Brand and consumer engagement behaviors on Facebook brand pages: Let's have a (positive) conversation

This paper examines consumer-brand engagement on social media, focusing on the dynamic interplay between brands and consumers as well as among consumers themselves. In addition to liking and sharing behaviors, we look at what influences consumers to provide feedback to brands by commenting on brand posts, connect with other consumers by replying to their comments and agree with other consumers by liking their comments and replies. Drawing on a large longitudinal dataset from 2740 Facebook brand pages across 25 industries, a multilevel multivariate autoregressive zero-inflated negative binomial model is used to examine how brand post and response behaviors are related to specific consumer engagement behaviors. Results show that the amount of brand posts indirectly affects consumer comments through increased liking and sharing, but with diminishing returns. Liking is key as it increases positive and attenuates negative feedback, whereas sharing is associated with both positive and negative consumer-brand comments. Posting photos and videos encourages liking, with photos having increasing returns. Videos are the only format with a direct positive influence on consumer-brand comments, though with decreasing effect. Brand replies to consumer comments, even delayed ones, have little effect on negative conversations but prompt replies would be more beneficial as they bolster positive consumer comments. Moreover, our findings provide evidence for both a “positivity spiral” and “negativity spiral”, with the negativity spiral stronger than the positivity one. Taken together, these findings shed light on how marketers can stimulate positive conversations between brands and consumers on social media.     

Differential Effects of Value Consciousness and Coupon Proneness on Consumers’ Persuasion Knowledge of Pricing Tactics

Pricing tactics persuasion knowledge (PTPK) is a relatively new concept that seeks to extend the research on persuasion knowledge to the pricing domain. Pricing tactics persuasion knowledge refers to the persuasion knowledge of consumers about marketers’ pricing tactics. Employing an acquisition–transaction utility theoretic perspective, this study examines the differential effects of value consciousness and coupon proneness on the accuracy, confidence, and calibration of consumers’ pricing tactics persuasion knowledge. The study finds that coupon proneness is negatively related to accuracy, confidence, and calibration of PTPK, while value consciousness is positively related to accuracy, confidence, and calibration of PTPK. The implications of the study are outlined.     

Exploring how consumers cope with online behavioral advertising

This study explores how consumers cope with a computer technology-driven persuasion tactic called online behavioral advertising (OBA). By tracking consumers’ online behaviors, OBA delivers highly tailored advertising messages to individual consumers, giving rise to serious privacy concerns due to their covert nature. Integrating the persuasion knowledge model and the protection motivation theory, we employed a survey method (N = 442) to examine how consumers cope with OBA based on their persuasion knowledge, cognitive appraisal, and cognitive processing variables. The results reveal that persuasion knowledge was indirectly associated with coping behavior of ad avoidance throughout cognitive appraisal process (perceived risks; perceived benefits; self-efficacy). Privacy concerns partially mediated such associations with ad avoidance. Interestingly, cognitive processing variables (reactance; perceived personalization) were significantly associated with ad avoidance without being related to persuasion knowledge. The implications for theoretical, managerial, and social contributions are discussed.     

Attracting Comments: Digital Engagement Metrics on Facebook and Financial Performance

Many companies are now using social media such as Facebook for advertising and marketing purposes. To understand how using social media affects a company's business performance from a digital engagement perspective, this study examines how user comments on company Facebook posts influence company revenue. S&P 500 companies' revenue information in a five-year time span (from 2010 to 2015) is collected, and this information is matched to more than 24 million user comments directed at these companies' Facebook posts. The hypotheses are tested using static (fixed effects [FE] and random effects [RE]) as well as dynamic (generalized method of moments [GMM]) panel data analyses in econometric methods. The estimation results indicate that digital engagement volume, defined as the total number of Facebook comments a company received, has a significant and positive effect on revenue. In addition, digital engagement valence, defined as the average tone of Facebook comments directed toward a company, also has a significant and positive effect on revenue. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

The trustworthy brand: effects of conclusion explicitness and persuasion awareness on consumer judgments

Two studies examine how a consumer’s awareness of marketing tactics influences the effectiveness of conclusion explicitness advertising (implicit, open-ended or explicit, closed-ended conclusions). Study 1 shows that persuasion awareness and conclusion explicitness influence brand evaluations. Persuasion aware consumers prefer implicit conclusions in comparative advertising that allow them to decide which brand is superior, rather than explicit conclusions which state the superior brand. Persuasion unaware consumers show no difference for conclusion explicitness. Brand trust mediates the results. Study 2 demonstrates the robustness of these effects. Research contributions include persuasion awareness as a moderator of conclusion explicitness effects and the role of trust as a mediator. For managers, results show how implicit conclusions can improve the brand evaluations of persuasion aware consumers.     

Cultural Differences in Consumer Engagement in Brand-Related SNS Groups: A Cross-Cultural Study of China and the United States

To gain a better understanding of consumer engagement in brand-related social network site (SNS) groups, this study examines how consumers engage with the brand and other members of the groups among different national cultures through the lens of brand community characteristics and collective value creation practices within brand communities. Through conducting a directed qualitative content analysis of two cases—consumer wall posts in a Facebook group and a Renren group—this study finds supporting evidence that although consumers in both groups actively shared their product use experiences, consumers in the Renren group tended to explicitly express their shared consciousness with other group members, share their product use experiences in a modest and respectful way, and actively engage in social networking, while consumers in the Facebook group tended to focus on product use sharing. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Experiential Engagement and Active vs. Passive Behavior in Mobile Location-based Social Networks: The Moderating Role of Privacy

The study aims to understand how social media and mobile change customer experiences and influence the online active behavior. We explore how leveraging differently on experiences that the users live online helps to increase experiential engagement and mitigate the negative influence of privacy concern on the active use of location-based social networking applications. We conceptualize experiential engagement as a second-order construct that is manifested in two first-order “experience” constructs (Personal Engagement and Social Interactive Engagement). We theorize that our engagement constructs are causally related to consumer active and passive use of a mobile location-based social network and we test (n = 379) the moderating role of privacy concern on this relation in EU and the US. Findings show that Personal Engagement plays an important role influencing active usage when users are more concerned with privacy issues. Social Interactive Engagement shows a significant effect on passive usage meaning that the more people experience a deep sense of community the more they are interested in reading other comments or collecting information. Managerial implications are discussed.     

The impact of pronoun choices on consumer engagement actions: Exploring top global brands' social media communications

To enhance the understanding of consumer engagement with brand content on social media, this study examines how pronoun choices affect different types of consumer engagement (e.g., likes, comments, shares) by simultaneously exploring five different pronoun types (first-person singular, first-person plural, second person, third-person singular, and third-person plural). Furthermore, this study explores how the effects of these linguistic (pronoun) choices vary across two brand classifications: characteristics (hedonic vs. utilitarian) and offerings (goods vs. services). The proposed multivariate Poisson regression model, analyzing 15,788 unique brand posts from Facebook over an 8-month period, reveals differences in engagement due to pronoun usage across brand classifications. These results offer a deeper understanding of how the way brands talk to consumers on social media platforms influences consumers' attitudes (likes), propensity to engage with the brand (comments), and willingness to share branded content with their social networks (shares) across different brand classifications.     

Use of persuasive techniques on Internet shopping sites

Huge strides in technological development combined with marketing strategies have led to dramatic changes in the way information is transmitted and communicated to the consumers, and subsequently used by the consumers. Information has become a dominant factor in determining why, where, what, and how consumers shop, process information, and make decisions. While marketing information has always been an important factor in consumer decision‐making, its provision on demand and added convenience via the Internet has created a need to research the nature and amount of information that these technologies provide. Advertisements use different forms of persuasion to gain consumer attention, meet their economic and emotional shopping needs, to create a positive image of the product, brand, and the shopping medium, and influence consumers to purchase the product. Persuasion may be classified as functional congruity and self‐congruity routes to persuasion (Johar & Sirgy, 1991). Fifty websites were studied for utilitarian and value‐expressive forms of persuasion by product differentiation. The websites were classified as those selling tangible products only and those selling intangible products only, and those selling both tangible and intangible products. The paper will present results of the study along with a discussion and conclusion with implications on consumer well‐being.     

Illusion of safety: How consumers underestimate manipulation and deception in online (vs. offline) shopping contexts

Online commerce changes how consumers shop for products and services—while also giving firms more control over consumers' shopping experience, more access to their information, and leading more firms to use these platforms to their financial advantage. In this research, I examine consumer perceptions of firms when they shop for products and services online (vs. offline), to determine whether consumers feel firms might use certain kinds of manipulative and deceptive tactics against consumers. Results show consumers believe firms are less likely to use manipulative and deceptive practices to increase consumer spending, when they shop online (vs. offline) for products and services. These findings remain consistent despite key individual differences (in ethnicity, gender, age, and time spent online). This research also demonstrates how certain cues can make consumers more (vs. less) suspicious of firms when they shop online and discusses the implications these findings have for consumer financial welfare.     

Investigating consumer attitudes and intentions toward online fashion renting retailing

Due to growth of access-based consumption businesses, it is important to understand how consumers perceive online fashion renting services. Based on two theories, the Theory of Reasoned Actions and expectancy-value approach, this study aims to examine the influence of consumers' attitudes and subjective norms on their intentions to participate in online fashion renting, and to investigate behavioral beliefs that may cause them to form favorable intentions toward online renting. In order to do this, a total of 300 sample surveys were collected from U.S. consumers. To assess the respective measurement model, confirmatory factor analyses were performed, and a structural path analysis was performed to verify the hypothesized relationships. This study empirically asserts that attitudes and subjective norms are key predictors of consumers' intentions to participate in online fashion renting. Consumers' attitudes toward online fashion renting were determined by assessing their perceptions of its relative advantages, compatibility, ownership, and ecological value. While acknowledging the influence of subjective norms and previous fashion rental experience, online fashion rental platforms are also advised to engineer strategies to engage consumers in this practice and to encourage peer referrals. This study sheds light on the determining factors that shape consumers’ attitudes towards and intentions to participate in online fashion renting, from which appropriate business strategies could be devised to enhance consumer engagement and expand the online fashion rental market.     

Optimizing customer engagement content strategy in retail and E-tail: Available on online product review videos

The present study attempts to examine how the various emotions expressed in customer engagement content available on online product review videos reflect purchase intentions. The study identified 97 popular review videos of different technical products on YouTube, with a total of 93,181 comments posted between January 2018 and June 2021. After filtering, the final set of data consisted of 18,452 comments. The paper employed both Poisson and negative binomial regression to test the hypotheses and strengthen the findings. The study explores new insights for predicting purchase intentions of potential customers with the help of a four-factor model based on customer engagement content available on online product review videos. Thus, this research supports the applicability of MRT, CET and SOR theories in the existing literature on retailing and e-tailing by developing a four-factor model. A wide range of consumer responses, both quantitative and qualitative, have been taken into account to predict purchase intentions using sentiment analysis, which makes this study unique and robust. Additionally, the paper entails several significant managerial implications for retailing and e-tailing firms to reformulate their marketing strategies.     

The combined influence of time pressure and time orientation on consumers’ multichannel choice: evidence from China

This article deals with the influence of time pressure and time orientation on consumers’ multichannel shopping behaviour. Previous studies have documented the role of time pressure on customers’ channel choice in developed countries, without examining the moderating effects of time orientation on the relationship between perceived time pressure and consumers’ attitudes towards online/offline channels. To fill this gap, this article aims to investigate the combined influences of time pressure and time orientation on consumers’ attitude towards both online and offline shopping. The results show that time pressure helps consumers form more favourable attitudes towards online shopping than towards offline shopping. Further, the effect of time pressure on consumers’ channel attitudes depends on one's time orientations. The implications for marketing channel strategies and market segmentation in Asian emerging markets are discussed.     

Expertise Makes Perfect: How the Variance of a Reviewer's Historical Ratings Influences the Persuasiveness of Online Reviews

Online reviews have become an important source of information for consumers’ purchase decisions. Drawing upon the consumer expertise and persuasion literature, this study proposes that consumers are more willing to accept a reviewer's recommendation when his/her historical ratings in a certain product domain display greater variance. Five experiments provide consistent support for this hypothesis and the underlying process. Study 1 tests the proposed effect of a reviewer's rating variance on consumers’ willingness to accept the reviewer's recommendation. Studies 2 and 3 show that this effect can be attributed to perceptions regarding the reviewer's expertise. Moreover, this “variance-expert inference” effect is attenuated when the consumption experience of the reviewer is limited (Study 4) and when the consumers are familiar with the products (Study 5). The theoretical implications for the online review and persuasion literature and practical implications for online retailers are discussed.     

“This Post Is Sponsored”: Effects of Sponsorship Disclosure on Persuasion Knowledge and Electronic Word of Mouth in the Context of Facebook

Social media, such as Facebook, offer brands the opportunity to reach their target audience in a less obtrusive way than traditional media, through sponsored posts. Regulations require marketers to explicitly inform consumers about the commercial nature of these posts. This study addresses the effects of sponsorship disclosures by means of a 2 (no disclosure vs. the sponsorship disclosure ‘Sponsored’) × 2 (source: celebrity endorser vs. brand) experiment. Results suggest that a sponsorship disclosure only influences the use of persuasion knowledge when the post is disseminated by a celebrity. Moreover, a disclosure starts a process in which the recognition of advertising (i.e., the activation of conceptual persuasion knowledge) causes consumers to develop distrusting beliefs about the post (i.e., higher attitudinal persuasion knowledge), and in turn, decreases their intention to engage in electronic word of mouth.     

Environmental factors to maximize social media engagement: A comprehensive framework

Social media is a crucial tool for companies to reach their customers as additional touch point and build brand awareness, but effectively using these platforms to engage with customers remains an area of research. Branded social media posts are aimed to deepen the customer-brand-relationship in form of social media engagement. In this study, we aim to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that influence social media engagement by examining the role of environmental factors, including the type of media and content of brand posts, brand involvement of the company, social media channel used, and cross-channel management strategies. We utilize social cognitive theory as our framework and identify three social media environments that must be considered to create social media engagement: (1) the imposed, (2) the selected, and (3) the created environment. We gather more than 7000 brand posts of twenty global brands using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram giving insights on the driver of social media engagement. By examining these factors, we aim to provide a framework for understanding the drivers of social media engagement and how companies can effectively use social media to engage with their customers.     

No Comment?! The Drivers of Reactions to Online Posts in Professional Groups

Social media has moved beyond personal friendships to professional interactions in high-knowledge industries. In particular, online discussion forums are sponsored by firms aiming to position themselves as thought-leaders, to gain more insight in their customer base and to generate sales leads. However, while firms can seed discussion by posts, they depend on the forum members to continue the discussion in the form of reactions to these posts. The goal of the current study is to investigate what features and characteristics drive the number of comments that a post receives on an online discussion forum. The empirical setting involves a global manufacturer connecting with health care professionals through a LinkedIn discussion forum. We project that (i) content characteristics, (ii) post characteristics, (iii) author characteristics, and (iv) timing characteristics jointly determine the number of comments a post receives. We show that the readability of the post, the controversiality of the content and the status of the post author have the highest elasticity on the number of comments. These results provide valuable insights for firms on how to build and maintain an attractive online forum through ongoing discussions.     

Exploring online comments from a strategic marketing stance to reduce wildlife crime

Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is an omnipresent global threat to ecological, social, and economic systems. Marketing expertise can aid in the mitigation and reduction of crime against wildlife using a variety of mechanisms. This paper focuses on how social media usage relates to the framing of conservation appeals. By studying the content of existing blogs, articles, white papers, and other online postings, we extract relevant themes and concepts. Conducting an unguided semantic analysis of our data, we analyzed messaging appeal strategies and the underlying social or informational frameworks they employ. Using literature on advertising appeal types and contrasting social/emotional with knowledge-based/informational messaging strategies, we identified how wildlife crime prevention content employs these rhetorical framing mechanisms. Through the lens of social learning theory, our study proposes messaging strategies as a framework for understanding online content. Crimes against wildlife are creating increasingly severe ecological, economic, and social damage within international political and social communities; individuals learn from and engage with online content, therefore appropriate framing mechanisms can aid marketers in designing effective prevention appeals.     

Consumer intentions to engage in s-commerce: a cross-national study

Social media has reached global proportions; yet, little is known about how consumers engage with firms in ways that lead to social commerce (s-commerce) – an emerging area of importance in the literature. This study addresses this gap and extends previous research by examining factors that influence consumers’ intentions to engage in s-commerce in four countries: Chile, Spain, South Africa and Australia. Specifically, this study develops and tests a model of consumers’ intentions to engage in s-commerce through brands’ Facebook pages incorporating personal variables (involvement in brands’ products and services, satisfaction with brands’ Facebook page), trust variables (message credibility of Facebook posts, trust in firms’ Facebook) and social variables (peer communication, social media dependency, online social interaction propensity) on predicting intentions to purchase products and services through brands’ Facebook pages if s-commerce was available to them. The findings show that the main drivers of s-commerce engagement are message credibility, trust in the brands’ Facebook, involvement, peer communication and online social interaction propensity, as influencers of consumer satisfaction with brands’ Facebook and social media dependency, which in turn drive intentions to engage in s-commerce. Contributing to theory and practice, these relationships are discussed for the four countries involved in the study.