The Relationship between Social Media Marketing and Consumer Behavior Based on Age Group with the Mediating Role of Brand Equity in Irancell Communication Services Company

How to make a brand valuable in the mind of the customer has become one of the main challenges of companies. One of these valuable resources that has not received much attention is the media and social networks. This research examines the impact of social media on brand equity from the customers' point of view, as well as their effects on consumer behavior. In terms of the method of data collection, the current research is a descriptive survey and it is considered applied study in terms of purpose. The purpose of present study is to test theoretical concepts in real situations and to solve concrete problems, and in terms of the relationship between variables, is considered correlational, and library studies and distribution of questionnaires were used to collect the data of the statistical community of social network advertising recipients. The statistical population was the audience of social media advertisements. Cluster sampling method was used to determine the composition of the sample. Out of 504 available samples, 384 people responded, which was 76%. In the current research, a questionnaire tool was used, which was adjusted based on the Likert scale. After the descriptive survey of the statistical population of the research, using inferential methods, the statistical analysis of the obtained studies has been undertaken to test the hypotheses through SPSS 22 software. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to check the normality of the distribution of the variables, the analysis of variance was used to check the significance of the difference between the variables, and the correlation was used to check the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable. The main research model has also been tested through Lisrel software and structural equation technique and through factor analysis of the data. The results indicate the confirmation of all the hypotheses and at the end, suggestions have been presented in line with the research hypotheses.