Does Social Media Engagement Really Build Brand Loyalty? Evidence of Short-Term Null Effects in Emerging Markets

Shasha Tian^*

• Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

This study examines the potential relationship between social media engagement and brand loyalty in emerging markets, with particular attention to the possible mediating role of brand trust. Drawing upon the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework and Social Exchange Theory, we develop and test a conceptual model using panel data from five global brands across five emerging market countries over a 24-week period. Employing fixed effects regression models with clustered standard errors, our analysis of 575 brand-country-week observations yields non-significant results across all hypothesized relationships. Rather than confirming conventional assumptions about engagement effectiveness, our findings suggest that short-term weekly fluctuations in social media engagement may not translate into immediate loyalty gains in emerging market contexts. This pattern of null results contributes to the literature by challenging the prevailing assumption that higher engagement necessarily leads to greater loyalty, and by highlighting the potential disconnect between engagement metrics and relationship-building outcomes in high-frequency social media data. This research advances theoretical understanding by examining functional form assumptions in engagement-loyalty relationships and provides methodological contributions through rigorous panel data analysis that addresses unobserved heterogeneity concerns prevalent in social media marketing research.