1 2 Table of Contents Table of Tables ....................................................................................................................................... 4 Table of Figures ...................................................................................................................................... 5 Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 6 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 7 1.1. Background ............................................................................................................................. 7 1.1.1. The World’s biggest Community .................................................................................... 7 1.1.2. Power of Word-of-mouth and their influence ................................................................. 8 1.1.3. People tend to engage, buy and share ............................................................................. 9 1.2. Online Social Media ............................................................................................................. 10 1.2.1. Online Social Networks ................................................................................................ 10 1.2.2. Social Communities ...................................................................................................... 10 1.3. Facebook Fever ..................................................................................................................... 11 1.3.1. Success of Facebook Marketing.................................................................................... 11 1.4. Problem Discussion .............................................................................................................. 13 1.5. Purpose .................................................................................................................................. 14 2. THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK ................................................................................................. 15 2.1. Customer Loyalty .................................................................................................................. 15 2.1.1. Loyalty Framework ....................................................................................................... 16 2.2. Main Influences of Customer Loyalty .................................................................................. 17 2.2.1. Core Offerings............................................................................................................... 18 2.2.2. Demographics ............................................................................................................... 18 2.2.3. The Market Place .......................................................................................................... 18 2.2.4. Share of Wallet.............................................................................................................. 19 2.2.5. Elasticity Level ............................................................................................................. 19 2.2.6. Satisfaction .................................................................................................................... 19 2.3. Online social media influence on Customer Loyalty ............................................................ 20 2.3.1. Loyalty through Trialogue .................................................................................................. 20 2.3.2. Impact of social network on customer .......................................................................... 22 2.4. Typology of online customer loyalty .................................................................................... 22 2.5. Word-Of-Mouth .................................................................................................................... 22 2.6. Traditional Communication Paradigm and New Communication Paradigm ........................ 23 2.7. e-Loyalty .................................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.8. State of the Art ...................................................................................................................... 28 3 3. METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................... 30 3.1. Introduction and context ....................................................................................................... 30 3.2. Research Design and Data Collection ................................................................................... 31 3.3 Sample and population ........................................................................................................ 32 3.4 Sampling size time and cost .................................................................................................. 32 3.5 Operationalization ................................................................................................................. 33 3.6 Sampling Strategy: ................................................................................................................ 35 3.7 Hypothesis Testing: .............................................................................................................. 35 3.8. Reliability and Validity ......................................................................................................... 35 3.9. Ethical Considerations .......................................................................................................... 36 3.10. Limitations & future implications ..................................................................................... 36 4. EMPIRICAL STUDY ......................................................................................................................... 38 4.1. Questionnaire Analysis ......................................................................................................... 38 4.1.1. Classifications by Demographics & Social Characteristics .......................................... 38 4.1.2. Classification by Social Factors .................................................................................... 43 5. ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................... 51 5.1. Evaluation of Demographic and Social Characteristics ........................................................ 51 5.1.1. Demographic Characteristics ........................................................................................ 51 5.1.2. Evaluation of Social Factors ......................................................................................... 53 5.2. Empirical and Statistical Analysis: ......................................................................................... 56 5.2.1 Regression Analysis: ...................................................................................................... 56 6. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 59 6. Reflection ...................................................................................................................................... 61 7.1. Proposal for Further Research............................................................................................... 61 8. References ................................................................................................................................. 62 9.1. Appendix 1: Online Questionnaire Invitation ....................................................................... 69 9.2. Appendix 2: Online Questionnaire ....................................................................................... 70 9.3. Appendix 3: Coding for Regression Analysis:...................................................................... 73 9.4. Appendix 4: Regression Analysis: ........................................................................................ 85 4 Table of Tables Table 1: Survey Questions ....................................................................................................... 33 Table 2: FACEBOOK ACCOUNT ......................................................................................... 39 Table 3: GENDER ................................................................................................................... 39 Table 4: AGE ........................................................................................................................... 40 Table 5: LOGINING IN FREQUENCY.................................................................................. 41 Table 6: SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR ............................................................................................ 42 Table 7: REASONS TO ‘LIKE’ or ‘JOIN’ A COMPANY PAGE ......................................... 43 Table 8: REASONS FOR ENGAGEMENT............................................................................ 44 Table 9:GROUP ACTIVITY FREQUECNY .......................................................................... 45 Table 10: SOCIAL FUNCTIONS ........................................................................................... 47 Table 11: POSITIVE WORD-OF-MOUTH ...........................................................................