Effects of Social Media Brand Reviews on Trust and Brand Perception: An Experimental Study on Facebook in Pakistani context

Abstract

Attraction towards social networking sites is increasing day by day. People join social networking sites to communicate with their friends, share their feelings and gain information from different platforms. One of the most popular social networking sites is Facebook with 1.7 billion active users. However, there are many users of Facebook with fake identities, communicating with other users just for fun and enjoyment. Companies are also attracted towards Facebook for advertisement, consumer engagement and feedbacks of customers bearing very low cost. However, users with fake identities also like different products and leave their comments on different brand pages. So companies are unable to get true picture of customer’s feedback and these fake reviews also damage trust of other customers. Current study examined the effect of brand page reviews on customer’s trust, perceived risk and perceived benefit. Both fake and original comments were considered in study. Effect of reviews is tested on three types of trust (interpersonal trust, dispositional trust and institutional trust). Experimental approach was used to collect data from 300 participants. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses of study. Results show that people believe more in comments and information provided by their friends or by third party. While getting information from social media, users trust comments and reviews provided by other users without differentiating original and fake comments. Users of Facebook trust in brand but normally ignore information provided by company itself. Furthermore, other users of social networking sites are affected by comments and reviews. Managerial implications are also discussed.