Predictors and buying happiness outcome from cosmetic brands engagement on Instagram

• Social Media consumer brand engagement (CBE) generates psychological benefits. • Examined impact of consumer involvement & innovativeness on CBE & buying happiness • Got quantitative data from 203 middle class consumers through snowballing sampling • SEM results show involvement and innovativeness impacted all three CBE dimensions • Except for cognitive CBE, affection and activation CBE predicted buying happiness Driven by the platform’s interactive, visual, and dynamic nature, consumer brand engagement (CBE) on Instagram is emerging as a critical area of interest in digital marketing and consumer behaviour. Consumers engage with brands on Instagram and other social media platforms to form any or all of the three CBE dimensions of emotional, cognitive, and behavioural bonds with brands. Both marketing-related and consumer-related benefits can be gained from CBE, yet much remains unknown about the consumer-related benefits and predictors of CBE. The uses and gratification theory suggests that CBE, even on social media spaces, should generate personal/consumer benefits. CBE varies digitally depending on the subject (sample), object (brand type) and context (culture/country). Thus, guided by the uses and gratification theory, we examined how much South African consumers’ involvement and innovativeness impact the three dimensions of CBE with cosmetic brands on Instagram and the resultant buying happiness. Data was quantitatively collected from 203 middle-class consumers through snowballing sampling. The structural equation modelling results revealed that consumer involvement and innovativeness positively impacted all three dimensions of CBE. Except for the cognitive CBE dimension, the affection and activation CBE dimensions significantly predicted buying happiness. The demonstration from this study that psychological benefits are gained from social media CBE should strengthen social media brand positioning and consumer-brand relationships endeavours. Theoretically, literature on CBE, digital, relationship marketing and consumer behaviour is enriched.