Abstract:
Social media is an emerging trend of marketing in today’s context. It can be seen that many organizations use Facebook to engage with people, build brand awareness, and brand trust towards their brand names. Thus, this study was quantitative in nature; the researcher used the deductive research approach. The study was conducted with a sample of 262 Facebook users, selected following the convenience sampling method. A structured questionnaire was distributed among the selected sample. The independent variable is Facebook marketing, and the dependent variable is brand trust. The variable of Facebook marketing measured through the dimensions of compliance, internalization, and identification. To test the developed hypotheses a correlation analysis and linear regression analysis were used. As per the Pearson correlation, a positive relationship was found between each variable and brand trust. Further, it discovered a significant impact of each variable on the brand trust with special reference to Sri Lankan tourist hotels. The study provokes valuable insights that marketing professionals, government bodies, and tourist organizations can use when developing their online marketing campaigns. Online strategies of tourist hotel brands should be wisely managed. The investments should be engaged in effective Facebook marketing activities to build brand trust and grab tourist attraction. Further, the study has revealed that there are some limitations in the study, such as poor generalizability of results due to the small sample size and respondents’ fraudulent answers.
