Page 274 - MARSIUM'21 COMP OF PAPER

FINAL YEAR PROJECT

AHIBS UTM SKUDAI

CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT BEHAVIOR TOWARDS SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT
FORMAT IN COSMETIC INDUSTRY

HAIRIYAH YUSUF*, NOR ZAFIR MD SALLEH

Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru

*Corresponding author: hairiyah@graduate.utm.my
Abstract

The increasing usage of social media platforms as a marketing channel for small business owners parallels the prominence of active social media users.
Hence, the selection of social media platforms and content strategies plays a vital part in building the engagement between the business and consumers.
Nowadays, businesses rely on social media to promote products, generate leads, and convert prospects to customers. This study assessed the effect of (i) social
media platform and (ii) social media content format in terms of the vividness and interactivity towards consumers’ passive or active engagement behavior by
the number of likes, comments, shares, views, and retweets. This study adopted exploratory qualitative research, and the data collection was made on the
social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter of the most followed local skincare brands in Malaysia. This study employed descriptive
content analysis to analyze the dataset collected within three months. The findings of this study will directly benefit marketers or small business owners of
skincare brands in selecting the most engaging social media platform and content strategies.

Keywords: Beauty and wellness industry, Engagement behavior, Content format, Skincare, Social media

Abstrak

Meningkatnya penggunaan platform media sosial sebagai saluran pemasaran untuk pemilik perniagaan kecil selari dengan peningkatan pengguna aktif media
sosial. Oleh itu, pemilihan platform dan strategi kandungan media sosial memainkan peranan penting dalam usaha untuk membina hubungan yang baik antara
perniagaan dan pengguna. Kini, banyak perniagaan bergantung pada media sosial untuk mempromosikan produk, mendapatkan pelanggan, dan
mentransformasi prospek kepada pelanggan. Kajian ini menilai kesan (i) platform media sosial dan (ii) format kandungan media sosial dari segi kejelasan dan
interaktiviti terhadap tingkah laku penglibatan pengguna media sosial sama ada aktif atau pasif melalui bilangan suka, komen, kongsi, tonton, dan tweet
semula. Kajian ini menggunakan penyelidikan kualitatif eksploratori, dan pengumpulan data dibuat melalui platform media sosial seperti Facebook, Instagram,
dan Twitter kepada jenama penjagaan kulit tempatan yang paling banyak pengikut di Malaysia. Kajian ini menggunakan analisis kandungan deskriptif untuk
menganalisis set data yang dikumpul dalam tempoh tiga bulan. Penemuan kajian ini secara langsung akan memberi manfaat kepada pemasar atau pemilik
perniagaan kecil jenama penjagaan kulit dalam memilih platform media sosial dan strategi kandungan yang paling sesuai.

Katakunci: Industri kecantikan dan kesihatan, Tingkah laku penglibatan, Format kandungan, Penjagaan kulit, Media sosial

■ 1.0 INTRODUCTION

Social media has been proliferating in the last few years. According to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center (2021) on 1,502 adults
recently, it is reported that over 75 percent of U.S adults age between 18 to 49 are using social media sites at least once, in which YouTube
and Facebook appearing as the most used online platforms widely followed by other social media namely Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn,
Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Reddit. According to the recent report, the increase in the number of social media users in 2020 is its
fastest rate during lockdown with 4.20 billion users (Kemp, 2021), more than half of the population. Meanwhile in Malaysia, approximately
86 percent Malaysian were an active social media users, unwaveringly increased from 62 percent in 2016, in which Facebook as the leading
social media platform among all (Müller, 2021).

Considering social media massive growth among all age groups, brands begin to adopt the use of social media in their organization to
encourage consumers’ engagement (Hallock et al., 2019) as according to Kumar and Pansari (2016), engagement is fundamental in
maintaining the excellent relationship between organization and consumer. With the fear of failing to get the benefits that social media offers,
Nick G (2021) stated that more than 50 million small businesses use social media to connect with consumers. As a consequence, consumers’
digital spending soared along with the rapid proliferation of social media content made to stimulate consumers’ engagement behavior
(Malthouse et al., 2016). Nonetheless, these marketing strategies will not be profitable unless brands comprehend how to deliver and
distribute social media content to engage with their target audience efficiently across these platforms (Lee et al., 2018).

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