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1. Introduction
Technological advances such as social media have transformed lives more than ever before in the history of mankind (Babu et al., 2021; Shadbolt and Hampson, 2018; Marakhimov and Joo, 2017). It is increasingly ever challenging for users to avoid interacting with social media platforms (Daowd et al., 2020; Shadbolt and Hampson, 2018; Kuchler, 2017). The exponential growth in these platforms has created many touchpoints (Roberts, 2018; Sharma, 2019). Consumers share big data digital footprints on these platforms. Digital footprints are digital DNAs that consumers share on technological platforms including social media. It is estimated that users spend around 144 min on social media platforms and 463 exabyte of data are created globally each day (Desjardins, 2019; Statista, 2020). Social media are considered to be one of the major sources of digital footprints (Karabatak and Karabatak, 2020; Azucar et al., 2018; Muhammad et al., 2018; Tuton and Solomon, 2015) and a rich source of insight for marketers (Winter et al., 2021; Henderson and Bowley, 2010). The number of social media users would exceed 3.77 billion in 2021 and expected to reach 4.41 billion by the end of 2025 (Statista, 2021). The significance of social media platforms and digital footprints are increasing every year (Aydın, 2019) with advertising revenue exceeding $51 billion in 2018 with 11% growth annually (Cooper, 2018). Social networking sites (SNS) alone have generated $85.21 worth of orders in 2017, with the current overall e-retail sales of $2.8 trillion and a further growth of $4.8 trillion by 2021 (Statista, 2020). Furthermore, user-generated content on social media will be the main channel for the enrichment of information base for public administrative bodies and commercial firms (Baur, 2017).
Consumers leave digital footprints on social media by sharing comments, photos, videos, review of products, bookmarks and microblogs and leave digital trails of their behaviour on social media (Malhotra et al., 2012). These digital footprints exhibit their interests, social and cultural identities, occupational and geographical attachments which are essentially required by marketers (Charlesworth, 2014; Golder and Macy, 2014; Michael et al., 2014). Although consumers use social media excessively, they may or may not be aware of their digital footprints that they share on social media platforms (Muhammad et al.