Classified Index: F275.5
U.D.C.: 657
Dissertation for the Doctoral Degree in Management
MEASURING THE FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE
OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FROM
MANAGERIALAND INVESTOR’S PERSPECTIVES
Candidate:
Supervisor:
Imran Khan
Prof. Han Dongping
Academic Degree Applied for: Doctor of Management
Specialty:
Business Administration
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Management
March, 2017
Date of Oral presentation:
Degree Confirming Institute:
Harbin Institute of Technology

Abstract
Abstract
Social media marketing is known as buzz, viral, word-of-mouth marketing and
guerrilla marketing. Social media tools are gaining popularity, and these are part of
regular operations of a large sum of companies of all sizes: start-ups, small, medium and
large corporations. Along with traditional marketing channels, social media outlets are
integrated as a part of the marketing mix. It has changed the dynamics of interaction
between organizations and their consumers by fostering the relationship. These dynamic
channels are challenging traditional one-way marketing. Customers can become brand
fans on these pages and indicate that they like the brand’s posts, share them on their
wall or simply comment. These behaviors of brand fans are known as social media
engagement. Consumers’ personality traits are also essential factor for the enhancement
of user-generated contents on social media. Companies are capitalizing their financial
value through social media transformation in business because of the increasing
popularity of social media among consumers. Quantitative analysis of social media’s
financial value to the organization is crucial to justify the investment of significant
resources in it. Social media enables the organization to utilize rich information about
consumer decisions with the help of information technology advancement which is
inaccessible through traditional media. Social media not only enables the investors to
perform sentiment analysis of firm’s contents but also to analyze the brand performance
and its future value. it can arm the investors with unceasingly updating information
about the future performance of their prospective firm, It may be the most important
predictor of firm equity value function. Thus, current research analyzes the factors
affecting consumer’s engagement in social media with respect to behavior of liking,
commenting and sharing on Facebook brand fan pages, and analyzes the mediating
effect of modes of interaction and the moderating effect of culture, on relationship
between post dimensions, personality traits and consumer engagement and the impact of
this engagement on financial performance of the organization.
Based on social learning theory, uses and gratification theory, grounded theory,
personality traits theory, extended Fama and French modeling and Greet Hofstede’s
cultural dimensions theory, the paper makes financial performance of the organization
as pointcut, and construct the theoretical framework about the effect of social media
marketing on organizational financial performance, which is the theoretical base of the
whole paper. This study analyzes the effect of social media marketing on the financial
performance of the organization. Firstly, this paper analyzes the impact of brand fan
page post content dimension’s impact on social media engagement of brand fans.
Secondly, it analyzes the effect of personality traits on the social media engagement of
consumers, then put forward the impact of this engagement of consumers on the
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Abstract
financial performance of the organizations. Moreover, this study also analyzes the
moderating effect of cultural differences on these relationships.
This paper analyzes the impact of brand post dimensions and personality traits
impact on social media engagement of consumers with the moderating effect of culture
based on the personality traits theory, social learning theory, uses and gratification
theory, grounded theory and Greet Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory. To empirically
test the hypothesis, current research analyzed empirically the data of five international
Fast Food brands: Burger King (BK), Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), McDonald's,
Subway, and Domino’s, that were posting contents actively on the wall of their brand
fan page on Facebook for six months period. Facebook fan pages were from three
different countries: Australia (AUS), United States of America (USA) and United
Kingdom (UK). The result shows that all determinants of the fan page post are not
equally suitable for enhancement of social media engagement. Moreover, their impact
and intensity vary across different cultures. Results also showed that the relationship
between personality traits and social media engagement behaviors has been mediated by
interaction modes. It is suggested that consumers possessing same personality traits
from various countries react differently to the post on Facebook brand page, specifically
when considering the individual’s Facebook functions.
Based on extended Fama and French model and vector autoregressive technique,
this paper analyzes the effect of social media engagement on firm equity value and then,
the this research evaluates whether social media metrics specifically in terms of
Facebook (FB) and Twitter metrics are related to stock market performance. This paper
also analyzes the effect of social media engagement on the organizational financial
performance. Social media metrics provide a powerful source in online environment for
prediction of firm performance. Moreover, this paper also analyzes, which of these
metrics (Facebook and/or Twitter) has more significant assoication and discovers the
dynamics of these relationships. The results indicate that social media engagement
directly impacts on the firm financial performance. Moreover, FB metrics are
significant leading indicators of firm equity value. Interestingly, Twitter metrics, as
compared to FB metrics, are found to have significant but substantially weaker
predictive relationship with organizational equity value.
This research strengthens our views with a sound theoretical base and fills the gap
in social media fan engagement literature. The empirical findings are supportive of the
inclusion of shyness as personality traits into the model. Moreover, moderating role of
culture incorporates a sound contribution to the literature of social media fan
engagement. Overall, current study is an important step in understanding the factors and
motives affecting consumer’s Facebook and Twitter behavior and social media
engagement in different cultures, and it provides fruitful insights for managers of the
brands intending to utilize Facebook and Twitter as part of their promotion mix strategy.
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