TWEET ABOUT A BRAND: A PLAN TO PURCHASE.

Abstract

Consumers in the cities of Pakistan have shown interest in buying online. The online buying is a phenomenon that has caught fast through social media Facebook communities, twitter, instagram, snapchat etc. Marketers are benefiting from the advantage of the two way communication that is offered by social media. This paper explores and examines the pattern of consumers using twi tter to follow a brand specifically clothing and to tweet about a brand (clothing) as well as retweet about a brand. The theoretical grounding for this paper is Theory of Planned Behavior. Results show that attitude towards brand following, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and brand attachment are positively associated with intention to follow brands on the social media. Consumers’ intention to create (i.e., intention to tweet at brands) and disseminate (i.e., intention to retweet the links of brands) brand-related information, as well as purchase intention, are the outcomes of intentions to follow brands on Twitter. Overall findings suggest that TPB model can be used to predict Twitter users’ brand-following behavior. More importantly, the finding of the paper identifies that brand attachment drives consumer intention to follow brands on Twitter extends the TPB framework. The conceptual framework developed is evaluated via SEM and results have both theoretical and managerial implications.