Evolving factors influencing consumers' attitudes toward social media marketing and their impact on social media usage

This study aims to increase understanding of the factors affecting consumer attitudes towards social media marketing and the use of social media. By applying the reasoned action and its early variations, the paper proposes a research model, which examines the determinants of consumer attitudes towards the use of social media marketing and consequent impact on social media use. Data for the study was collected from 372 consumers in Saudi Arabia. Using the Partial Least Square method, the model was tested using a two-stage process, model evaluation and testing the significance of the model. The findings support most of the hypotheses. In summary, of the nine hypotheses tested, six were supported, while three were not. The results show that knowledge of social media and its following have positive effects on attitude towards social media marketing and use of social media, while fear and foresight of social media has no effect on attitude towards SMM and use of social media. Attitude towar