Salient role and centrality of trust in social media marketing

Abstract

This chapter points to the importance of trust in a business scenario, followed by deliberation on probable avenues of investigation into the antecedents of trust in the context of social media marketing and their effect on certain outcomes. It provides direction for research avenues as well as a rough guidance to social media marketing managers to evaluate their efforts with the help of a predefined matrix. Trust plays a vital role in the context of social media marketing. This evolving form of marketing, based on the Theory of Six Degrees of Separation, gains popularity from the assumption that there are not more than six steps separating any two individuals in the world. Social media have the potential to rapidly emerge as the most successful and effective marketing platform, provided consumers feel a sense of trust in business entities using them.