Abstract

This study examined the relationship between social media marketing and consumer buying behaviour of supermarkets in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The rapid diffusion of internet-enabled mobile devices and the growing reliance of retail consumers on social networking platforms have reconfigured how shoppers discover, evaluate and patronise supermarket brands. Anchored on the Technology Acceptance Model and the Stimulus–Organism–Response framework, the study disaggregated social media marketing into four dimensions, namely social media advertising, influencer marketing, online customer engagement and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). A cross-sectional survey design was adopted, and data were obtained from 384 supermarket consumers selected through convenience sampling. A structured questionnaire validated by experts and assessed for reliability using Cronbach’s alpha (α = 0.87) served as the instrument for data collection. Descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlation and multiple regression analysis were employed to analyse the data with the aid of SPSS version 27. The findings revealed that all four dimensions of social media marketing exert a positive and statistically significant influence on consumer buying behaviour, with electronic word-of-mouth and social media advertising emerging as the strongest predictors. The study concluded that social media marketing is a salient determinant of consumer patronage of supermarkets in Yenagoa. It recommended that supermarket managers should invest deliberately in interactive content, credible influencer partnerships and reputation management to stimulate favourable buying responses among consumers.