Impact of Social Media Marketing by Apparel Brands on Consumers’ Willingness to Pay A Premium: A Study on the Mediating Effect of Consumer Trust
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Abstract
With the rapid development of mobile communication technologies and digital information dissemination over wireless network platforms, social media marketing has become an essential channel for apparel brands to influence consumer decision-making and value perception. This study investigates the impact of social media marketing on consumers’ willingness to pay a premium (WTPP) by incorporating consumer trust as a mediating variable within the Stimulus– Organism–Response (SOR) framework. Five dimensions of social media marketing—entertainment, interactivity, trendiness, customization, and word-of-mouth—are identified through literature analysis and validated using questionnaire-based empirical research. The results demonstrate that entertainment, customization, interactivity, and trendiness significantly enhance consumers’ WTPP, whereas word-of-mouth does not exhibit a statistically significant effect. Moreover, consumer trust partially mediates the effects of entertainment, customization, and trendiness on WTPP, indicating that digital marketing stimuli can improve premium payment conversion by strengthening brand reliability and perceived value. By revealing the differentiated influence paths of social media marketing dimensions, this study provides a data-supported decision framework for apparel brands to optimize online communication strategies. The findings also offer practical references for intelligent information dissemination, consumer behavior modeling, and wireless network-based digital marketing systems in engineering-oriented communication environments.
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