Article Preview
TopIntroduction
Often associated with community, transparency, conversation, and connectedness (Power, 2014), social media encourages two-way communication, feedback, and information-sharing (Mutum and Wang, 2011). Content shared on social media can be instantly accessed by individuals worldwide. Malaysians are motivated to use social media to learn about new events and updates, keep in touch with friends, share content, find funny and engaging content, complete work tasks, and research or discover new products to buy (Seraph Studio, 2019; YouGov, 2019). These data imply that social media is becoming more substantial in the lives of Malaysians, as compared to traditional media.
Among the social media platforms, Instagram is ranked fourth, after Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp, with 11 million active monthly users (Kemp 2018). Nonetheless, it has been suggested that although Facebook has the biggest market share, Instagram is more impactful and has recorded significantly higher engagement rates (Yew, Suhaidi, Seewoochurn, & Sevamalai, 2018). Instagram is more popular than Facebook among millennials (those born between 1981 to 1996) and the Gen Z (those born between 1997 to 2012), who make up the biggest user base, as evidenced by the yearly increases in its number of users from this demographic (Tran, 2020). Instagram users grew by 70% from 2016 to 2018 (Wong, 2018). Its popularity among the younger generations might be due to its free, user-friendly, creative, and interactive in-app visual tools.
Changes in consumer behavior have signaled that a digital presence in the form of a website is no longer enough (Mutum and Wang 2010; Mutum et al. 2018). Instead, companies must quickly adapt to the consumer trend toward social media and learn to reach customers on these platforms. Utilizing social media technologies to improve creativity, communications, and offers to increase shareholder value describes social media marketing; companies use social media marketing for brand-awareness building, promotion, market research, and customer relations (Jaakonmäki, Müller, and vom Brocke, 2017; Tuten and Solomon, 2018). Research has indicated that social media positively influences consumer purchasing behavior (Chen & Lin, 2019). Many Malaysian brands are already exploiting social media marketing capabilities. However, the impact of social media marketing is largely unclear. Managing social media content remains a challenge for many companies trying to identify what is suitable for their audience and can, thus, increase their business value (Trkman & Trkman, 2018). Moreover, studies on Instagram as a social media marketing tool have been quite limited.