The role of Brand Salience and Trust in deepening Perception to an Intention: An empirical study on a social media platform

Abstract

Using the social media platform to examine the deepening of perception to the cognitive level of Intention to transact, this paper aims to consider the effects of trust and brand salience between perception-Intention relationship. An internet survey was conducted with 140 respondents. For analysis SEM applied to see the interactional effects of the variables. The results indicate that in the presence of a developed consumer perception, trust and brand salience do not show any significant effect on Intention to transact. However, independently brand salience and trust have significant relationships with Intention to transact. There’s no significant mediating effect of brand salience or trust in deepening consumer perception to the level of ‘Intention to transact’. This study recommends determining the key variables that effect the deepening of consumer perception. Exploration of more factors of consumer perception in new media platforms in general and social media platforms in particular. From a practical point of view this study suggests that firms using social media platforms should concentrate more on creating a good perception about their products and brands through SNS. A perceptual position properly created and managed has a very good chance of converting into an Intention to perform a transaction. This study provides valuable insight into the social media users’ behavior regarding their Intention building through the use of social networking sites. Furthermore, this study extends the deepening of consumer perception to the level of ‘Intention to transact’ by examining the mediating role of trust and brand salience.