DOES SOCIAL MEDIA BRAND COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP TRANSLATE TO REAL SALES? A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF PURCHASE BEHAVIOR BY FANS AND NON-FANS OF A FACEBOOK FAN PAGE

摘要: The emerging social media brand communities provide a good platform for marketers to promote brands their members. Marketers are devoting time and efforts building fan pages; however, the elusive question of whether fans exhibit any behavioural loyalty in terms actual purchase behaviour remains unanswered. Based on characteristics media, we treat membership as objective indicator attitudinal loyalty. This study validates positive relationship between by proposing three models expenditure, quantity frequency. We used treatment effects model account selection bias problem. Our data estimation consist an apparel retailer brand’s customer transaction Facebook page data. shows that have higher than non-fans all aspects.