To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media?

There is an ongoing debate over the activities of brands and companies in social media. Some researchers believe social media provide a unique opportunity for brands to foster their relationships with customers, while others believe the contrary. Taking the perspective of the brand community building plus the brand trust and loyalty literatures, our goal is to show how brand communities based on social media influence elements of the customer centric model (i.e., the relationships among focal customer and brand, product, company, and other customers) and brand loyalty. A survey-based empirical study with 441 respondents was conducted. The results of structural equation modeling show that brand communities established on social media have positive effects on customer/product, customer/brand, customer/company and customer/other customers relationships, which in turn have positive effects on brand trust, and trust has positive effects on brand loyalty. We find that brand trust has a fully mediating role in converting the effects of enhanced relationships in brand community to brand loyalty. The implications for marketing practice and future research are discussed.