Social Media Advertising and Its Impact on Consumer Behaviour

Abstract

Social media advertising (SMA) refers to a promotional tool that is widely used by more than 160 million businesses globally to facilitate interaction among consumers and brands. Despite the wide usage, consumer ad attention has been scarce. Thus, putting into question the effectiveness of SMA in influencing consumer Behaviour, particularly in a social media context which is characterised by high-end innovations in ad formats, increased social media and e-commerce integration, ad clutter, application of artificial intelligence in SMA, and privacy breaches. The purpose of this quantitative descriptive study is to investigate the impact of SMA on consumer behaviour based on interactions of active Facebook users. The objectives of the study are fivefold, to (1) identify the antecedent factors of consumer‟s attitude to social media advertising (2) examine the impact of identified antecedents on attitude (3) determine the impact of attitude and social influence on consumer behaviour (4) assess the mediating role of attitude on the effect of identified antecedents on ad engagement and purchase behaviour, and (5) compare consumer behaviour between India and Tanzania, and find out its relationship with Hofstede cultural values. In this regard, the study was underpinned by positivists and objectivist philosophical world views. Thus, a descriptive, deductive, cross-sectional survey strategy was adopted to collect data from 700 university students. The participants were purposively recruited into a sample from a population of Facebook users in Indian and Tanzanian universities. Data were collected by administering questionnaires offline and online through Google forms. Clean data were analysed by using various techniques; descriptive statistics (mean, mode, frequencies, and standard deviations), independent sample t-test, Spearman correlation analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modelling. Ethical standards were upheld in undertaking this study.