Investigating the Impact of Social Media Marketing Activities in Enhancing Consumer Brand Engagement on Instagram in the Fashion Industry of Sri Lanka

Abstract

The emergence of social media has transformed traditional marketing by offering dynamic platforms for consumer engagement. Despite the dominance of Instagram in terms of engagement rates, limited empirical research has explored its role in driving consumer-brand interactions, particularly within the fashion sector, when examined through the lens of the Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT). This study investigates how five social media marketing strategies – interaction, trendiness, entertainment, customization, and electronic word of mouth – affect customer brand engagement on Instagram, with particular attention to the visual and interactive features of the platform that appeal to user motivations and gratifications. Guided by a positivistic philosophy and a deductive approach, the study collected data through a structured survey distributed to Instagram users in Sri Lanka who actively engage with fashion brands, yielding 449 valid responses following data screening. Reliability of the measurement scales was confirmed using Cronbach’s alpha, with all constructs exceeding the recommended threshold of 0.7. An ordered probit regression model was applied to analyse the data, as it is well suited to handling ordinal dependent variables. The results indicate that word of mouth, interaction, and trendiness have significant positive effects on customer brand engagement, while customization and entertainment show significant negative effects, suggesting that Sri Lankan consumers respond differently to these strategies than reported in prior international studies, potentially due to contextual factors such as price sensitivity and trust concerns. These findings extend the application of UGT to the Instagram context and offer practical insights for marketers seeking to strengthen brand engagement in the Instagram-driven fashion market, underscoring the importance of tailoring social media marketing strategies to local consumer behaviour rather than assuming universal effects across markets.