The influence of personality on active and passive use of social networking sites

Managers are more and more interested in social networking sites because they provide opportunities for strengthening relationships with customers as well as site content and service. Using social networking sites effectively, however, depends on understanding both the psychological attributes and social interactions of participants. This paper addresses these topics by presenting the results of a two‐study inquiry into the importance of two personality traits (consumer innovativeness and expressiveness) to active and passive use of social networks among Italian consumers. In Study 1 ( n = 753) it was found that innovativeness is positively related to active and passive use. Study 2 ( n = 277) revealed that self‐identity expressiveness and social identity expressiveness positively influence only active use. These results suggest that managers need to distinguish bet‐ween, and differentially encourage, joining and browsing such sites on the one hand and actively contributing to them on the other. Managers can also enhance the impact of their social networking sites by taking into account social and self‐identity expressiveness to increase affiliation and market share and by encouraging consumers to use these sites actively. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Feelings and functionality in social networking communities: A regulatory focus perspective

A sense of community is vital to the sustainability of both face‐to‐face and virtual communities. In this study, we use a mixed methods design to study the motivations that lead to satisfaction in a social media network. In Study 1, we semantically analyze the qualitative comments from a survey regarding the reasons for using social networks (n = 237). Consistent with the literature, the results identify two categories of underlying motivations—hedonic (feelings) and utilitarian (functionality). With these results, we apply regulatory focus theory in Study 2 to propose a structural equation model ( n = 622). This model differentiates between the experiences of promotion‐ and prevention‐focused individuals with social networking based on the core elements of feelings versus functionality . Our findings indicate that a sense of belonging and emotional connection are key hedonic elements and are more relevant for promotion‐focused individuals. For prevention‐focused individuals, the utilitarian and functional aspects of interactivity (influence) and innovativeness (risk) are more important in influencing satisfaction with a social network. Overall, positive and innovative user experience with a social media network requires the creation of an emotional connection, the existence of interactivity between members, and the cultivation of a sense of belonging.     

Vulnerable consumer engagement: How corporate social media can facilitate the replenishment of depleted resources

Technology may facilitate health and wellbeing consumer engagement. When there is scant public health provision and socio-cultural norms marginalize consumers stigmatized from cancer, we reveal how a brand’s corporate social media campaign can support vulnerable consumers with resource constraints. Drawing from a transformative consumer research lens, we investigate five years of computer-mediated communications facilitated by the Indian brand Dabur Vatika. Through a grounded theory and an abductive reasoning approach, we unveil how vulnerable consumers directly or indirectly affected by cancer leverage brand's social media to replenish resources. First, we identify how vulnerable consumers engage to replenish depleted emotional and social support resources. We further expand consumer engagement scholarship by offering a preliminary definition of “vulnerable consumer engagement”. Second, we provide a nascent classification of vulnerable consumers in a consumer-producer role, Principal Vulnerable Consumers and Associate Vulnerable Consumers, distinguished by their proximity to the vulnerable context. Lastly, we reveal how brands may perform a transformative role, to replenish social, emotional and operant resources at the micro level through the engagement of vulnerable consumers with corporate social media. This insight is informative for policymakers, advertising practitioners and transformative consumer research academics.     

Intentional social action in virtual communities

There is growing evidence of the increasing participation in, and influence of, virtual communities in digital environments. To help explain this irresistible allure, the individual and social determinants of the member's intentions to participate are investigated. Conceptualizing virtual community participation as intentional social action, we explicate the concept of “we-intentions”, and use the Model of Goal-Directed Behavior to explain members’ we-intentions. Virtual community influences pertaining to compliance, internalization, and social identity are also elaborated on. An empirical study of regular virtual community participants (N = 157) finds that we-intentions to participate are functions of both individual determinants (positive anticipated emotions and desires), and community influences (social identity). Implications for marketing and future research opportunities are discussed.     

Understanding value-creating practices in social media-based brand communities

For service providers hosting social media-based brand communities, understanding the use of value-creating practices enables them to enhance their customers’ brand community experiences and facilitate value. Yet, extant social media-based brand community research neglects to examine the uses of practices in commonly occurring, direct service provider customer interactions that may be value co-creative. Thus, for a more holistic view of value creation, and informed by service logic, this study applies netnography to observe participants’ uses of practices in two social media-based cause brand communities, in both direct and indirect interactions. The findings reveal that participants predominantly employ practices in direct interactions and act as value co-creators. The findings extend empirical evidence into value-creating practices in social media-based brand communities. They also highlight how cause organisations should plan their uses of practices to facilitate the types of value-creating interactions they seek (i.e. direct and value co-creating, or indirect and independently value creating).     

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.     

Enhancing the role of flow experience in social media usage and its impact on shopping

Online retailers are eager to find the answers to the following questions: How relevant is SNS usage to consumer shopping decisions? Is the information shared on SNS likely to influence users’ shopping decisions? This study is designed to answer these questions via essential factors based on flow theory and TAM. The moderating effects of some social factors were also explored. The data was collected from U.S SNS users, and SEM was performed and a research model estimated. The findings reveal that flow experience of SNS usage for shopping, perceived ease of use of SNS, and perceived usefulness of information shared on SNS exert positive and significant effects on consumer intention to shop on SNS. Particularly, flow experience directly and positively determines shopping intention and shares positive and significant impacts with TAM. Furthermore, the perceived usefulness is highly important relative to the perceived ease of use. Social identity, group norm, and social influence also positively moderate the links between flow experience, TAM, and SNS usage intention for shopping. Very few theoretical studies have discussed SNS usage behavior for shopping based on flow theory or validated its relationship with TAM in the SNS shopping context. A validated model of consumers’ actual usage of SNS for shopping proves that experience drives the success of social commerce. The findings provide current information and important aspects to firms that operate SNS commerce, allowing them to adjust their marketing strategies to serve consumers better.     

Privacy concerns on social networking sites: a longitudinal study

This longitudinal cohort study examines whether privacy concerns have changed on social network sites (SNSs), in particular Myspace/Facebook, as both the users and the medium have matured. Tracking a cohort of 15–17-year olds at three points across an 8-year period, it uses focus groups and self-determination theory to investigate the perceptions of control and vulnerability of 45 participants. The findings suggest that while consumers appear to trust SNSs to protect their private information, they are reluctant to trust advertising or brands on these sites. Over time, users’ autonomy, connectedness and competence have shifted from experimenters, who have nothing to lose, to acceptors who felt their social life was more important than their privacy concerns, to managers who strategically controlled their information in order to reduce their vulnerability.     

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.     

Service-driven social community and its relation to well-being

This study aims to develop a conceptual framework pertaining to a service-driven social community and its relation to customer well-being. This paper draws on motivations and self-determination theory to expand an existing empowerment framework for a better understanding of how a service provider, which aims at transforming its service offerings to achieve business sustainability, supports for his/her customers’ needs in value co-creation in the beginning and over the course of time, which subsequently drive their active engagement in co-creation. The framework reinforces the transformative role of a service to establish a social community to satisfy customers’ psychological needs for competence, autonomy and a sense of relatedness. The satisfaction will drive the community to form a collective commitment to shared goals and intercustomer support, which subsequently perpetuates community members’ positive experiences of living well. This is accomplished through a case study drawn from the cTaipei platform, where service providers interact with their networks and customers to co-create values in developing a creative Taipei city. This paper contributes to this practice by providing a roadmap for services and customers to be benefited from the proposed service-driven social community framework.     

Pet‐related consumption as a consumer identity constructor

The objective of this paper was to analyse how pet‐related consumption can be connected to consumer identity construction. This objective is based on the idea that consumers use symbolic meanings from possessions to construct and communicate their identities. Objects of attachment have especially been found to be closely connected to the formation of consumer identity. Furthermore, it is often assumed that consumers struggle to maintain a true sense of self or personal identity while retaining a feeling of belonging and social identity. This may be portrayed through layers of identity, which are composed of personal identity, social identity and other people. Empirical research was conducted using focus groups to create individual collages. The findings indicated that pet‐related consumption was used in the following six ways to construct consumer identity: ‘character developer’, ‘source of well‐being’, ‘means to connect’, ‘status communicator’, ‘object of devotion’ and ‘intermediary’, all of which found their places in the layers of identity. Each of these ways of using pet‐related consumption was paired with one other so that the extremes formulated three dimensions in a consumers' identity construction: the personal dimension, the social dimension and the dimension of emotional attachment. In conclusion, it was proposed that consumer identity construction illustrated via pet‐related consumption as created within both social interactions with meaningful others and those three dimensions is multi‐levelled and multifaceted. The paper invites future research to study both identity construction and emotional attachment, being such multifarious phenomena, and to explore the dynamic interactions that may exist.     

A typology of organisational stakeholder engagement with place brand identity

ABSTRACT

This study explores how stakeholders engage with a place brand identity (PBI) in the context of country branding. This research extends beyond the importance and challenges of stakeholder brand engagement with place brand identity by exploring several typology of stakeholder engagement with PBI. A case study approach using semi-structured interviews with 39 senior-level representatives from national Australian organisations was adopted to explore how internal stakeholders in Australia are engaged with the current PBI initiative in Australia: Australia Unlimited (AU). A typology of stakeholder engagement with a PBI, including philosophical and concrete engagement was identified. Stakeholders’ philosophical engagement is reflected by their moral support, future engagement intention, as well as positive word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviour. Concrete engagement, on the other hand, is reflected by place brand partnership and internalisation of PBI in the organisations’ strategy. The research findings offer practical ways for place brand managing organisations (PBMO) to enhance stakeholder engagement with a PBI. The identification of multicomponent nature of PBI from the research findings allows PBMO to identify which PBI component lacks stakeholder support in order to make necessary improvements. Further, identification of the typology of stakeholder engagement with PBI provides alternative strategies of how stakeholder engagement can be managed.     

Consumer engagement with brands on social network sites: A cross-cultural comparison of China and the USA

To advance theoretical understanding of consumer engagement on social media, this cross-cultural study evaluates how culture influences consumers’ engagement levels and activities on brand pages of social network sites. It further evaluates the underlying motivations and engagement mechanisms in two culturally distinct countries, China and the USA. Specifically, social media dependency, parasocial interaction, and community identification are examined as the key antecedents of consumer-brand engagement. The results confirm the effects of the proposed antecedents and reveal both cultural differences and similarities between Chinese and American consumers’ engagement with brand pages on social network sites.     

Exploring professional human brand identity through cultural and social capital: a typology of film director identities

ABSTRACT

Our research focuses on film director human brands. It addresses the issue of human brand identity construction through the social valuation of identity attributes linked to cultural capital. Based on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social capital, we examine the identity attributes on which human brand identities are built through the acquisition of legitimacy. We conduct a qualitative study combining three context levels of analysis (external, internal and individual). Our results reveal the existence of four human brand identity types (i.e. chameleon conformist, niche archetypecast, mass archetypecast, cultural influencer), thus enriching and extending previous research. Each identity type is characterised by a set of culturally valued identity attributes, associated with legitimacies – specific, bourgeois, popular and institutional – bestowed by human brand constituencies.     

Challenging Traditional Culture? How Personal and National Collectivism-Individualism Moderates the Effects of Content Characteristics and Social Relationships on Consumer Engagement with Brand-Related User-Generated Content

Consumers across the globe increasingly engage with user-generated content about brands on social networking sites (i.e., brand-related user-generated content [Br-UGC]). As online consumer behavior does not occur in a cultural void, the present study extends earlier research by explicitly examining how the collectivism-individualism dimension, both at the national and at the personal level, influences consumers’ engagement (“liking,” commenting on, and sharing) with different types of Br-UGC created by different sources. Results based on a diverse sample of participants from South Korea, Thailand, the Netherlands, and the United States (N?=?812) suggest that collectivism-individualism at the national level moderates the effects of content characteristics and social relationships on Br-UGC engagement. Moreover, consumers who hold the same values as others in their national culture are more comfortable sharing informative Br-UGC.     

Understanding pre-teen consumers social media engagement

Social media (SM) platforms are frequently used by pre-teen (8–12-year old) consumers for curating their self-identity, developing social relationships and for learning. This paper identifies the building blocks that drive pre-teen SM engagement. We use the Gioia method to analyse interview data collected from 32 pre-teens and parents, in France. Findings show that the primary building blocks are FoMO (Fear of Missing Out) and social inclusive experience, being noticed online, multiplicity, excessive use (without guidelines) and self-regulation. Identity constructs (self-identity and social-identity) are used to explain SM engagement – and to empirically define core conceptual building blocks (aggregate dimensions) that drive SM engagement. We contribute to consumer theory by developing a holistic research framework to examine pre-teen SM engagement. Self-identity and social-identity theories help explain the factors that drive pre-teen SM engagement and explain push/pull influences of parents and schools in encouraging or discouraging certain behaviour. We build on current research into SM usage, drawing from the fragmented existing literature, to reveal causes of both excessive screen-time and SM usage among pre-teen consumers, which may indicate antecedents of future adult behaviour. Practical and regulatory policy issues are considered and addressed.     

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).     

The corporate social responsibility (CSR) employer brand process: integrative review and comprehensive model

ABSTRACT

Firms are increasingly drawing on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in their employer branding to improve attractiveness and engage current and potential employees, and to ensure consistency in employee brand behaviours. However, there is a dearth of literature synthesising CSR and employer branding research to understand employee engagement with CSR-firms from a branding perspective. In this article, the authors carried out an integrative literature review of CSR and employer branding literatures. Informed by signaling theory, the authors develop a conceptual model of the CSR employer branding process as a cohesive view from the potential and current employee perspective. Our review highlights the need for firms to achieve CSR consistency in terms of (a) embeddedness of CSR values, and (b) levels of internal CSR. These two factors frame a typology that enable managers to better execute their CSR employer brand identity to achieve favourable results, such as a high-quality talent pool and positive affective, cognitive and behavioural employee outcomes.