Scientific study has shown that brand trust is of greater significance for the involvement and commitment of customers on social media platforms.
The findings revealed that brand trust is essential for forming the relationship between consumer-brand relationships and brand loyalty on social media platforms.
Scientists investigated the customer-brand relationship on social media of 131 brand community members in the North Capital Region of India. The research was developed to demonstrate the impact of customer-brand relationships on brand loyalty and word of mouth via brand trust.
The results showed that highly engaged customers on social media have higher brand trust. In like manner, highly engaged customers on social media can become loyal customers and disseminate further information about the brand. On the other hand, customer satisfaction is not necessarily an effective predictor of loyalty, even though it is critical for commitment. The reason is that a customer may be satisfied, but he/she may not be loyal on social media. Furthermore, a satisfied customer may not trust the brand in a social media environment.
Moreover, commitment is considered one of the critical prerequisites to brand trust from the social media perspective. Likewise, commitment and word of mouth demonstrate that greater commitment results in brand loyalty and word-of-mouth behavior on social media platforms.
The study, published in the journal of Marketing Intelligence & Planning, recommends that marketing managers recognize brand trust as effective in both brand loyalty and word-of-mouth communication. Also, managers should stress the importance of maintaining brand commitment and taking on attentive communication management to ensure that all accessible information can be trusted to enhance brand loyalty.
Original Study:
Jain, N.K., Kamboj, S., Kumar, V. and Rahman, Z., 2018. Examining consumer-brand relationships on social media platforms. Marketing Intelligence & Planning. DOI:
10.1108/MIP-05-2017-0088