The Impact of Social Media Marketing on Consumers’ Buying Decisions in the Restaurant Industry: Mediating Role of Trustworthiness

This study aimed to measure the impact of social media marketing on the consumer purchasing process in the restaurant industry of Dhaka city. The random selection provided a structured questionnaire to 200 participants, and 113 replies were deemed appropriate for the research. An MS Excel sheet, SPSS (V, 24), and SPSS AMOS (V, 22) were used to validate the demographic, descriptive, and inferential analyses. The Pearson product–moment correlation exposes a significant positive correlation among the variables. In regression analysis, the proposed model and the independent variable (trustworthiness, business process, user experience, and consumer engagement) can describe 27.5% of the selected dependent variable (consumer purchasing behavior). Finally, the hypothesis testing from the research survey data depicts that trustworthiness and consumer engagement significantly impact consumer purchasing behavior. In addition, the model proposed three mediating effects of trustworthiness relating to social media marketing and consumers’ buying decisions in the restaurant industry, and the outcomes revealed that the direct effect of both business processes and user experience on consumer purchasing behavior does not work. Meanwhile, the presence of consumers’ trust in social media marketing enhances the predictive ability of business processes and user experience, significantly impacting consumer purchasing behavior.