Investigating the role of consumers participation in social media marketing communications and consumer loyalty in the tourism industry

The radical innovation in social and digital marketing techniques has created a very dynamic platform to gain consumer loyalty. Consumer loyalty helps to gain new consumers and retain existing consumers for a longer period. Loyal consumers also spread positive word of mouth and influence others to buy the company's products. This paper aims to find out the elements of social marketing communications that play important role in gaining consumer loyalty. The elements such as expressive message, customer co-creation, and consumer engagement have been considered for this study. The purposive sampling technique was used to select and interview 392 respondents of the Himachal state of India. The findings suggest that consumer engagement is the most important elements of social media marketing communication to gain consumer loyalty followed by posting expressive messages on the company's social media page. The implications of the study are discussed.