Perceived social media agility and consumer responses: The roles of consumer experience and media richness orientation

Purpose: Drawing on uses and gratifications theory, the stimulus-organism-response model, and media richness theory, this study examines how perceived social media agility influences electronic word-of-mouth and booking intentions directly and indirectly through consumer experience, and how media richness orientation moderates these effects.

Design/methodology/approach: Three scenario-based online experiments employed a single-factor, between-subjects design to test the proposed model. Participants were drawn from Türkiye (N = 154), India (N = 188), and a Prolific sample (N = 211).

Findings: Perceived social media agility positively influences electronic word-of-mouth and booking intentions, both directly and indirectly via consumer experience. These effects are stronger among consumers with greater media richness orientation, providing support for the proposed moderation and conditional indirect effects.

Practical implications: Hotel managers should strengthen social media agility by delivering timely, personalized, and rich interactions that enhance consumer experience and encourage favorable consumer responses. Incorporating consumers’ media richness orientation can further refine targeting and optimize engagement strategies.

Originality/value: Our study conceptualizes and empirically validates perceived social media agility in hotel settings and identifies consumer experience and media richness orientation as the psychological process and contextual boundary conditions explaining how and when perceived social media agility influences consumer responses.