THE CUSTOMER’S BRAND EXPERIENCE IN THE LIGHT OF SELECTED PERFORMANCE INDICATORS IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

A brand is no longer what we tell the customer, it is what customers tell each other. The importance of using a social media mix for marketing purposes has never been greater than it is today. Ignoring these tools can have unfavourable effects on any company, whether in the form of lack of competitiveness or in the case of unnecessarily high costs for promotion with weak effect and targeting. We aim to examine the relationship between a customer’s brand experience and loyalty to the brand, its image and willingness to recommend the brand to others. The paper examines the sample of 476 respondents questioned through the CAWI method - computer assisted web interviewing. A random sampling method was used. All of them are active users of social media tools. Data collection took place during the first half of 2016. We came to interesting findings concerning the existence of presented relationships. It appeared that a customer’s brand experience is a crucial factor for the success of a company in the environment of social media. All the relationships presented in this study proved to be significant with a strong γ coefficient in all cases of branding experience relation to loyalty, image and willingness to recommend the brand. The findings are subsequently transformed into a set of recommendations that help in setting the right marketing activities of companies in the online environment. There are also implications for the development of strong social media presence.

Keywords

• social media
• brand experience
• loyalty to the brand
• image
• recommendation
• Slovakia