Effects of social media marketing on consumer brand engagement among insurance companies in Kenya: a case of selected insurance companies in Kenya

Abstract

Social media has revolutionized the way brands and consumers interact from a monologue to creating active conversations and engagement through a variety of platforms. Thus, social media allows brands and consumers to connect on a more intimate level by humanizing the communication and by satisfying the functional and emotional needs of the consumers. The purpose of this study was to establish the effects of social media marketing on consumer brand engagement among insurance companies in Kenya. This study was guided by the following objectives; to establish the effect of online brand community, social networks and social websites on consumer brand engagement among insurance companies in Kenya. The study was grounded on two theories namely; Social Networking Theory and Theory of Social Identity. Descriptive research design was adopted for this study where the researcher collected both primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected by means of structured questionnaires. The target population for the study included all the fifty-eight (58) insurance companies in Kenya. However, for the purpose of this particular study, 3 insurance companies actively embracing social media marketing with a total population of 1318 employees were considered. From this population, the researcher applied the Yamane’s formula to obtain a sample size of 306 respondents, who participated in the study. Stratified sampling technique was used to obtain the study sample. The researcher considered a section of the senior level, middle level and junior-level managers in each of the insurance companies mentioned. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyze the primary data. Under descriptive statistics, means and standard deviations were computed while inferential statistics included correlation and multi-linear regression analysis. According to the findings, it was established that the online brand community affects consumer brand engagement among insurance companies in Kenya to a very great extent. This was quite evident from the generated r value of 0.942 at p value of 0.001 which was less than 0.01. The study also established that social networks affected consumer brand engagement to a very great extent. Also, the researcher established that there existed a very strong relationship between social networks and consumer brand engagement among insurance firms in Kenya. This was quite evident from the generated r value of 0.821 at p value 0.002 which was less than 0.01. According to the findings, it is clear that social websites affect Consumer Brand Engagement (CBE) to a very great extent. This was evident from an r value of 0.736 at a p value of 0.003. This finding also indicated that there was a very strong relationship between organizational use of social websites and enhancement of CBE.