Resumo

Social media narrowed distances and crossed borders, being a constant reality in the daily lives of both organizations and today's society, bringing opportunities for communication, expression, and business. In marketing research, literature has focused on social media as a partner in the relationship between companies/brands and consumers, however, little is known about social media as brands, especially the relational strategies used by such brands to foster their relationships with social media users.

Based on the need of exploring the relational aspects between social media and users, we question: what are the main aspects that lead users to relate to social media brands? How do users evaluate their relationship with social media brands? Thus, the main objective of this paper is to develop a measurement model to assess the relationship between social media brands and users, here called the Social Media Relationship Scale (SMR Scale). As a secondary objective, we analyze the association of each dimension of the SMR Scale with users’ satisfaction.

We build our theoretical framework based on relationship marketing literature and its focus on developing long-term relationships between brands and customers. In this context, social media has arisen as an important partner of companies and brands in fostering such relationships, providing resources to relational strategies. Regardless the interest on social media in the context of relationship marketing, the perspective of social media as brands remain underexplored. More specifically, the relationship between social media users and social media brands is a gap in the scientific literature.

In a multimethod study, we followed Churchill’s (1979) and Rossiter’s (2002) guidance for scale development. We started with a qualitative stage with interviews, judges' analysis, and semantic analysis, analyzing data through content analysis, with the objective of generating a scale specific to the context of social media brands. Then, we conducted a survey with 602 social media users. For data analysis, we used content analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, through structural equation modeling. For hypotheses test, we performed correlation and linear regression analyzes.

We presented a scientific instrument with 15 items distributed in three factors: Trust, Content and Interaction. Furthermore, we found the influence of these dimensions on user satisfaction. This is particularly important in the context of social media brands, as their relationship with the users surpasses the idea of a commercial transaction, embracing aspects concerning privacy, information sharing, information quality, socialization and interactivity. With this, we reveal the most relevant aspects connecting social media brands and their users.

The main objective of this study was achieved. The SMR Scale presented evidence of reliability, internal validity, construct validity, and content validity, constituting a reliable scientific measure with possibilities of application in relational studies in marketing and consumer behavior research. For social media managers, the scale can be used for diagnostic purposes to improve users' experience. In an increasingly virtually connected world, investing in the quality of relationships can bring substantial results for organizations and society as a whole.

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