Explaining the Role of Company's Social Media Marketing on Customer Engagement: Examining Brand Experience and Customer Age Generation

Objective
In recent years, marketing activities on social media have been considered important as one of the strategies to advance the company's social media marketing goals (Wibowo, Chen, Wiangin, Ma & Ruangkanjanases, 2020). In the world of business, the advancement of technology has influenced consumer behaviour through social media (Saghat Foroush, 2023). Social media platforms such as social networking (like Facebook), microblogging (like X), brand blogs, video sharing (like YouTube) as well as photo-sharing platforms (like Instagram) are most widely used by marketers to promote their products (Zollo, Filieri, Rialti & Yoon, 2020). With the ever-increasing advances in technology, most companies should create a positive image and active online presence and continuous interaction with their customers and other Internet users through websites and social networks (Razmi, MirzaeianKhamseh & Soltani Tajabadi, 2023).
Corporate social networks are a subset of social media that provide users with online interactions and content sharing (Verhagen, Swen, Feldberg & Merikivi, 2015; Wibowo et al., 2020). Among the most popular social networks in the world and even in Iran, we can mention the Instagram social network, which had more than 1 billion and 300 million active users by 2023, and it is predicted that this number will increase to 5.5 in 2025. reach 1 billion active users (Statista, 2023). This social network is also popular in Iran because the research of Zobeidi, Komendantova and Yazdanpanah (2022) showed that 27% of Iranian internet media users prefer this social network to other media.
On the one hand, social media marketing activities can be profitable for the company (Zollo et al., 2020), and for customers, the experience of interacting with social networks brings more engagement, satisfaction and loyalty (Yu, Yuan, Kim & Wang, 2021). The users of the Instagram social network have acknowledged that this network has been able to help them in sharing information and learning appropriately (Zobeidi et al., 2022). In the meantime, marketing researchers have paid particular attention to brand and branding because they are known as valuable assets of the company (Oliveira, Sonza & da Silva, 2023). Considering the growth of social media, brand experience and its effects on strengthening the company are considered strategic requirements for managers to create more value (Harandi, 2015).
Today, the food industry has taken a special place in the global economy, and due to this special place, the attention of officials and researchers has been directed to it (Tarvirdizadeh, Mirzaei Daryani, Nahidi Amir Khiz, Pasbani & Honarmand Azimi, 2023). On the other hand, social media marketing is crucial for companies active in this industry, and the effort to engage potential customers and social network users with the company's brand has increased; this research examines social media marketing activities in creating a brand experience. This research was conducted on one of the companies in this industry, which produces hot drinks, such as coffee and tea, to provide suggestions to its active managers to increase user engagement and create a better brand experience.
Therefore, the main goal of this research is to explain the role of marketing activities in the company's social media, emphasizing the mediating role of brand experience in the food industry and producing hot drinks (coffee and tea) and providing suggestions to increase customer engagement through marketing activities on the Instagram social network. Also, the current research seeks to answer the following questions:

What effect do the marketing manager's activities in the company's social media have on the perception of customers' experience of the brand?
How does customers' brand experience of the brand affect customer engagement;
What effect does the company's social media marketing activities have on customer engagement?
What role can brand experience play in the relationship between a company's social media marketing efforts and customer engagement?
Are the company's social media marketing activities effective in the perception of which age group of customers and the brand experience?

Research Methodology
The methodology of this research with a survey strategy is in the paradigm of positivism research, and it has been done using data collected from customers (or users) of a sample company, which includes 389 customers. The researchers collected the data through an online questionnaire. The structural equation modeling method was used to analyze the data.
Findings
The findings showed that marketing activities on the Instagram social network are significant through the mediating role of brand experience on customer engagement.
Discussion & Conclusion
Also, the results of this research confirm that marketing managers, by designing activities on Instagram, can both directly and indirectly and, through the role of intermediary brand experience, increase customer engagement with the brand and the brand's Instagram page. Considering that the significance related to the relationships between the variables in the first four hypotheses was more significant than the absolute value of 1.96, four of the five hypotheses of the current research were confirmed with 95% confidence. Despite this, due to the moderation of the user's age variable, the results showed that social media marketing activities on the brand experience did not have a significant difference in the eyes of people from different age groups including generations X, Y and Z.
The results and suggestions of this research can be valuable and practical for marketing managers to prioritize their activities in social media.