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The phenomenal growth of interactive digital technology has impacted almost every aspect of young consumers' daily lives over the past two decades. This new interactive revolution has resulted from noteworthy achievements in the information superhighway (Arens, 2004), known as the Internet, which recently exceeded 3 bn users (Internet World Stats, 2015). Social networking became much quicker with the arrival of the Internet and the globalization that accompanied it, and this gave rise to innovative information communication technology (ICT) channels, which were dubbed social media and/or Web 2.0. But social networking is not a new phenomenon, as it has always been within human nature to communicate and socialize with one another, as well as to recommend, comment and alert each other about commercial content (Uitz, 2012). Hence, a majority of young Internet users also make use of one or more forms of online social media (Barenblatt, 2015). Social media has become an indispensable part of life in the modern-day era, especially among young consumers (teenagers and adolescents) known as Generation Z (also referred to as iGeneration, Plurals and Generation Next) who have enthusiastically adopted this new online ICT platform (McCrindle and Wolfinger, 2009; MacKenzie et al. , 2012; James and Levin, 2015).
Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, WeChat and Google+, permit young users to create personalized online pages, communicate and interact with friends, as well as exchange content that they have created themselves (user-generated content) and/or information from other brand-related sources (Matthee, 2011; Statista, 2015). Social behavior and how consumers think have conventionally been disseminated by media such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines, but in the twenty-first century, social media has begun to replace traditional media's enduring and influential role on young consumers. This change in behavior represents both an opportunity and a challenge from an organization's viewpoint (Uitz, 2012; Nhlapo, 2015). Marketers progressively depend more on social and mobile ICT channels to market and promote their brands amid the youth. Additionally, the notion of implementing content that is both entertaining and current would entice young consumers to interact and disseminate the information to their friends. This significant feature, which is also referred to as word-of-mouth (WOM), can be considered as the future of social media marketing communications...