Social Media Advertising: The Role of the Social Media Platform and the Advertised Brand in Attitude Formation and Purchase Intention

Social media provide not only platforms for individual users for personal communication, but also serve as media for the dissemination of promotional messages. Recently, the role of social media platforms as earned media has been in focus, but paid advertising still plays a significant role in this respect. This study seeks to deepen the understanding of consumer behavior in this context by addressing consumer attitude towards social media advertising on two levels, i.e., general attitude towards advertising on a social media platform and specific attitude towards an individual advertisement on the social media platform. The study proposes and empirically tests a research model that shows a significant impact of platform enjoyment on general attitude towards advertising as well as brand familiarity as an antecedent of specific attitude towards an advertisement on the platform. Further, a significant impact of both levels of attitude on purchase intention could be shown. The findings stress the importance of a clear conceptualization of consumer attitude on different levels and highlight the relevance of paid advertising in social media.