
hypotheses are not wellexplained. The author should
add more discussion on this
result.
Why do age and gender do not
Add 5 more sentences to discuss
moderate the effect of social
media on trust?

33

31

40

49

52&53


10

Some typos and incorrect

citations still exist in the thesis

1. social media is for people connection social media are for
people connection
2. “activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of
people who gather online to share information, knowledge,
and opinions using conversational media”incorrect
citationremove “ ”
3. social media is defined as a internet-based
applicationssocial media are defined
4. Constantinides and Fountain (2008) recommend classifying
social media into five categories “(i) blogs, (ii) social
network sites (for instance, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and
Google+), (iii) content communities (for example, YouTube
and Wikipedia), (iv) e-forums, and (v) content
aggregators”incorrect citationremove “ ”
5. Whilst social media is offer pull marketing Whilst social
media are offering pull marketing
6. Moreover, trust is consider as the source Moreover, trust is
considering as the source
7. “higher means for group-in-self and entertainment. Negative
collective self-esteem links with social compensation,
propound that those who felt negatively about their social
group used SNS as an alternative to communicating with
other group members. Males are more possibly than females
to commentate negative collective self-esteem and use SNSs
for social compensation” incorrect citationremove “ ”
8. “has been socialized to believe we live in a materialistic
orientation society”incorrect citationremove “ ”
9. “N>50+8m (where N is the number of sample size and m is

number of independent variables)” incorrect citation
remove “ ”
10. “Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Cronbach’s Alpha and
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)”, “significant impact on
the influence of the dependent variables towards the
independent variable”, “ranging from 0.70 to 0.95. A low
value of alpha could be due to a low number of questions,
low inter-relation between items or heterogeneous

10

16

16
16

17
19
21

23
32

36, 37, 38, 41,
42, 43, 52


constructs”, “if this correlation was equal 0.40 or above the
item would be probably correlated with most of the other
items and make a good element of this summated rating

scale. If the item – total correlation was negative or too low
(less than 0.30)”, it was compulsory to pay more attention on
“the item for wording problems and conceptual fit by
modifying or deleting such items”, “in terms of its fit to the
hypothesized population model”; its indices could be created
to “help with model interpretation” , “insight into the
relationships among independent variables in their prediction
of the dependent measurement”, “linear relationship between
each of the predictor variables”, the “suggested cutoff for the
tolerance value was .10 (or equivalent to VIF of 10.0), which
corresponds to a multiple correlation of .95 with the other
independent variables”, “correlation of each specific item
with total of the other items in the scale (Corrected ItemTotal correlation)”, “better recovery of factor structure than
do shorter tests, and when the correlation between the factors
was very great”, “the items and factor loading for rotated
factors with loading”, according to (McCloskey, 2006) age
effects the initial decision with regard to “whether to
purchase on the internet, but not the subsequent behavior of
e-shoppers, such as the number of transactions or the amount
spent”, “status of experienced e-shoppers, their behavior is
indistinguishable, independently of their age, gender or
income level” (Hernández et al, 2011) incorrect citation
remove “ ”
HỌC VIÊN
(Ký, ghi rõ họ tên)


UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business
------------------------------

Nguyen Thi Doan Thanh
THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON
CONSUMERS. DO AGE AND GENDER
MODERATE THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA
ON TRUST?

MASTER OF BUSINESS (HONOURS)

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

1


UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY
International School of Business
------------------------------

Nguyen Thi Doan Thanh
THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON
CONSUMERS. DO AGE AND GENDER
MODERATE THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA
ON TRUST?
MASTER OF BUSINESS (HONOURS)

SUPERVISOR: DR. DOAN ANH TUAN

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

2

Contents
List of figure ........................................................................................................................................ 5
List of table .......................................................................................................................................... 6
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT................................................................................................................. 7
ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................ 8
1. Introduction...................................................................................................................................... 9
2. Literature review and hypothesis ................................................................................................... 14
2.1 Technology acceptance model (TAM) and theory of planned behavior (TPB) ....................... 15
2.2 Social media and trust ............................................................................................................. 16
2.3. Age and gender ....................................................................................................................... 20
2.4. Effect of trust on intention to buy and perceived usefulness ................................................... 23
2.5. Perceived usefulness and intention to buy .............................................................................. 26
2.6. Hypotheses .............................................................................................................................. 27
3. Research methodology ................................................................................................................... 28
3.1 Research procedure ................................................................................................................. 29
3.2 Measurement of the constructs ................................................................................................ 34
3.3 Data analysis and method........................................................................................................ 36
Measure validation .................................................................................................................... 36
Cronbach’s alpha ...................................................................................................................... 36
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)............................................................................................. 37
Multiple regression analysis .......................................................................................................... 38
4. Data analysis and results ................................................................................................................ 39
4.1 Sample characteristic .............................................................................................................. 40
4.2 The reliability test .................................................................................................................... 41
4.3 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)........................................................................................... 41
4.4 Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) result ............................................................................ 44
4.5. Research hypotheses test ........................................................................................................ 45
4.6. Results of Multi-group analysis .............................................................................................. 47

5. Discussion and implications, limitations and directions for future research ................................. 51
5.1. Discussion ............................................................................................................................... 51
5.2. The main results ...................................................................................................................... 53
Result contributions to theory .................................................................................................... 53
Result contributions to management practices .......................................................................... 55
5.3. Limitations and directions for future research ...................................................................... 57
5.4. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 58

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Reference ........................................................................................................................................... 58
Appendix 1: Primarily questionnaire ................................................................................................. 72
Appendix 2: Cronbach’s Alpha Reliability........................................................................................ 77
Appendix 3: CFA results and regression ........................................................................................... 79
Appendix 4: SEM result .................................................................................................................... 83
Appendix 5: Moderating role of gender............................................................................................. 87
Appendix 6: Moderating role of age .................................................................................................. 89

4


List of figure
Figure 1: Conceptual model .............................................................................................. 28
Figure 2: SEM for suggestion model................................................................................. 46
Figure 3: Multi-group result for female............................................................................. 48
Figure 4: Multi-group result for male ................................................................................ 48
Figure 5: Multi-group result for Generation X .................................................................. 50
Figure 6: Multi-group result for Generation Y .................................................................. 50

5


List of table
Table 1: Guidelines for identifying significant factor loadings based on sample size ...... 38
Table 2: Characteristics of different fit indices demonstrating goodness-of-fit across
different model situations .................................................................................................. 39
Table 3: Sample characteristic........................................................................................... 40
Table 4: KMO and Barllett’s test result ............................................................................ 42
Table 5: Total variance explained ..................................................................................... 43
Table 6: Communalities..................................................................................................... 43
Table 7: Rotated component matrix .................................................................................. 44
Table 8: Assuming model unconstrained to be correct_gender ........................................ 47
Table 9: Assuming model unconstrained to be correct_age.............................................. 49

6


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Firstly, I send my sincere thanks to all respondents who helped me finish questionnaires.
Especially, I am grateful to have chance to work on my thesis under the direction of Dr.
Doan Anh Tuan. His guidance and intensive support were instrumental in my research
journey. Moreover, his supervisor and joyful spirit helped me continue to write and
research even during the most stressful moments.
Besides, I would like to thank the thesis defense committee: Dr. Tran Ha Minh
Quan, Dr. Nguyen Phong Nguyen for asking questions to give positive arguments and
constructive contribution for my thesis.
I would also like to thank Dr. Nick Hajli for his support to send me questionnaires, it
made this thesis possible.
Last, but certainly not least, I would like to send the deepest gratitude to my family,

my MBUS 7 classmates and my friends who gave me good conditions and generous
support for completion of my thesis. Thank you very much for helping me through the
good times and the bad, for always trusting me, and for standing by my side no matter
what the circumstances.

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ABSTRACT
Customers’ experience is the centric point that marketers of all industries must focus to
embrace effectively. Thus, brand managers apply many kinds of marketing strategies to
attract consumers. The recent popular trendy to drive marketing now is social media
marketing as social media bring great opportunities to online users; they can easily
engage in social communities and stay focus via Internet. In recent decades, people
witness the fast growth of social media in the cyber world, which delivers enormous
effects to our daily activities (See-To & Ho, 2014). The goal of this thesis is to evaluate
the influence of social media on trust, intention to buy. The research model is built by
borrowing from technology acceptance model (TAM) as well as based on the theory of
planned behavior model (TPB). The results of the study emphasize that social media
positively affects consumers’ social interaction; consequently it improves trust and
intention to buy. Furthermore, the outcomes also highlight that trust attains noticeable
impact on buying intention. Likewise, the perceived usefulness (PU) of networking sites
is indicated as a contributed feature. According to these findings, this thesis proposes
some realistic tactics for practitioners to utilize social media as an omnipotent and
influential marketing tool of sales and services.

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1. Introduction

A brand is commonly known as a name and a symbol but it is a critical means for
organizations to differentiate with rivals and help create positive images on customers.
Managers recognize a key intangible asset of their business is brand name (Aaker, 2009)
that brand can create positive and prominent identity in customers’ mind. Products and
services that maintain brand popularity and brand loyalty are likely to generate higher
sales revenue, gain additional market share and bring profit as well as help the firms grow
up business or at least survive and withstand in the fierce market competition (Erdoğmuş
& Cicek, 2012). Actually, stimulating consumer interest as well as building and
promoting the brand are the strategic and complex processes that require marketers plan
and execute carefully. Thus, many marketers have employed variety ways to create
relationships with customers and influence customers’ purchase intention such as
traditional advertising as well as new marketing methods via social media platforms, for
instance digital marketing, events, sponsorship, etc.
Latterly the social media evolution has altered the online commerce landscape for not
only companies but also consumers. Especially in the era of social media platforms, for
instance Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, etc. these platforms have expanded impressively
and enabled millions of users of all ages to develop both personal and professional
relationships. Remarkably, every day Facebook alone achieves 1.45 billion active users
and 2.2 billion active users in a monthly basis in March 2018 (Facebook, 2018). Hence,
engagement through social media is becoming a fundamental element of any
organization’s marketing strategy. Consumers easily view and interact with social media

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posts and updates as well as can able to connect the companies’ website to respond their
reviews then the firms can instantly offer a solution to the customers’ problems. It is the
fact that the more consumers resonate with the specific brand, the more likely they will
purchase with that brand again. Social media is an effective marketing channel that
empowers companies to leapfrog traditional media and build relationships directly with

consumers (Holt, 2016) as well as offers good communication grounds to companies.
If companies take advantage of social media to share great stories and at the same time
connect with customers in real time, their brands would become an important centre for
consumers interact in social community. Additionally, companies could generate
meaningful consumer interest online (Holt, 2016).
In contrast, Zhu and Chen (2015) show a Gallup survey that advertisements in social
media do not motivate the majority of consumers in USA to make buying decisions.
Gallup also alerts the firms that social media are not the compelling marketing force and
consumers adeptly tune out brands which are related to Facebook and Twitter content. In
addition, people have tendency to ignore and neglect advertisements in social media by
simply changing to another topic. Additionally, Fournier and Avery (2011) convey that
social media are for people connection not a new media channel for branding
communications.
Although the high adoption rate of social media can create new potent social
networks, there are very few exploration empirical studies resolved these issues (e.g.,Hsu
and Tsou, 2011). Thus, there is a need to explore how marketers take advantage of social

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media for brand building activities. Regarding to Laroche et al. (2013), almost researches
concerning marketing and branding in social media describe the definition,
characteristics, pros and cons of social media as well as recommend advices and
strategies for marketers and businesses, for instance studies from Edelman et al. (2010) or
Kietzmann et al. (2011). Hence, it is fundamental for brand owners to concentrate on the
outcome of social media marketing to foster their products and service or strengthen
relationship with customers through online social channels. The context of this research
is in a transitional country like Vietnam as Vietnam this country has achieved 53%
Internet penetration rate (Statista, 2018). More interestingly, Vietnam has almost half of
95 million citizens use social media and anticipates achieving 56 million Facebook users

by 2021 (Bloomberg, 2017).
The firms likely use social media to design marketing programs through trust-building
mechanisms and impact consumers’ intent to purchase online (M. N. Hajli, 2014).
However, many Vietnamese companies have not realized the important role of branding
and brand promotion program (Nguyen et al., 2011) and there is a little branding research
in Vietnam has been acceded (Nguyen, 2003). Therefore, understanding the importance
of social factors on trust leads to motivate customers’ purchase intention will ultimately
help marketers execute marketing strategies and design attractive advertising campaign to
proactively interact with target consumers on an efficient and appealing level through
social media.

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Importantly, gender is considered as a crucial variable on consumer’s behavior
(Bendall & Powers, 2002). Venkatesh et al. (2000) indicate the differences between
males and females’ decision making process which is related to personal technology
adoption. They strongly state that men’s decisions are firmly affected by their attitude
toward using advanced technology, whilst women rely on subjective norm and perceived
behavior control. In addition, young users from 18 to 34 years old utilize social media for
information exchange with their accompanies and family than older ages (Bolton et al.,
2013). Likewise, users of this age group also usually consider others’ experience and
feedback about products and services from specific brand. There have a great number of
papers examine the role of demographic factors on consumers’ orientation toward
commercial activities, however, this relationship is not obvious as research findings have
been found to be controversial (Mai and Zhao, 2004; Mitchell and Walsh, 2004). With
the purpose to verify the moderating role of key demographic variables: age and gender
in an emerging market, it is compulsory to investigate the moderating role of age and
gender to propose appropriate marketing strategy.
In addition, as social media help organization to differentiate company’s product,

services and value from other rivals if the company can execute effective marketing
strategies. Therefore, the main intent this research concentrates on examining the role of
social factors on trust, which can impact an individual’s buying intention. A deep
understanding of this issue can foster in observing factors that form trust and social
commerce intention through social networking sites (SNSs). In order to resolve the above
issue, this thesis has five specific goals. Firstly, it reviews how social media can motivate

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trust in electronic commerce. Secondly, it tests age and gender can moderate the impact
of social media on trust. Thirdly, the correlation between trust and consumer’s buying
intention is examined. Fourthly, the linkage between trust and perceived usefulness on
intention to buy is also discussed. Finally, it checks the direct and indirect effect of social
media on trust and purchase intent. On these bases, the thesis answers below inquiries:
(1). Do social media in social networking sites influence consumers’ trust? (2). Do
perceived usefulness and trust determine users’ buying intent? (3) Whether PU or trust is
decision factor grip the user’s buying intention? (4) Do age and gender influence the
connection between social media and trust? In order to accomplish these objectives, the
thesis uses perceived usefulness from technology acceptance model constructs, together
with other variables such as social media, trust and intention to buy as well as age and
gender data to build an interdisciplinary research model. Our specific purposes, therefore,
are to evaluate the role of social media to purchase intention in Vietnam as well as
examine the moderator role of age and gender.
The research is conducted on various people from teacher to students, office staff to
household, manager to worker in the context of Ho Chi Minh City which is the biggest
city in Vietnam. The primary contention of this thesis concentrates on testing the role of
social media elements on trust, which can impact customer’s buying intent.
Comprehending of this issue can benefit in recognizing features that inaugurate trust and
social commerce intent through social networking sites.

This research study executes TAM constructs and propounds a model which validates
that trust and perceived usefulness possibly influence consumer’s buying intent. The

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study also canvasses how trust can become a major challenge in a social commerce
environment by using social media networking sites. The valuable contribution of this
study is to reiterate the role of social media and its impact on trust in electronic markets.
This paper proceeds as follow stages: Section 1 Introduction presents the research
background, research problem, research objectives, research questions and the research
contribution as well as the research gap. Section 2 Literature Review and Hypotheses
reveals previous theoretical basis of the social media, trust, intention to buy and related
studies about age and gender. Based on that, the author proposes a research model. The
next section is Research Methodology, in this unit author will cover the development of
scales, sample selection, data collection tools, how the data collection process is
conducted, and statistical data analysis techniques used in the research. Section 4 Data
Analysis and Results analyzes and interprets the results of data analysis, the limitations is
also discussed in this part. From that result, the author draws the conclusions for the
research hypotheses proposed in literature review and hypotheses section. Finally is
section 5 Discussion and Implications, Limitations and Directions for future research:
performs the main findings of the research, the contribution as well as presents the
limitations for future research directions and recommends some practical strategies.

2. Literature review and hypothesis
This section will present theoretical concepts of social media, trust and buying intent as
well as moderator variable ages and gender and the major constructs.

14

2.1 Technology acceptance model (TAM) and theory of planned behavior (TPB)
Theory of technology acceptance (TAM) is mainly designed for modeling user
acceptance of information technology (Davis et al., 1989) and TAM has a strong base in
theory and there are many empirical researches about this (Lucas Jr and Spitler, 1999).
Furthermore, the two prime constructs of TAM, perceived usefulness and perceived ease
of use, which have hypothesized to be vital determinants of user’s acceptance, can be
broadly adopted (Adam et al., 1992).
The theory of planned behavior has been applied and validated in a greater number of
researches (Chang, 1998) as this is an extension of the theory of reasoned action (TRA).
The TRA shows that behavior intention or purchase intent in this study is an antecedent
to forecast actual volitional behavior (purchase completion) (Razak & Marimuthu, 2012).
Firstly, Van den Poel and Leunis (1999) mentions that consumers’ perceived risk when
shopping online may be higher than when shopping offline. In searching ways to
minimize this risk, customer may exchange and verify information with other
experienced consumers to gain normative recommendation (Hansen et al., 2004).
Moreover, recent research comes up that consumers perceive obstacles and difficulties
(PBC) in performing online shopping behavior. Hence, they have expectancy to use
cognitive sources in order to form beliefs toward the related attributes which may result
in the maturation of an overall attitude toward the behavior (Rossiter & Percy, 1987).

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2.2 Social media and trust
As social media develop rapidly and it diversifies in many delivery platforms, there is a
shortage of an official consensus on what social media are. Social media are included
activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to
share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media (Safko & Brake,
2009). In addition, social media are defined as a internet-based applications group that

based on the conceptual and integrated technical frameworks of Web 2.0 that enable
consumers create, generate and exchange content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). The
Economist and TIME magazines suggest that the Web 2.0 transform individual’s and
group behavior, as well as affect the power structures in the marketplace, causing a
substantial migration of market power from manufacturers towards consumers. Because
today's online consumers have access to a previously unknown pool of information and
knowledge as well as unlimited choice, just move your mouse and click upon a button
Constantinides and Fountain (2008). Actually, there is no official classification of
Internet-based applications types of social media. Nevertheless, Constantinides and
Fountain (2008) recommend classifying social media into five categories (i) blogs, (ii)
social network sites (for instance, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Google+), (iii)
content communities (for example, YouTube and Wikipedia), (iv) e-forums, and (v)
content aggregators. Amongst these five categories of Internet based applications in
social media above, social network sites (SNSs) are the most common application
nowadays. All of them have permit users share information as well as recommend,

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review and rate products and services online with their peers (Mangold & Faulds, 2009).
These conversations provide the firms a gainful method to move customers from
awareness to engagement, boost brand recognition, consideration and raise brand loyalty,
advocacy (Gunelius, 2010). Actually, social media proffer a pull marketing chance
because customers proactively engage products and services and then pull more
information that catalyze business, building brand. Whilst social media are offering pull
marketing, traditional marketing is push marketing tactics that must provide information
and motivate customers engage with their products and services (Gunelius, 2010). In
addition, in the book The New Influencers, Gillin emphasizes in his book that in the past
one unsatisfied customer can tell ten people but nowadays in the social media epoch,
customer has his many tools to update with even ten million people virtually overnight

(Gillin, 2009). Thus, firms should consider social media as powerful integrated marketing
strategy which can bring consumers experiences to the forefront. In fact, if companies
take advantage of social media platforms to share great stories and at the same time
connect with customers in the actual time, their brands will become a centre for a social
community. Additionally, companies could generate meaningful consumer interest online
(Holt, 2016).
On the contrary, Abeza et al., (2013) argues that executing social media may embrace
a lot of challenges such as difficulties with reaching the target audiences, lacking of
control as well as challenges of accuracy in distributing the company’s resources, and
trust issues. Furthermore, Fournier and Avery (2011) even warn brands to be careful
about social media involvement as the brands can be considered as “uninvited crashers”.

17


It is implying that create brand relationship via social media is more complicated than
stimulate more interactions.
It is no doubt that social media marketing differs from traditional methods of
marketing as it creates both new challenges and opportunities. In the age of social media
marketing, customers have demand of a more upstanding and direct relationship with the
firms they are doing business with. Hence, brand managers are trying to show their
transparent welcome and honest side to forge ahead relationships with consumers.
Nowadays, there is a trendy that various well-known companies for instance Pepsi,
Unilever, etc engage consumers by giving customers a real opportunity to take part in
their advertising programs because consumers’ interactions result in the inauguration of
emotional bonds and increases commitment and certitude between brands and consumers
(Sashi, 2012). Interestingly, the essence is that online users control social media using,
individuals can use these media with little or without cost at great convenience.
Moreover, social media allow communication and collaboration that go beyond
geographical barriers (Lai & Turban, 2008).

It can be concluded that firms can

communicate with their customers at a much lower cost than ever before by using social
network (Hainla, 2017). Moreover, the firms can also generate online content widely and
economically to trigger brand presence.
As social media marketing plays crucial role in company’s strategy so companies and
managers have put great efforts in identifying and tracking key performance indicators to
evaluate the performance of their projects. One of these indicators is trust. As online

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transaction and e-commerce have developed rapidly recently, therefore, online trust is
receiving great attention from researchers (Hallikainen & Laukkanen, 2018).
The key to maintain and develop long term relationship is trust, especially in online
context it plays crucial role because of a lot of uncertainties of technology-driven
environment (Pavlou, 2003). Trust has been researched gruelingly by any scholars to
study the impact of trust on an individual's intention to use online applications for
purchasing purpose (Gefen et al, 2003; Hoffman et al. 1999; Kim, 2012; McKnight and
Chervany, 2001). Taking social commerce as a typical example, individuals have a
tendency to heed recommendation from online communities and experienced members
who they can trust to provide correct advice with regard to their purchasing experience of
a specific product or online service (Chen & Shen, 2015).
Trust is defined is an attitude of confident expectation in an online environment that
risk of individual’s vulnerabilities shall not be exploited (Corritoreet al., 2003).
Lacking of trust will be a serious barrier of electronic-commerce adoption (Chang et
al., 2013). Without trust, it is believed that a operative, interactive on-line environment
would be impossible (Corritore et al., 2003). Moreover, trust is considering as the source
to stimulate the implementation of information and communication technologies over the

boundaries (Kirs and Bagchi, 2012).
Therefore, one effective method that brands can influence their consumers and make
trust is to give the sufficient knowledge of the brand and products (Chiu et al, 2010).
Social media supplies abundant communication context for consumers and enables
companies to create and retain their relationships with many essential features of the

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