Building brand loyalty on social media: theories, measurements, antecedents, and consequences

As social media has developed in the past two decades, researchers have been investigating how to build brand loyalty on social media platforms. However, there is a lack of comprehensive review on the findings of studies in this area. The purpose of this study is to identify research gaps and inform future research directions by conducting a field examination on the scholarship of building brand loyalty on social media. The study reviewed a total of 86 papers on building brand loyalty using social media published between 2009 and 2020. The results revealed five clusters of theories applied in this stream of scholarship, namely consumer self-identity and consumption style theories, brand community-related theories, decision-making theories, theories focused on communication medium, and relationship-based theories. Moreover, we identified eight major antecedents and five consequences of brand loyalty in the context of social media communities. Applying Oliver’s (1999) four-phase loyalty framework, we consolidate eleven categories of brand loyalty measurements and propose a framework of loyalty dimensions and its antecedents and consequences. Researchers who intend to conduct a brand loyalty study may find the examples of the measurement items summarized in this study useful for their research.