Beyond Humour: How Memes Shape Brand Associations and Drive Purchase Choices

Memes are the perfect marketing tools a brand can use while promoting their products or services. In this ever-changing consumer preferences memes are the convenient marketing tools that a consumer pays attention, the usage of memes has become a completely modern approach for brands to seek the attention of consumers. The study examines the impact of internet meme that spreads through social media which catches the consumer attention and improves the intention of purchasing products and also learn about the brands. A structured questionnaire and convenience sampling technique are designed to collect data from frequent internet users who are active in social media from Gen-z and have at least a little knowledge on meme marketing, and responses yielded were 353. This paper gives a general study of meme marketing and if the consumer brand relatability and purchase decisions are affected by meme marketing. The findings state that there is a relationship between branding memes and consumer brand relatability and using the memes in social handles affect the consumer behaviour however there is a discomfort among consumers when brands solely use memes for marketing purposes. Also the study found that there is no significance between Gender and meme motivation into buying products. Thus the study contributes to understand the consumer behaviour, purchase intention and likeliness towards the brands. In addition, the authors contribute to the finding the significance of meme in daily life of a consumer and what type of memes would pursue consumers more towards the brand.