Do Social Media Marketing Activities Enhance Consumer Perception of Brands? A Meta-Analytic Examination

Abstract

Social media marketing activities have been grasping considerable attention from marketers and researchers recently, as demonstrated by more research efforts investigating these relatively new marketing channels and their impacts. This study reports on a meta-analysis examining social media marketing activities (SMMA) relationships with brand equity (BE) and purchase intention (PI). A quantitative meta-analysis of 15 articles (n = 6282) is conducted in order to determine the effect sizes of these relationships. Furthermore, potential moderating effects have been investigated for two types of study characteristic variables; measurement characteristics (type of economic development, type of questionnaire employed, type of study quality), and context characteristics (industry type and sample type of social media). The meta-analysis results indicate a positive relationship between SMMA and BE (r = 0.57) reflecting a large effect, while SMMA relationship with PI (r = 0.43) indicates a medium positive effect. Moreover, the results of meta-regression show that context characteristics do not moderate the relationship between SMMA and BE or between SMMA and PI. As for measurement characteristic, only the type of study quality moderates the relationship SMMA and PI. Based on these findings theoretical and practical implications are presented.