The Effects of Social Media Content on Continuous Purchase Intention in Traditional Dessert Cafés: A Stimulus–Organism–Response Framework

Abstract

The growth of traditional dessert cafés enhances local cultural heritage and the local tourism and economy while evoking consumers' nostalgia. To remain competitive, these cafés employ various marketing strategies, including modernized product presentation, brand collaborations, and social media engagement, which have further intensified market competition. This study investigates consumers’ continuous purchase intention toward traditional dessert cafés using the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework, examining how social media content influences emotional states—specifically, brand storytelling attitudes, brand attachment, and brand trust—which, in turn, affect continuous purchase intention. A sample of 251 respondents was selected via judgmental sampling, with a few screening questions administered, such as preferences for and most recent visits to traditional dessert cafés, to ensure they qualified as respondents. PROCESS Model 4 was used to analyze the hypothesized direct and indirect effects.  This model explains 52.7% of the variance in continuous purchase intention (R2 = 0.527). The results indicate that social media content has no significant effect on continuous purchase intention (β = 0.011, p > 0.05) but does have indirect effects through storytelling (β = 0.148, p < 0.01), brand attachment (β = 0.201, p < 0.01), and brand trust (β = 0.156, p < 0.01). This suggests that brand attachment is the strongest mediator, followed by storytelling and brand trust. The implications of this study inform marketers and traditional dessert café owners in developing content to foster brand attachment and trust, thereby encouraging customers to return to the café.