Exploring the Impact of Social Media Usage on Consumer Engagement: A Regression-Based Empirical Study

social media usage; consumer engagement; gratifications; usage mode; uses and gratifications theory; stimulus-organism-response; regression analysis

Brands invest heavily in building audiences on social media, yet a large following does not guarantee that people actually care about the brand. This study asks why some social media use turns into genuine consumer engagement while other use does not. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework and Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), it proposes that social media usage (usage intensity, usage frequency and brand interaction) shapes consumer engagement (cognitive processing, affection and activation) mainly through the gratifications people receive from social platforms, namely entertainment, information and empowerment. Usage mode, which covers consumption, contribution and creation, is tested as a moderator of the link between usage and gratifications. Survey data were collected from 287 active social media users through a structured questionnaire on a five-point Likert scale and analysed using reliability analysis, correlation analysis, multiple regression and the PROCESS macro. Social media usage predicted both gratifications (β = 0.527) and consumer engagement (β = 0.558). Gratifications partially mediated the usage–engagement relationship and accounted for about 42% of the total effect. The effect of usage on gratifications was more than twice as strong for respondents high in usage mode (B = 0.735) as for those low in it (B = 0.301). All five hypotheses were supported. The findings suggest that what consumers get from social media, and how actively they take part, matters more than the time they spend there.