Abstract
Social media has become an important tool for marketers to shape and influence the consumers' behavior. Inherent ingredient of the social media is the interaction of consumerswith other consumers as persons. Besides, the brand personality is a phenomenon which isevolved into the presentation of brands as persons (brand anthropomorphism) to accentuatethe consumer's person-to-person interaction. Literature reflects the impact of consumerinteraction in social media on brand outcomes. But the current study postulates that, amongthe social media users, the social media engagement is a better measure to study theconsumer behavior towards brand outcomes. This study analyzed the moderating role ofbrand anthropomorphism on the relationships of social media engagement and brandrelationship quality, as well as analyzed the moderating role on the relationship of socialmedia engagement and brand loyalty. Data was collected from 440 consumers of the fastmoving consumer goods in Pakistan through snowball sampling. Data was analyzed throughStructural Equation Modeling (SEM) in SmartPLS 3 software. Significant impact of socialmedia interaction was found on the brand outcomes with moderating role of brandanthropomorphism. Future recommendations and managerial implications are alsodiscussed.
Keywords: Social Media Engagement, Brand Anthropomorphism, Brand RelationshipQuality, Brand Loyalty