Investigation of Social Media Metrics With Respect to Demand Modeling for Promotional Products

ABSTRACT Social media (SM) has revolutionized the way companies connect with customers, enabling more personalized marketing strategies and enhancing engagement. With platforms like Facebook offering detailed user data, businesses can create more targeted advertising campaigns. This paper proposes an approach to categorizing SM variables based on their SM marketing objectives with respect to the demand modeling for promotional products, which is particularly challenging due to limited historical data. A taxonomy is developed of the Facebook marketing metrics that drive consumer behavior with respect to product demand. Moreover, the study explores how the SM marketing metrics groups impact short‐term demand modeling for promotional products in an analysis of a real case study and finds that paid Facebook metrics, which are generated from paid advertising efforts on the platform, are the best predictors of demand for their promotional products.