About the Research

Introduction

Many lifestyle brands today utilize and take advantage of social media as an outlet for both cost-effective marketing and public relations, especially due to increased exposure to audiences on social media platforms. These lifestyle brands attempt to embody the opinions, interest, attitudes, and ideas of target audiences and use this information to shape the way consumers integrate brands into their lives. Brands that fall under this category utilize individual and group identities based on choices, practices, experiences, and even backgrounds (which include could also includes social class, ethnicity, subcultures, and nationality among others). Not exempt from these lifestyle brands are contemporary beauty and cosmetics brands that leverage the individual interests and attitudes of women, especially millennials, towards cosmetics and beauty. Social media marketing in itself has flourished in recent years due to the availability and accessibility of various platforms. The abundance of social media users and platforms nowadays has led the beauty industry to take advantage of this phenomenon. As a result, it has become very common that social media users have subsequently become major influencers who take part (both voluntarily and inadvertently) in many marketing strategies conducted by both established and emerging lifestyle beauty brands. It has been proven time and time again, that social media has become a thriving channel for marketing and advertising in a constantly evolving atmosphere. However, how exactly does social media marketing bring value to a brand? And similarly what benefits do consumers get from unknowingly or knowingly participating in a brand’s social media marketing strategy?

Past research have touched upon aspects of social media use, which includes brand marketing, social media interactions, and even motivations for social media use, with a large focus on the marketer’s or the brand’s point of view rather then their audiences and social media users. This study will take a slightly different approach in understanding why social media users are driven to interact with brands online, which consequently results in increased exposure for these brands. By providing a backdrop for social media marketing and brand practices, the study can juxtapose marketer behaviors with that of social media users in order to ascertain the relationship between marketing efficacy and brand interactions through specified social networking platform. This study will attempt to answer the following questions: What really motivates social media users to interact with brands through social media networking platforms (specifically Twitter and Instagram)? And finally, will results of an in-depth analysis on social media user interactions satisfy and validate existing research on user-generated content and utility for social media users? In addition to addressing these questions, this study can aid in conceptualizing how brands can use these motivations to create marketing campaigns that drive increased brand-consumer interactions through social media.