THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING ON CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT: A STUDY IN THE DOMESTIC AIRLINES IN THAILAND

The world of internet is rapidly growing in an enormous way and it is used in different activities in the human personal life and also in the business. Social media, for instance, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Line and YouTube, is used for marketing strategy in several businesses as well. The aim of this dissertation is to study the impact of social media marketing on customer engagement, specific in domestic airlines in Thailand. Researcher would like to explore the elements of social media marketing; brand awareness, sponsored advertising, content, hashtag and customer service, that have an impact on customer engagement. The conceptual framework was created from the secondary data. The primary data was collected from the online questionnaire that distributed to 400 Thai millennials as a sample group. Due to Thai millennial is the population group who uses social media in daily life and might have a chance to see or interact with domestic airline social media account. The result of survey indicated that hashtag, customer service, content and sponsored advertising had a positive impact on customer engagement, but brand awareness didn’t. Thus, domestic airline brands should consider these four elements of social media marketing as part of the marketing strategy, especially on hashtag rather than focus on brand awareness