An Examination of How Social Media Participation and Customer Satisfaction Affect the Likelihood that a Business Will Make Another Transaction in the Hospitality Sector

This paper explores the moderation role of social media and customer satisfaction to determine its influence on the probability of customer repeat purchases in the hospitality industry. Since the hospitality industry has grown more conscious of digital technologies, applications like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have determined fundamental strategies for customers and service promotion. The uses of these platforms extend business to customers, timely promotions are made, and customer feedback, which can impact satisfaction and customer loyalty, is received. To this end, the study seeks to determine the correlation between customers’ use of social media and customer satisfaction and how these variables impact customer revisits. This study conducted a cross-sectional quantitative survey of 100 hospitality customers to determine the impact of engagement on the customers’ behavior as influenced by social media usage. This study established a highly positive relationship between an establishment’s participation in social media and future patronage (Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.963), indicating that social media helps boost customer loyalty and subsequent purchases. Nevertheless, the correlation between social media presence and the Customer Satisfaction index was relatively low; thus, those other variables have a stronger relationship with Customer Satisfaction. While social media has proven useful in encouraging customers to visit an establishment multiple times, it seems to be less useful in increasing their satisfaction level. The study implies that social media is an important element in customer retention; however, there can be other ways to improve customer satisfaction. It brings new information for constructing a theoretical framework for investigating digital engagement in hospitality. It emphasizes managerial applicability to enhance social media utilization for revenue generation through repeat patronage and customer retention on top of other factors affecting user satisfaction.