Brand engagement in self-concept and consumer engagement in social media: The role of the source

This three-group between-subjects experimental research investigates the extent to which consumer engagement with a social media branded post is directly affected by individuals’ tendency to incorporate brands as part of their self-concept (BESC) and whether this relationship is moderated by individuals’ exposure to three different post source types. Participants were exposed to one of three Instagram social media posts of a luxury brand, where the only manipulated factor was the type of source. Findings show that there is a positive relationship between BESC and post engagement. The study also shows that content source plays a moderating role in the relationship between BESC and post engagement, such that individuals with high BESC will engage significantly more with content posted by other users, compared with branded sources (brand, influencer).     

Social media influencers and consumer engagement: A review and future research agenda

The rise of social media influencers (SMIs) in the recent decade garnered wide interest from academicians and marketers. Academicians try to understand the effect of influencers on consumer behaviour, while marketers use influencers as part of their strategy to achieve marketing objectives. Although, plenty of practical and conceptual research is available in this area, literature reviews in the domain of SMIs and consumer engagement are scarce as it is still developing, and most of the studies have focused on these two concepts separately. In this study, the authors attempted to combine and understand how social media influencers affect consumers engagement. This systematic review of the literature offers a comprehensive view of previous research on social media influencers and consumer engagement. The study reviewed articles published in the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC), Scopus, and Web of Science indexed journals till 5 June 2021. To understand consumers' engagement with SMIs, authors identified and theorized the antecedents, decision and outcome of such engagement. It also discusses the influencer-follower parasocial relationship on different social media platforms. The study proposes an integrated conceptual framework that can be further used to test and validate the impact of social media influencer's marketing efforts on consumer engagement. This framework also may serve as a foundation for marketers to develop effective influencer strategies for brand promotions. The review concludes the discussion by highlighting theories, methodology, and context of studies conducted by past researchers.     

Social media engagement: a model of antecedents and relational outcomes

This article investigates individual-level antecedents and relational outcomes of social media engagement. Social media engagement approached in this study is a three-dimensional construct composed of affective, cognitive and behavioural dimensions. Surveying more than 48 Facebook pages, spanning nine product categories and 448 consumers, the results show that product involvement, attitude towards the community and online interaction propensity all impact social media engagement. The study also reveals that high social media engagement increases brand relationships significantly, particularly affecting brand trust, commitment and loyalty. Additionally, community engagement appears as a precursor of brand engagement. These findings provide insight into antecedents and outcomes of engagement for academic research and bring value to online brand and community management.     

Employee brand engagement on social media: Managing optimism and commonality

This article considers how employees engage with B2B firms on social media, a topic that is largely overlooked in the extant brand engagement literature. Using the results from a large-scale study of employee brand engagement on social media, we identify two key drivers of employee brand engagement using the content analysis tool DICTION—namely, optimism and commonality. Employees of top-ranked and -rated firms express higher levels of optimism and commonality in their reviews of their employers on social media than do their counterparts in bottom-ranked and -rated firms. This permits the construction of a 2 × 2 matrix that allows managers to diagnose strategies for increasing or improving employee brand engagement. This creates four different kinds of employee brand engagement situations, and offers human resources and marketing managers different strategies in each case. We demonstrate how practitioners and scholars can shed new light on the way stakeholders engage with brands.     

Leveraging consumer personality and social media marketing to improve a brand's social media equity

Consumer personality traits impact consumer actions, preferences, online behaviour and shopping motives. This study examines personality traits as drivers of social media equity by addressing the mechanisms under which consumer personality traits influence social media equity. We aim to combine consumer-level information with brand-level metrics to advance our understanding of consumers' associations with brands on social media and how specific consumer personality traits can be leveraged to improve a brand's social media equity. Using a self-administered survey, a total of 418 respondents from an online consumer panel participated in this study. The results from structural equation modelling revealed that while extraversion, openness to experience and neuroticism personality traits are positively associated with brand engagement and brand advocacy, agreeableness and conscientiousness are significantly associated with brand advocacy and not with brand engagement. This study advances theory by examining how consumer personality traits influence social media equity via brand engagement and brand advocacy as mediators. The findings provide rich practical insights into underlying mechanisms through which marketers can increase social media equity using consumer personality traits.     

The impact of consumer local engagement on local store patronage and customer satisfaction

Abstract

This paper examines the drivers of local grocery retail patronage. Drawing on institutional and social network theory literature, we develop a framework to investigate how consumers’ personal values and engagement with local communities affect their satisfaction and local store patronage. We test our model with survey data on 1504 Finnish consumers. Our results show that the relationship between customer local engagement and local retail patronage is indirect rather than direct, and it is mediated by the vitality of local services, social interaction, and consumer satisfaction.     

The effect of social media communication on consumer perceptions of brands

Researchers and brand managers have limited understanding of the effects social media communication has on how consumers perceive brands. We investigated 504 Facebook users in order to observe the impact of firm-created and user-generated (UG) social media communication on brand equity (BE), brand attitude (BA) and purchase intention (PI) by using a standardized online survey throughout Poland. To test the conceptual model, we analyzed 60 brands across three different industries: non-alcoholic beverages, clothing and mobile network operators. When analyzing the data, we applied the structural equation modeling technique to both investigate the interplay of firm-created and user-generated social media communication and examine industry-specific differences. The results of the empirical studies showed that user-generated social media communication had a positive influence on both brand equity and brand attitude, whereas firm-created social media communication affected only brand attitude. Both brand equity and brand attitude were shown to have a positive influence on purchase intention. In addition, we assessed measurement invariance using a multi-group structural modeling equation. The findings revealed that the proposed measurement model was invariant across the researched industries. However, structural path differences were detected across the models.     

Social media influencers: A route to brand engagement for their followers

Social Media Influencers (SMIs) are micro‐celebrities with large followings on social media platforms who engage consumers and hold the potential to promote customer‐brand relationships across different product categories. SMIs have an existing relationship of trust with consumers, and consumers seek out the content created by SMIs for valuable information and advice. This study explores the process of brand engagement between consumers and brands in the digital content marketing environment, specifically examining the research question: Do SMIs act as a route to brand engagement for their followers? The context for this study is the beauty community on YouTube; over 60,000 user comments were analyzed through automated text analysis. This study is among the first to provide empirical evidence that SMIs do act as a route to brand engagement through the three dimensions of cognitive processing, affection and activation.     

The impact of social media conversations on consumer brand choices

This paper estimates the impact of social media conversations on consumer valuation of brand characteristics and demand for carbonated soft drinks (CSDs). We formulate a random coefficient, discrete choice model of consumer demand that includes social media conversations, and estimate it matching Nielsen sales data on carbonated soft drinks to social media conversations on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Empirical results indicate that consumers’ conversations about brands and nutritional aspects of CSDs have a significant impact on their valuation of brand characteristics and ultimately on their choices of CSDs. These findings have important implications not only for firms using social media as a strategic tool for effective brand promotion and product design but also for public health policies aimed at reducing the consumption of sugary beverages and high-calorie foods.     

eWOM and the importance of capturing consumer attention within social media

Word-of-mouth (WOM) is widely regarded as one of the most influential factors impacting consumer behavior, yet traditional models were constructed oblivious to the potential of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and social media. In particular, very little is known about the dynamics affecting consumer attention within two-way many-to-many mediated environments even though attention constitutes a critical step. Thus, we construct a conceptual framework that grounds consumer attention within a larger progression of behavioral responses to eWOM. We then conduct an experiment (n = 28) that isolates contextual antecedents of attention to positive, negative, and neutral WOM for both luxury and non-luxury brands within a social media platform. Using behavioral eye-tracking, we find that WOM message valence interacts with brand type to affect attention differently. Implications of these findings for facilitating eWOM are discussed with future research directions suggested.     

Leveraging social media-based determinants to build customer-based brand equity of a retailer

ABSTRACT

Social media is all about consumer networks and consumer relations that challenge marketers to leverage social media as a means to develop and improve their connections with consumers. Though tremendous opportunities via social media are alluring, businesses are still finding it hard to penetrate the clique of consumer interactions that are largely personal in nature. Despite the opportunities available through social media marketing activities, understanding customers and their behavior, and incorporating that information in marketing strategy formulation is critical to successful strategy implementation. This study takes a significant leap forward in this direction. Theoretically grounded in diverse fields, this study demonstrates how retailers can build customer-based brand equity using social media-based brand determinants. Using seemingly unrelated regression technique, this study examines how retailer brands can leverage consumer characteristics on social media to successfully integrate and capitalize on social media marketing activities. This research study has important implications for both marketing theory and practice.     

Consumers' engagement with social media activation campaigns: Construct conceptualization and scale development

This study conceptualizes the consumers' engagement with social media activation campaigns, which are important tools in improving the interactions between brands and consumers. We offer a comprehensive definition of this construct and discuss the nature and dimensionality of it. Further, this paper reports the development and validation of a 12‐item scale for measuring the aforementioned construct. This scale development process comprises four studies. Study 1 begins by generating a pool of items and then employs both a panel of experts and some Instagram users to examine the content validity of the items. To validate the scale, this paper carries out several online surveys in subsequent studies. Study 2 uses exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to remove the problematic items and evaluate the dimensionality of the construct. In Study 3, we conduct iterative CFAs to purify the scale and reassess the psychometric properties of the scale. Study 4 uses structural equation modeling to test the nomological validity. Our analyses reveal that consumers' engagement with social media activation campaigns is a second‐order construct encompassing three first‐order dimensions (cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement). The results also support the reliability, content validity, convergent validity, discriminant validity, known group validity, and nomological validity of the engagement scale.     

The brand personality dimensions of business-to-business firms: a content analysis of employer reviews on social media

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the brand personalities that employees are creating of their employer brands, in particular business-to-business (B-to-B) brands, when describing these brands on social media. We examine how the brand personalities, based on written online reviews, differ between high- and low-ranked, and high- and low-rated brands.

Methodology/Approach: 6,300 written employee reviews from a social media platform, Glassdoor, are used for content analysis in DICTION, to determine the brand personality dimensions they communicate (J. L). An independent B-to-B brand ranking data source, Brandwatch, is used as a reference to various brands’ level of ranking, while an ANOVA test is used to determine whether there is a difference in the brand personality trait means when comparing high and low-ranked, and high- and low-rated brands.

Findings: Our findings suggest that a strong social media presence does not equate to a strong employer brand personality perception among employees, since there are no significant differences between B-to-B firms based on their rankings.

Research Implications: Extant literature has mostly explored the impact of either critical reviews or favourable customer ratings and reviews on company performance, with very little research focusing on the B-to-B context. In addition, research employing DICTION for the purposes of content analysis of reviews is sparse. The methodology used in this study could thus be employed to further compare and contrast the reviews from a single company, dividing top and low starred reviews to compare discrepancies.

Practical Implications: The results of this study show how online shared employee experiences of employer brands contribute to the formation of a distinct employer brand personality. From a managerial viewpoint, engaging with current and past employees and being cognizant of the online narratives that they share on social media, may be an early indicator of where the firm is lacking (or showing strength) in its’ employee engagement. This would offer a way for firms to both understand their employer brand personality as well as gauge how they compare to top employers in a specific sector or industry.

Originality/Value/Contribution: The study attempts to grow the literature of employee brand engagement in a B-to-B context, by recognizing the important role that employees play in engaging with their employer brand online. Two main contributions are offered. The first contribution relates to the finding that employees perceive highly-rated B-to-B brands as being more competent, exciting, sincere and sophisticated than low-rated B-to-B brands. Second, the methodology used in this study proves to be a novel and accurate way of comparing employee reviews and perceived employer brand personality, with the employer-created intended brand image.     

An empirical study of the impact of consumer emotional engagement and affective commitment in firm-hosted virtual communities

ABSTRACT

Emergent perspectives in marketing highlight new opportunities for leveraging social media as a means to build customer–firm relationships through consumer engagement. Drawing from cognitive appraisal theory and aspects of the service dominant logic, this study delineates and empirically tests hypotheses regarding the effects of key components of consumer engagement (cognitive appraisal, affective states, participation) on consumers’ affective commitment, in the context of two service companies where the firms used social media to host virtual communities. The research examines how consumers’ cognitive appraisal of the engagement experience aligned with their online interaction propensity and participation in value-creating activities drive engagement outcomes. The results confirm the need to contextualise, personalise and respond to the consumer’s engagement experience to develop this engagement.     

Investigating the antecedents of customer brand engagement and consumer-based brand equity in social media

The current research is concerned with identifying and testing the role of three main predictors: consumer involvement, consumer participation, and self-expressive brand on the customer brand engagement (CBE). The customer brand engagement is treated in the current study as multidimensional constructs comprising three main aspects: cognitive processing (CP), affection (AF), and activation (AC). It was also proposed a direct influence for these three aspects of CBE on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE). Using online surveys, we gathered data from fans/followers of mobile phone service providers, via Facebook fan pages in Jordan. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling. Based on structural equation modelling analyses (SEM), it was supported that CBE aspects were largely predicted by the role of consumer involvement (INV), consumer participation (COP), and self-expressive brand (SEB). However, we find that activation impact one dimension of the CBBE dimensions, namely, brand loyalty. Further, we find that brand awareness/associations affect perceived quality but not brand loyalty. To validate the CBE scale, future studies could investigate the impact of the scale using other social media platforms for different brands. The limited amount of empirical research on CBE was the motivation behind this research. In particular, there is no study that has investigated the main predictors of CBE and its consequences over developing context by proposing and testing the association between the antecedents of CBE with the dimensions of CBE, which in turn affect the dimensions of CBBE.     

Modeling consumer engagement on social networking sites: Roles of attitudinal and motivational factors

This paper reports on a study that seeks to assess an extended typology of consumer social networking engagement behaviors. Drawing on uses and gratifications theory, this study assesses consumer engagement with social media, where consumer engagement incorporates consumer responses to marketing communications. The paper argues that certain motivations for social media use serve as antecedents to general attitudes toward social networking sites, which subsequently affects attitudes toward marketers' social networking sites. These attitudes then influence subsequent consumer engagement behaviors. The results show that social facilitation motivation, participating and socializing motivation, and information motivation positively influence consumers' general attitudes toward social networking sites, which had a strong effect on their attitude toward marketers' social networking sites. The relationship between attitudes toward social networking sites and engagement with social networking sites was mediated by attitudes toward marketers’ social networking sites also mediated. The current study brings together the online advertising perspective and the consumer motivation/gratifications perspective of using social media in branding and marketing into a conceptual model that holds up to empirical testing. The paper ends with a discussion of some limitations of the study and proposes avenues for future research.     

A higher-order model of consumer brand engagement and its impact on loyalty intentions

Consumer brand engagement is increasingly gaining popularity among practitioners and academics as a prominent consumer-brand relationship construct. The emergent literature on consumer brand engagement, largely conceptual, offers various definitions of the construct, though without much consensus. We offer a novel higher-order model of consumer brand engagement that we derive from organizational psychology. We adapt the concept of employee engagement and examine its factorial validity in a consumer-brand relationship context, defining consumer brand engagement as consumers' positive, fulfilling, brand-use-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption. We develop and empirically test a three-dimensional model of brand engagement, outlining relevant antecedents and outcomes. More importantly, we assess the managerial utility of consumer brand engagement by examining its impact on consumer loyalty intentions. We additionally compare the explanatory capability of brand engagement relative to traditional consumer judgments of value, quality and satisfaction. A survey of 408 mobile phone consumers from India provided data for empirical testing. The results support the three-dimensional factor structure of consumer brand engagement. Brand engagement not only exerts a significant impact on loyalty intentions, but also explains significantly more variation in the outcome in addition to the variation explained jointly by value, quality and satisfaction. Theoretically, we offer a holistic multi-dimensional measure of consumer brand engagement, and examine key nomological relationships. Managerially, we demonstrate the explanatory capability of brand engagement in explaining consumer loyalty intentions, offering a useful tool in the relationship-building repertoire of managers.     

Exploring the drivers of customer engagement behaviours in social network brand communities: towards a customer-learning model

Customer learning is regarded as a process that alters either individual cognition or the outcomes of socialisation. Understanding how the learning process works enables a brand firm to identify a customer’s latent needs. Prior studies have primarily focused on effectively positioning brand knowledge in the minds of customers, but that linear learning process does not apply to the interactive and proactive social media setting. Based on the uses and gratifications perspective, this study proposes a customer-learning model and analyses 373 online questionnaires using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The empirical results confirm that learning motivation and collaborative learning are two core components of customer learning that have positive influences on satisfaction, which in turn has a positive influence on customer engagement behaviours (CEBs) and loyalty. In addition, learning motivation is the driver of collaborative learning. Finally, CEBs also have a positive influence on loyalty. This study also concludes that the social network brand community is an informative customer-learning platform that is characterised by interactivity, collaborative learning and co-creation. Theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed.     

Consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) and the role of social media communications: Qualitative findings from the Malaysian automotive industry

Previous studies on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) have maintained that CBBE is a multidimensional construct which reflects both consumers’ perceptions and attitudes. However, only few of the extant CBBE models emanate from the context of automotive brands. As such, this present study employs a qualitative approach using a semi-structured face-to-face interview among 11 informants, to explore the concept of CBBE in the context of automotive brands. Also, this study explores the role of social media communications in developing CBBE for automotive brands. The findings of this research demonstrate that CBBE is a valid concept which reflects consumers’ perception and mindset towards their knowledge, which are reflected through brand awareness, hedonic brand image, functional brand image, and brand sustainability of automotive brands. Additionally, the marketing activities and communication contents on social media play an important role in improving the perception of automotive brands in consumers’ minds, hence the development of automotive CBBE. The theoretical implications of these research findings are that this study provides an insight into the feasibility of developing a specific CBBE model for automotive brands. Practically, this study presents insights for brand manager on the importance of developing CBBE through social media communications.     

The influence of social capital through social media: a study of the creation of value in shopping behaviour

When consumers access information from groups through social network sites (SNSs), they develop social capital in the form of bonding and bridging ties with these groups. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of these bonding and bridging behaviours on consumers’ use of the social network information (SNI) gained from SNSs in their purchasing decisions. The study integrates constructs from the Technology Acceptance Model and the concept of flow to examine how these behaviours influence consumers’ perceptions of how useful the SNI is, of how easy the SNI is to use, and how they engage with SNI. The study utilizes structural equation modelling to examine questionnaire data from a random sample of social network users. The findings demonstrate that bonding and bridging ties influence consumers’ perceptions of the usefulness and ease of use of the information provided by SNSs, and therefore influence their use of the information when making shopping decisions. In addition, consumers who access SNI through bonding ties are likely to have flow experiences which further contribute to their use of the information. This study makes a theoretical contribution by expanding knowledge of the social capital influences on consumers’ perceptions of the value of the social media shopping experience.