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Spreading the word through likes on Facebook: Evaluating the message strategy effectiveness of Fortune 500 companies
Abstract
Purpose
– This research aims to investigate the message strategies most likely to promote online “word-of-mouth” (WOM) activity for business-to-business (B2B)/business-to-consumer as well as product/service Facebook accounts.
Design/methodology/approach
– Using content analysis and HLM, the authors measure the relationship between three types of message strategies and Facebook message “Likes” by analyzing 1,143 wall post messages of 193 Fortune 500 Facebook accounts.
Findings
– Research findings suggest that B2B Facebook account posts are more effective if they include corporate brand names and avoid “hard sell” or explicitly commercial statements. Furthermore, results suggest that including emotional sentiments in Facebook posts is a particularly effective social media strategy for B2B and service marketers.
Originality/value
– This study advances the knowledge of social media and online WOM behavior, as well as B2B and service advertising/communication literature, by relating message content to message popularity. In terms of managerial implications, this research provides explanations and support for the implementation of effective social media message strategies that are likely to promote WOM activity.
... For example, Agnihotri et al. (2016) investigated how the implementation of social media by B2B salesperson affects consumer satisfaction. Salesperson's social media use is defined as a "salesperson's utilization and integration of social media technology to Effect of social media Agnihotri et al. 2016;Ancillai et al. 2019;Rossmann and Stei 2015;Agnihotri et al. 2012;Agnihotri et al. 2017;Itani et al. 2017;Salo 2017;Bhattacharjya and Ellison 2015;Gáti et al. 2018;Gruner and Power 2018;Hollebeek 2019;Iankova et al. 2018;Jussila et al. 2011;Kho 2008;Niedermeier et al. 2016;Ogilvie et al. 2018;Hsiao et al. 2020;Mahrous 2013;Kärkkäinen et al. 2011;Meire et al. 2017;Moncrief et al. 2015;Rodriguez et al. 2012;Pitt et al. 2018;Pitt et al. 2017;Sivarajah et al. 2019 Adoption of social media Buratti et al. 2018;Gáti et al. 2018;Gazal et al. 2016;Itani et al. 2017;Kumar and Möller 2018;Lacka and Chong 2016;Lashgari et al. 2018;Michaelidou et al. 2011;Müller et al. 2018;Nunan et al. 2018;Pascucci et al. 2018;Rossmann and Stei 2015;Shaltoni 2017;Siamagka et al. 2015;Wang et al. 2017 Social media strategies Cawsey and Rowley 2016;Huotari et al. 2015;Kasper et al. 2015;McShane et al. 2019;Mudambi et al. 2019;Swani et al. 2013;Swani et al. 2014;Swani et al. 2017;Watt 2010 Social media use Andersson et al. 2013;Bernard 2016;Bolat et al. 2016;Denktaş-Şakar and Sürücü 2018;Dyck 2010;Guesalaga 2016;Habibi et al. 2015;Katona and Sarvary 2014;Moore et al. 2013;Moore et al. 2015;Müller et al. 2013;Niedermeier et al. 2016;Sułkowski and Kaczorowska-Spychalska 2016;Vasudevan and Kumar 2018;Vukanovic 2013 Measuring effectiveness of social media Gazal et al. 2016;Michaelidou et al. 2011;Vasudevan and Kumar 2018 Social media tools Keinänen and Kuivalainen 2015;Mehmet and Clarke 2016;Yang et al. 2012 perform his or her job" (Agnihotri et al. 2016, p.2). The study used data from 111 sales professionals involved in B2B industrial selling to test the proposed hypotheses. ...
... Another group of studies investigated types of strategies B2B companies apply (Cawsey and Rowley 2016;Huotari et al. 2015;Kasper et al. 2015;McShane et al. 2019;Mudambi et al. 2019;Swani et al. 2013;Swani et al. 2014;Swani et al. 2017;Watt 2010). For example, Cawsey and Rowley (2016) focused on the social media strategies of B2B companies. ...
... Another study by Swani et al. (2013) aimed to investigate message strategies that can help in promoting eWOM activity for B2B companies. By applying content analysis and hierarchical linear modeling the study analysed 1143 wall post messages from 193 fortune 500 Facebook accounts. ...
Social media plays an important part in the digital transformation of businesses. This research provides a comprehensive analysis of the use of social media by business-to-business (B2B) companies. The current study focuses on the number of aspects of social media such as the effect of social media, social media tools, social media use, adoption of social media use and its barriers, social media strategies, and measuring the effectiveness of use of social media. This research provides a valuable synthesis of the relevant literature on social media in B2B context by analysing, performing weight analysis and discussing the key findings from existing research on social media. The findings of this study can be used as an informative framework on social media for both, academic and practitioners.
... A conceptual framework was proposed and empirically tested. This seminal work has been giving rise to a number of similar articles over the years, with the purpose of identifying antecedents of brand post popularity (e.g., [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]). As shown later, some of these works have also resulted in contradictory findings. ...
... 2) Brand name. According to [4], posts that include corporate brand names are likely to become popular on social media. A more nuanced finding emerged from [13]: The use of corporate brand names was popular for service messages. ...
... While the former stimulates emotions, the latter provides facts in an objective format [15]. In this vein, [4] found that emotional appeal works well in brand posts. More recently, [21] showed that emotional appeal conveyed through brand posts that follow a story-like format work well for highly involving product categories that are associated with a long purchase cycle but do not work for fast-moving consumer goods. ...
Social media has now become an indispensable marketing tool. Much research has been done to understand what makes brands’ social media posts popular by attracting Likes, Comments and/or Shares. The objective of this paper is to carry out a systematic literature review on brand post popularity on social media. Through a literature search on Scopus—the largest database of peer-reviewed literature, 19 relevant articles were identified. Facebook has been the most widely studied platform while only a handful of works have focused on Instagram and Twitter. Platforms such as LinkedIn and TikTok have not been studied. Scholarly attention has mostly been trained on well-known and popular brands. A list of 22 antecedents of brand post popularity could be identified, some of which have often yielded contradictory findings. Several directions for future research are proposed. Consistencies in the literature are also summarized for the benefit of practitioners such as social media marketers.
... There is a variety of empirical studies investigating reasons for using SNS in managing B2B relationships, such as reduced transaction costs and more efficient information flows between partners (Boyd and Spekman, 2004;Lucking-Reiley and Spulber, 2001;Tomak and Xia, 2002). In such studies, value is mainly studied from the perspective of the seller and measured in terms of communication (frequency value, richness value, content value and relevance value). ...
... From such research, the body of knowledge reveals that entertaining, informational, interactive and user-generated content are elements that influence consumer engagement (Dessart et al., 2015;Rohm et al., 2013). However, the Swani et al. (2013) study, comparing social media content between B2B and B2C, found that social media content published by B2B actors tended to include more prevalent use of brand names, functional appeals and links, compared to content published by B2C actors. Whether or not this content supports user engagement is unknown, but there are reasons to believe that a combination of brand names and emotions, with the avoidance of commercial statements (Swani et al., 2013), will help organizations to adopt to a pull approach rather than push approach to social media messaging (McShane et al., 2019). ...
... However, the Swani et al. (2013) study, comparing social media content between B2B and B2C, found that social media content published by B2B actors tended to include more prevalent use of brand names, functional appeals and links, compared to content published by B2C actors. Whether or not this content supports user engagement is unknown, but there are reasons to believe that a combination of brand names and emotions, with the avoidance of commercial statements (Swani et al., 2013), will help organizations to adopt to a pull approach rather than push approach to social media messaging (McShane et al., 2019). ...
Purpose
This paper aims to identify content strategies on social media that influence engagement and to analyze those operations to describe important features for co-creation and trust.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper addresses the question of how social media content can influence engagement by using a medium-sized Swedish company for an empirical case study. This empirical study is based on a participatory action research methodology. By using the company account on LinkedIn, the authors experimented with relational content to understand the effects on customer-perceived value and trust.
Findings
Results reveal that action-oriented messages had a more significant impact on engagement than product-oriented messages and value-based messages.
Originality/value
This paper builds on the existing literature in two ways: drawing upon business-to-business relationships and perceived value and using recent advances in the use of social networking sites to understand the value of co-creation through a participatory culture.
... Thus, a single 'like' has the ability to send over 130 personnel referrals (WOM)" (Swani et al. 2013, p. 285). The number of 'likes' is positively influenced by an increasing amount of fans on the hospital's Facebook site (Swani et al. 2013) as well as an emotional content of the released postings (Swani et al. 2013;Liu et al. 2017). ...
... Thus, a single 'like' has the ability to send over 130 personnel referrals (WOM)" (Swani et al. 2013, p. 285). The number of 'likes' is positively influenced by an increasing amount of fans on the hospital's Facebook site (Swani et al. 2013) as well as an emotional content of the released postings (Swani et al. 2013;Liu et al. 2017). ...
... With respect to research question 3, the literature states that eWOM is affected by the message content (Choi et al. 2017) For example, the number of 'likes' can be positively influenced by the emotional content of the postings (Swani et al. 2013;Liu et al. 2017). In this study, patient stories achieve one of the highest average number of emojireactions (predominantly 'likes') per post, which seems to be in accordance with research to date. ...
... For example, Heath et al. (2013) explored the use of SM for customer engagement. Swani et al. (2013) contrasted the use of Facebook by marketers to promote brand name through an emotional sentiment rather than hard selling. Swani et al. (2014) concluded that B2B marketers use emotional appeal in their tweets and word of mouth. ...
... [Insert Figure 5 Here] Theoretical aspects: In this timeframe, research was pointed towards service communication/advertising theories in the social media context. Like, Social networking theory was used to describe messages propagation ability through the antecedent of word-of-mouth (WOM) (Swani et al., 2013), salesperson behavior of utilizing SM tools during sales management (Moore et al., 2013) in B2B organizations. Similarly, social ties and expectancy valued theory are used to explore user satisfaction in the virtual community (Chompis et al., 2014), while Heath et al. (2013) argued implementing a five-step framework consisting of sensing, seizing, developing, deploying, and evaluating as essential components to build managerial strategies through SM engagement. ...
... The challenge of limited resources can be overcome by online collaboration with outsiders. SM helps solve the problem of resource limitation through B2B collaborations (Swani et al., 2013). However, SM use is still limited to B2B SMEs. ...
Although various critical elements, such as media publicity, word of mouth, legislation, and environmental factors, are not under the control of a company, they play a significant role in influencing its brand image. Uncertainty over how different social networking sites can support brands is one of the crucial reasons for the delayed acceptance of social media (SM) in business-to-business (B2B) transactions. SM possesses immense potential in relation to gathering customer data and assisting B2B marketers. Therefore, this study reviewed SM usage in the B2B context, based on 294 selected articles. The methodology included bibliometric analysis to identify the impact of SM usage in the B2B domain and content analysis to perform a thematic assessment. Our analysis found that many B2B firms cannot leverage SM’s potential to its fullest compared to business-to-customer (B2C) firms. However, SM can help B2B marketers build their brand presence and trust globally, ultimately helping them find potential customers and build relationships with global supply chain providers.
... Another study analyzed posts main topic across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to determine fifteen oftenused content categories-event, new product, product sighting, celebrity sighting, stockiest, sneak peak, promotion, style, quote, current event, repost, lifestyle, hashtag promotion, blog, and coverage (Mizobe, 2014). Other scholars presented three types of message strategies that brands used on their Facebook pages, including the use of corporate brand names, emotional content, and direct calls to purchase (Swani, Milne, & Brown, 2013). Likewise, posts on Renren and Weibo were classified as brand content, brand-extended content, or non-brand content messages (Gao and Feng, 2016). ...
... Both brands used emojis in the caption to express non-verbal information, as well as using purchase links in the visual content to encourage direct transaction. However, the negative correlation between purchase link and engagement confirmed the finding from Swani et al. (2013)-consumers were less likely to respond to posts. Additionally, almost all posts from the two brands utilized at least one hashtag-usually their names (i.e., #Salomon and #arcteryx)-a frequent method for increasing post exposure. ...
... Among all the social networking sites, Facebook has one of the largest user bases and it makes marketers prefer Facebook in connecting with these individuals through their brand fan pages (Pö yry et al., 2013). Individuals participating in conversations in brand fan pages Response Organism in Facebook have a higher probability of developing dedication to the brand and consequently generating upright eWOM (Swani et al., 2013) and influence purchase decisions. It is, therefore, essential to cognize the dynamics of eWOMpurchase decision relationship in social media setting and explore underlying mechanisms enhancing this link. ...
... The findings pertained to the direct effect of eWOM on PI suggests that eWOM significantly influences the PI in the context of smartphones and the relationship is found consistent with the existing conceptual (See-To and Ho, 2014) and empirical research (Erkan and Evans, 2016a: shopping products; Kudeshia and Kumar, 2017: electronic items;Wang et al., 2018: all the products), etc. It may be because of the trustworthiness of the user generated content, hosting of pages by brands and Facebook platform (Swani et al., 2013). The presence of young users on Facebook brand fan pages in millions is a sheer reflection of it. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to adopt stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory to reveal the impact of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) on buying intentions of young consumers in the presence of hedonic brand attitude (HBA) and utilitarian brand attitude (UBA) as mediators, among smartphone customers in the context of brand fan pages in Facebook.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a single cross-sectional design to survey a sample of 326 young online customers present in leading smartphone brand fan pages on Facebook in India. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data and replies were recorded on a Likert scale (five-point). The data was subjected to structural equation modelling for model and hypotheses testing.
Findings
eWOM has a significantly positive influence on the buying intentions of the young. Both HBA and UBA partially mediate the influence of eWOM on buying intentions.
Research limitations/implications
The study examines only the personal-oriented functions of attitude and does not investigate the role of social dimensions of attitudes. Its scope is confined to smartphones in the consumer electronics segment and only Facebook among social networking sites.
Practical implications
A theoretical contribution to eWOM literature is made by studying it under the lens of S-O-R theory and functional theory of attitudes. Measurement of two different dimensions of attitude, i.e. hedonic and utilitarian, may facilitate managers to comprehend the source of variance in consumers’ decision-making behaviour in the online context.
Originality/value
The only study to explore brand attitude as a mediator in its multi-dimensional form, in the context of social eWOM.
... The exclusion of B2C consumer insight in B2B research may be due to the fact that B2B product and service offerings and buying processes are more technical and complex than they are in the B2C context (Swani, Milne, & Brown, 2013). End consumers may lack knowledge and expertise to contribute insight into the B2B firms' decision-making processes, or they may lack the motivation to establish a long-term relationship with a B2B firm (Swani et al., 2013;Cortez & Johnston, 2017). ...
... The exclusion of B2C consumer insight in B2B research may be due to the fact that B2B product and service offerings and buying processes are more technical and complex than they are in the B2C context (Swani, Milne, & Brown, 2013). End consumers may lack knowledge and expertise to contribute insight into the B2B firms' decision-making processes, or they may lack the motivation to establish a long-term relationship with a B2B firm (Swani et al., 2013;Cortez & Johnston, 2017). However, we argue that these assumptions regarding end consumers may be oversimplified, i.e., the irrelevance of consumers' insight argument in firm strategies and performance in a B2B setting is problematic. ...
Social media contains a massive amount of information, which provides researchers and practitioners with an invaluable source of data to conduct research from end-users' perspectives, in order to influence firm strategic choices. Although an extensive amount of research has been developed in B2C and B2B marketing context, few social media studies take a dive into potential linkages between external and internal marketing contexts in an industry specific paradigm. This study aims to bridge B2C and B2B social media marketing, by adopting the outside-in perspective as theoretical lens. Using a large-scale dataset, collected from a micro-blogging site, and consumer-oriented information assembled from multiple sources, we empirically examine the inter-relationship between firm-generated messages, consumer digital engagement, and firm sales performance in the movie industry. Theoretically, this study builds upon the outside-in perspective and extends the current knowledge of the outside-in perspective to the social media context. It also bridges the B2C and B2B marketing literature by demonstrating that the insight garnered from B2C social media interactions should be integrated into the B2B firm interactions, communications, and decision makings. Managerially, this study provides movie practitioners with important implications.
... Namely, eWOM refers to any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet [22]. One-click social plugins are thus buttons through which customers can show and share their interest about a content; they differ from any other online eWOM forms since only with a click customers can share content relevant for them with their network of contacts [23,24] increasing the popularity of their posts [25]. Once a user likes a company page or post, this information appears in his friends' feeds. ...
Differently from traditional transaction data, social media data are difficult to investigate due to their volume, variety and velocity. Indeed, the knowledge extraction from social media data raises several issues especially for what concerns statistical exploration and synthesis of complex information. Our work aims to study users' preferences, stated on a social media platform, in order to aid businesses to make their marketing communication decisions. We rely our analysis upon 5685 Italian Facebook users interested in pharmaceutical products and health. The data have been collected at the end of 2014 and are focused on Likes actively expressed by the subjects on specific categories of interests (TV Channels and Magazines). Through a factorial analysis we uncovered significant associations between marketing communication Media and users' profiles. This allows sketching out a marketing strategy in twofold actions: first, identifying the target group to reach and, then, the nearest suitable channel where to develop the marketing communication.
... Using dual-coding theory [6], information on Instagram was examined by two types-cognitive (texts) and affective (images). It has been reported that emotional expressions on social media posts affect viewers' behavioral reactions [12]. Thus, we examined the intensity of four emotions, namely, anticipation, joy, surprise, and trust from the text information. ...
Image-based social media such as Instagram is actively used as a tourism marketing channel that provides information regarding tourist destinations. Recognizing the importance of viewers’ responses, this study investigated the relationship between viewers’ responsive behavior and the characteristics of texts and images posted on Instagram. The results of multiple regression analysis showed that certain emotional expressions in hashtags and images that include people are positively associated with the number of likes and comments. This study provides insights into social media utilization strategies and post-marketing strategies that are helpful for DMO (Destination Marketing Organization).
... "If a certain user clicks on a "Like" button on a post, other users that visit the post might see that the user liked it, and a story might even appear on the user's timeline showing that he or she liked the post" (Facebook, 2016). Liking is as crucial as other elements as it extends the reach by getting shared within the individual's network (Swani et al., 2013). Liking is endorsing without comment (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). ...
This paper presents a comparative analysis of educational pages' 'post interactions' in two time periods. It evaluates the user behavior pattern-specifically, the impact of lockdown on interactions by collecting online social data through real-time data extraction tools and statistical tests like correlation, equation modeling, and regression analysis. The study investigates the frequency of user interactions and growth of specific content types along with the impact of lockdown on educational posts. The study also provides insights on the impact of page activeness on content performance and user intention of interaction through volume growth and content performance analysis and suggests user intention and structure of optimized content mix for better performance.
... For example, Osatuyi (2013), with an exploratory survey, introduced social media sites as a suitable tool for accessing market information. Swani, Milne, Brown, and B. (2013) also, by analyzingFortune 500 companies' Facebook wall posts, showed that social networks are a good tool for introducing the organization and creating public relations in B2B interactions. At the second level, the organization seeks to strengthen customer relationships by taking consumer-centric focus measures (Chung et al., 2017). ...
This study aims to identify the consequence of social media usage on firm performance. To this end, it proposes a conceptual map that shows promising linkages between the maturity level realization of an organization in social media usage and its corresponding performance consequences. The conceptual map was developed by combining two theories: performance theory and theory of growth and maturity in social media, and then through systematic mapping. This map can predict what performance consequences will emerge in the organization for each stage of maturity in social media usage. According to this conceptual map, the organization is expected to benefit from accessing and sharing knowledge by realizing the first stage of maturity. The realization of the second stage is expected to establish more relationships with the customers, and the third stage will be followed by product and new processes development. By promoting the organization to the fourth stage, it is expected that communication with the organization's stakeholders emerges via social media. In the fifth stage, social media will help with value creation. Thus, managers and professionals can predict what performance consequences they will benefit from if each stage of maturity is realized.
... This article demonstrates the conclusions of a content analysis that analyzed the posts exposing brands by the top six Turkish influencers and the top six celebrities on Instagram. Although there are limited number of papers written about blogger posts (Cılızoğlu & 1040(Cılızoğlu & Çetinkaya, 2019Yağcı, 2019;Aktaş & Şener, 2019;Sabuncuoğlu-İnanç & Yağlıcı, 2018;Alikılıç & Özkan, 2018;Çelen & Tuna, 2018;Aktaş, 2018;Öztürk, Şener, Süher, 2016) and brand accounts (Aksoy, 2018;Ashley & Tuten, 2015;Tafesse, 2015;Erkan, 2015;Swani, Milne, Brown, 2013;Parsons, 2013;Shen & Bissell, 2013;De Vries, Gensler, Leeflang, 2012;Cvijikj, Spiegler, Michahelles, 2011) by using content analysis, no studies could be found comparing the performance of influencer and celebrity posts exposing a brand on Instagram. Thus, this paper could be seen as one of the earliest efforts about its topic of interest. ...
... Positive emotion displays encourage more positive attitudes toward the ad (Berg et al., 2015). In social media settings, both positive and negative emotions can induce sharing behaviour (Swani et al., 2013). In general, highly emotional ads appear more likely to be shared online (Alhabash et al., 2013). ...
To determine the relevance of consumers' self‐construal in social media contexts, this study investigates its effects on social media success metrics, such as sharing behaviour, as well as its influence on the relationship between social media success and other drivers, such as endorsers' emotion displays or the communication source (user vs. company). Along with an in‐depth review of consumers' self‐construal, this article reports on two quantitative panel studies, which reveal that eight items are best suited to represent consumers' self‐construal, using correlated dimensions of interdependent and independent self‐construal. The main study affirms the relevance of consumers' self‐construal and offers detailed insights. Consumers with a strong interdependent self‐construal express more positive attitudes toward social media posts, and a smiling endorser positively influences attitudes toward the post, sharing behaviour, word of mouth, and purchase intention. In combination, a strong interdependent self‐construal and smiling endorser produce even stronger effects for attitudes toward the post, purchase intention, and word of mouth. User‐generated content outperforms company‐generated content, independent of self‐construal types. These findings have important implications for social media communication management and personality research.
... Liking and commenting differ in at least two regards: the level of effort required and emotional complexity. Liking is a "lightweight, one-click feedback action" (Scissors, Burke, and Wengrovitz 2016), whereas commenting is a deliberate form of "composed communication" that takes time and cognitive capacity to compose (Swani, Milne, and Brown 2013). In terms of emotional complexity, liking is mainly used to express positive, affirmative emotions such as agreement or acceptance (Scissors, Burke, and Wengrovitz 2016), whereas commenting can convey more complicated emotions such as disagreement, anger, or a combination of multiple emotions. ...
... Liking, as a "lightweight, one-click feedback action" (Scissors et al. 2016), requires low cognitive effort and represents a low level of involvement with the content. In contrast, commenting is a deliberate form of "composed communication" that requires high cognitive effort (Burke and Kraut 2014;Swani et al. 2013). In terms of emotional complexity, liking is mainly used to express positive, affirmative emotions such as agreement, empathy, acceptance, or awareness (Scissors et al. 2016), whereas commenting can express much more complicated emotions. ...
We study the impact and interplay of social design features on the engagement behaviors toward user-generated content on Facebook business pages. By examining the introduction of the “Reactions” feature on Facebook, we aim to understand how the introduction of a new engagement feature affects the overall engagement activities and the use of existing engagement features. We found evidence of a positive effect of Reactions on overall engagement levels. Furthermore, the introduction of the Reactions feature had heterogeneous effects on the use of existing engagement features. Posts that received Reactions also ended up receiving more Likes and Comments than what they would have received before the feature change. However, the opposite is true for posts that received no Reactions, although the effect sizes were small. These effects were detected within the first four weeks after the feature introduction, and persisted after six months, indicating long-term structural changes in users’ engagement behaviors.
... Research on Facebook and Twitter suggests that FGC posts are more likely to promote WOM if the content includes emotional sentiments, corporate brand names and embedded media 5 such as video, image, text or a URL, e.g. a link to a company website. Moreover, posts should avoid explicitly commercial statements and "hard sell" strategies (Swani et al. 2013;Swani et al. 2014;Leek et al. 2016). ...
This paper extends previous research on the influence of social media and digital channels on customer purchase behaviour by presenting a new omnichannel purchasing model. We characterise that model as a “virtuous circle” as it centres around customer use of social media and has potential to benefit both customers and companies. We illustrate that model with a worked example, discuss approaches to its implementation and evaluate its use in the context of a business case study. The model creates a framework that combines elements of digital marketing, social CRM, omnichannel CRM, and customer experience and engagement. This paper bridges academic and industry practitioner communities across those fields.
... Ordenes, Grewal, Ludwig, Ruyter, Mahr, and Wetzels (2019) after two years of analyzing Facebook posts and Tweeter tweets demonstrate that the use of rhetorical style and cross-message composition enhance consumer message sharing. Further, Swani and Milne (2017) demonstrate that Facebook service messages generate more attention (measured by the number of comments) than goods messages, and Swani, Milne, and Brown (2013) suggest that the popularity of social media content is driven by the level of its functional and emotional appeals. In this respect, Ozdora-Aksaka and Atakan-Duman (2015) point out that Turkish banks construct their identity on social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter) by emphasizing their softer side (especially social responsibility). ...
This study investigates the thematic content of Facebook disclosures from small local banks (SLBs) in Poland, their impact on Facebook users’ attention, and the economic repercussions for SLBs’ growth and performance. Based on the specificity of SLBs and existing empirical evidence, it hypothesizes that disclosures on socially responsible issues increase customer attention and can be converted into economic outcomes. To verify the posed hypotheses, several data sources are employed, including a hand-collected dataset describing the specificity of Facebook activities from SLBs in Poland between 2010 and 2017, and a stepwise research strategy is implemented. First, models of SLBs’ Facebook disclosures are distinguished. Second, the kinds of social media activities that ensure SLBs’ popularity among Facebook users are determined. Third, the thematic content of SLBs’ Facebook disclosures is related to their growth or performance indicators. The collected evidence shows that SLBs, as expected, can garner attention if they concentrate their social media activities mainly on socially responsible or local issues. Moreover, socially responsible activities and economic outcomes are generally not opposed, but only a careful selection of specific social disclosures can effectively exploit social media to the economic advantage of SLBs.
... Social media, with the increasing relevance of mobile devices, have radically created new ways of interacting (Taiminen & Karjaluoto, 2015) and are considered by SMEs as the most important means of communication and value creation within the business model. Social media enhances and transforms customer value propositions and organizes innovative delivery operations (Berman, 2012;Swani, Milne, & Brown, 2013). Augmented reality (AR) transforms how individuals interact with physical environments (Poushneh & Vasquez-Parraga, 2017). ...
This study examines the impact of digital transformation on customer value creation in the context of small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) operating in the Made in Italy sectors, with the aim of understanding how dynamic capabilities, as enabling mechanisms, may foster digital transformation. We use multi-case study research on the digital transformation of six Made in Italy SMEs, belonging to the food, fashion, and furniture design industries. The results show that, for the selected SMEs, digital instruments contribute to innovation of their business model, creating new distribution channels and new ways to create and deliver value to customer segments. The results highlight the relevance of sensing and learning capabilities as triggers of digital transformation. In addition to the theoretical contribution to the existing literature on digital transformation and organizational capability, this study provides some managerial implications for digital transformation in SMEs operating in the Made in Italy sectors.
... Ayrıca, mobil cihazların artan ilgisiyle birlikte sosyal medya, radikal bir şekilde yeni etkileşim yolları yaratmakta ve aile işletmeleri tarafından iş modeli içerisinde en önemli iletişim ve değer yaratma aracı olarak görülmektedir. Bu sayede sosyal medya, müşteri değer önerilerini geliştirmekte, dönüştürmekte ve yenilikçi teslimat operasyonları düzenlemektedir (Swani, Milne, Brown, 2013). Buna ek olarak, artırılmış gerçeklik, müşterilerin ürünleri satın almadan önce birçok kez test etmesine olanak sağladığı gibi marka ve diğer kullanıcılarla etkileşime girmesine olanak tanımaktadır. ...
Gelişen teknoloji ve yeni uygulama teknikleri belirsiz, karmaşık ve rekabetçi
bir iş ortamına neden olmaktadır. İşletmeler yaşamlarına devam edebilmek için
daha fazla rakiple mücadele etmek zorundadır. Bu mücadele, sunduğu geniş istihdam
imkânlarıyla ve dünyada en yaygın örgüt olarak öne çıkan aile işletmeleri
için de oldukça önemlidir (Meier ve Thelisson, 2020). Dünyada aile işletmelerinin
yaygınlığı göz önüne alındığında, bu işletmelerin nasıl rekabet avantajı elde edecekleri
önemli bir sorunsaldır. Günümüzde paydaşlar nezdinde farklılaşmanın ve
rekabet avantajı kazanabilmenin başında itibar gelmektedir. Rekabet koşullarında
aile işletmelerinin ürettiklerini satabilmeleri ve paydaşları tarafından güven oluşturabilmeleri için itibar yaratmak önemlidir. İşletmeler faaliyetlerine devam ederken aynı zamanda paydaşlarına bu faaliyetlerine yönelik mesajlar vererek olumlu algılar oluşturma çabasındadır. Oluşan bu olumlu algılar, işletmenin itibarına atıfta bulunarak işletmede başarılı bir yönetim anlayışı olduğuna, mal ve hizmetlerinin kaliteli olduğuna dair düşüncelerin oluşmasına neden olmaktadır (Dowling, 2006). İşletmeler daha fazla değer yaratabilmeleri ve yeni iş modelleri geliştirebilmeleri için iş sistemlerinde dijital teknolojileri kullanmaktadır (Bharadwaj, 2000). Son yıllarda dijital dönüşüm, işletmelerin
tüm paydaşlarıyla ilişki kurmalarında, müşteri değeri yaratmalarında, yeni iş modeli oluşturmalarında ve iş yürütme biçimlerinde devrim yaratmıştır (Ponsignon, Kleinhans, Bressolles, 2019; Matt, Hess, Benlian, 2015). Dijital dönüşüm işletmenin iş süreçlerini, operasyonel rutinlerini ve organizasyonel yeteneklerini etkilemektedir (Fitzgerald vd., 2014). Yakın tarihli bir araştırmaya göre, 500’den fazla kişiyi istihdam eden işletmelerin genel müdürlerinin %85’i dijital dönüşümü organizasyonların çalışma biçiminde devrim yaratan kritik bir değişim süreci olarak görmektedir. Bu nedenle, dijital dönüşümü gerçekleştirmek çoğu işletme için özgün fırsatlar sunmaktadır (Margiono, 2020).
Müşterilerin ürün ve hizmetleri satın alma ve kullanma biçimleri önemli ölçüde
değişmektedir. Müşteriler giderek daha fazla mobil çözümlere, teknolojik
deneyimlere, teknolojinin sunduğu bilgi ve uzmanlığa anında erişime ihtiyaç
duymaktadır (Barnes vd., 2012). Artık benzer mal ve hizmetlerden veya işletmelerden
farklılaşmak özellikle dijital teknolojilerin sunduğu bilgiden faydalanma
yeteneğiyle doğrudan ilişkilidir. Gelişen ve değişen rekabet ortamında
aile işletmelerinin varlıklarını koruyabilmesi ve müşteri istek ve beklentilerini
karşılayabilmeleri için bu işletmelerin dijital teknolojileri tüm organizasyonel
süreçlerine entegre edebilmesi gerekmektedir. Küresel rekabet ortamında müşteri
değerini ön plana çıkaran işletmeler rekabet avantajı elde etmektedir. Böyle
bir rekabet avantajı sayesinde, aile işletmesinin paydaşları, kurumun faaliyetlerinden
ve bu faaliyetlerin sonuçlarından hareketle kuruma özgü değerlendirmeler
yapmaktadır (Fombrun, 1996). Paydaşların bu değerlendirmeleri kurum itibarını
ortaya çıkarmaktadır. Kurum itibarının kuruma sağladığı en değerli katkısı
sürdürülebilir büyüme, farklılık algısı ve rekabet ortamında ortaya çıkan
avantajlardır (Dowling ve Moran, 2012). İşletmeye rekabet avantajı sunan itibar,
işletmeye daha fazla finansal kazanç sunmaktadır, daha fazla kalifiyeli insan
kaynağını kendi bünyesine çekmektedir ve işletmenin verimliliğinin daha
fazla artmasını sağlamaktadır (Balmer, 2001; Ferris, Berkson, Haris, 2002; Rose
ve Thomesen, 2004). Dünyada aile işletmelerinin yaygınlığı göz önüne alındığında, aile işletmelerinin kendi içerisindeki dinamiklerini anlamak, bu işletmelerin özellikle dijital
dönüşüme olan yaklaşımlarını tespit etmek açısından önemlidir. Bu öneme rağmen, aile işletmelerinde dijital dönüşüm konusuna odaklanan araştırmaların kısıtlı olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Bu çalışma, literatürdeki mevcut eksikliği telafi edeceği düşünülerek, aile işletmelerinin dijital dönüşüme olan tutumlarının nasıl olduğunu, dijital teknolojileri kullanan aile işletmelerinin nasıl bir rekabet avantajı elde edeceğini, bunun kurum itibarına nasıl bir katkısı olacağını ve dijital dönüşümde geride kalan aile işletmelerini hangi sorunların bekleyebileceğini irdelemektedir.
... Over the past decade or so, social media has proven to be a fertile marketing landscape for advertisers with the capability to move potential customers from passive recipients of advertising to active participants in the co-creation and dissemination of promotional messages (Swani et al., 2013;Dunlop et al., 2016). Social media also provides a distinctive way to lower costs as well as conveniently advertise products to target consumers (Kirtiş and Karahan, 2011). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine how best to build online advocates for a food company’s brand based on data available from the brand’s Facebook pages. Specific research objectives are to study examine whether incentivizing actions such as “liking,” sharing or commenting on a brand’s Facebook impacts the brand community’s sentiment and engagement with the brand, and whether such engagement is different for different actions (e.g. liking vs sharing).
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve the objectives of this research, sentiment analysis is performed on Facebook insight data from a Fortune 500 company, consisting of fans’ comments, shares and “likes” for promotional and fan posts pertaining to one of its brands. Paired samples t -tests are performed to assess differences in sentiment and engagement before and after each promotional post.
Findings
The results do not support a strong impact of promotional posts on overall sentiment. However, there is evidence in support of a positive impact of the campaigns on overall wall-level engagement with the brand. Moreover, the levels of engagement are not the same for all promotional posts. Rather, some posts resulted in much higher engagement levels than others, suggesting that not all incentivized campaigns are created equal.
Research limitations/implications
The study used the data from only one of company’s many brands. Therefore, similar studies on other brands are warranted.
Practical implications
Social networking sites are increasing in numbers, and more and more businesses are embracing social networks and/or blogs as part of their marketing platforms. Many companies offer coupons and incentives on social media to entice customers to engage with their social media platforms as well as buy products. The study results provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of different kinds of social media promotional campaigns, and can help managers decide which campaigns to implement to achieve specific objectives.
Originality/value
This research adds to the literature in two ways. First, it contributes to the limited literature on the effectiveness of incentivized social media campaign. Second, it contributes to the social media analytics literature by demonstrating how sentiment analysis can be used along with other statistical procedures to make sense of qualitative social media data.
... Untuk mengatur komunikasi, nilai dari penciptaan strategi secara berkelanjutan, untuk menciptakan keterikatan pelanggan dan pemangku kepentingan lain Selanjutnya keterikatan pelanggan juga dapat dijelaskan dari faktor konten yang dipublikasikan di media sosial. Huang, Su, Zhou, & Liu (2013) menyatakan bahwa konten merupakan faktor utama dalam mengajak pelanggan membagi konten di media sosial khususnya pada konten-konten yang tidak bersifat komersil (Swani, Milne, & Brown, 2013). Hal ini menjelaskan bahwa format konten memiliki kadar efek yang berbeda (de Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012), seperti konten yang berbentuk foto yang lebih mudah dalam menciptakan tanda suka, komentar sampai dengan membagikan ke pengguna lain (Kim, Spiller, & Hettche, 2015). ...
The regulation of the Governor of DKI Jakarta Number 196 (2015) on Child Friendly Integrated Public Space (RPTRA) explains the open areas for children that can be a positive medium for interaction and play. The development of RPTRA in DKI Jakarta is not fully funded by the DKI Jakarta government through the Regional Government Expenditure Budget (APBD), but the program also involves companies in the form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In terms of marketing, this synergy program can not only strengthen the organizations/companies involved in the CSR program but indirectly can help the existing RPTRA to more easily introduce the implementation of its activities through branding. The concept of branding for the organization is not an easy thing not only for the surrounding community as RPTRA's board but also for marketers. Social networking sites can be a powerful medium in developing RPTRA as an organizational brand that makes marketing communications have a significant influence on how organizations communicate to their customers. This study aims to measure the effectiveness of training on the role of social media to improve online organization. The method used by observation measurement at two periods (before and after training) and the effectiveness of training provided (using SPSS 22.0). The result of this training is able to explain the increasing effectiveness of the use of social media RPTRA Dharma Suci and utilization of supporting media elements in it such as photos, videos and so on. Suggestions for further research may consider the use of other social medias and observations over a longer time span.
Keywords: RPTRA, branding, organization, social media
... The results showed that in students who follow the HEI page, there is a positive impact of consumption in connection with the brand and in loyalty, while in students who do not follow the page, this impact only occurs in connection with the brand. These results are consistent with the studies by Moran et al. (2014) that show that the "like" on the page leads to a positive word of mouth (assessed on loyalty), as the message automatically appears in the friends' feed (Swani et al., 2013). ...
Sensory dimensions of tourist destinations have recently been recognized as a crucial component in encouraging positive tourist experience. The urban area is rich in multisensory stimuli that could assist in planning and promoting attractive tourist experiences, and engage in local sustainable development as well. Hence, this paper focuses on capturing a holistic approach of all five human senses and their role in forming meaningful sensory impressions in the context of urban tourism, the so-called urban sensescapes. Following the qualitative approach, the present study embraces eight in-depth interviews with relevant stakeholders in tourism field in order to answer to research gaps in the previous literature and help to understand the role of urban sensescapes and
meaning of sensory features of the city. The case study approach enables mapping of multisensory routes where urban entertainment spots are presented in the light of their sensorial and emotional features. This will further facilitate tourist’s experience of the city’s best attractions which reflect all multisensory stimuli, ie., visual, aural, olfactory, gustatory and tactile.
... This article demonstrates the conclusions of a content analysis that analyzed the posts exposing brands by the top six Turkish influencers and the top six celebrities on Instagram. Although there are limited number of papers written about blogger posts (Cılızoğlu & 1040(Cılızoğlu & Çetinkaya, 2019Yağcı, 2019;Aktaş & Şener, 2019;Sabuncuoğlu-İnanç & Yağlıcı, 2018;Alikılıç & Özkan, 2018;Çelen & Tuna, 2018;Aktaş, 2018;Öztürk, Şener, Süher, 2016) and brand accounts (Aksoy, 2018;Ashley & Tuten, 2015;Tafesse, 2015;Erkan, 2015;Swani, Milne, Brown, 2013;Parsons, 2013;Shen & Bissell, 2013;De Vries, Gensler, Leeflang, 2012;Cvijikj, Spiegler, Michahelles, 2011) by using content analysis, no studies could be found comparing the performance of influencer and celebrity posts exposing a brand on Instagram. Thus, this paper could be seen as one of the earliest efforts about its topic of interest. ...
The main purpose of this research is to compare influencers' and celebrities' posts exposing a brand name according to a few metrics which are ad type, number of likes, number of comments, post type, number of page views for videos, product/service category of exposing brands in posts and engagement rates. With this purpose, this paper examines influencer and celebrity endorsement on Instagram by a content analysis focusing on posts exposing a brand name. Results of the content analysis of 126 posts of six Turkish celebrities and six Turkish influencers revealed that the total number of posts shared by influencers are doubled the total number of posts shared by celebrities. On the other hand, the total number of posts with a brand exposed by celebrities is more than influencers'. In terms of product category, fashion/clothing/apparel products are shared mostly for both groups. Another important result of this study is about ad type used by celebrities and influencers in their posts. According to the results, the most used ad type by both celebrities and influencers is sharing the brand while using the product.
... Every message on Facebook must correspond to a certain strategy, which takes into account aspects such as the type of product, the target audience, etc., since the response of users of this social network will be highly conditioned by the strategy chosen. Several studies have demonstrated the relationship between message strategy and user response (Swani et al., 2013;Chauhan & Pillai, 2013;Saxton & Waters, 2014;Ashley & Tuten, 2015). ...
Facebook has acquired a notable presence in many business activities as a social medium and networking service. Tourism has not been oblivious to this trend and consequently numerous accommodation establishments have joined this network. However, when analysing a particular type of accommodation, i.e. rural accommodation, certain deficiencies can be observed at least in the context analysed. For this reason, this article aims to ascertain the activity of rural accommodation in Extremadura based on the hypothesis that the potential of this network to promote the visibility of its establishments is not always exploited. At the same time we investigate the possible existence of a territorial pattern in certain characteristics of the social network that could lead to an improvement in the visibility of the accommodation establishments. To corroborate this assumption, a Grouping Analysis is applied both with and without spatial restriction in order to determine the presence of spatial clusters. The results clearly show that a higher performance is achieved when this technique is applied based on spatial relationships than without them. At the same time, it can be observed that most of the rural accommodation establishments do not stand out in the use of the social network analysed and very few of them play a prominent role, both positively and negatively, with respect to the average situation of the accommodation establishments. In the first case, they should act as models when their behaviour can be replicated by other establishments, and in the second case they should serve as a basis for the implementation of corrective measures to involve the establishments in the management and control of this widely distributed social network. Among the conclusions drawn from this study is the need to actively incorporate Facebook as a basic tool for the positioning of accommodation.
... Consistent with prior literature, this study examines three behavioral indicators to quantify social media engagement with nonprofit leaders. The "Like" button signals audiences' interest or positivity toward the message (Swani et al., 2013). Posts liked by users likely appear in their followers' feeds. ...
This study explored how nonprofit executives in the U.S. engaged with online publics through various communication strategies. We investigated the extent to which nonprofit executives leveraged 1) digital dialogic principles, 2) social presence strategies, and 3) message tactics. In addition, this study attempted to explore how different communication strategies influenced publics’ digital engagement with nonprofit leaders. We conducted a content analysis on 700 Twitter posts from 35 nonprofit executive leaders who possess an active Twitter presence and 195 public comments. These executives led America’s largest nonprofits across a wide range of religious, educational, scientific, sports, and social welfare organizations. The results showed that nonprofit executives employed some degree of the four dialogic principles and capitalized on each of the three types of social presence strategies evenly. Regarding message function, nonprofit executives were most active in disseminating information and creating an online community. Findings regarding the associations between communication strategies and public engagement remain mixed.
... Contents should have appeal for passing as opinion passing enhances multidirectional communication (Chu and Kim, 2011). Liking is as crucial as other elements as it extends the reach by getting shared within the individual network (Swani et al., 2013). "If a certain user clicks on a "Like" button on a post, other users that visit the post might see that the user liked it, and a story might even appear on the user's timeline showing that he or she liked the post" (Facebook,2016).Liking is endorsing without comment (Hennig-Thurau et al.'s, 2004) . ...
... As for business-to-business (B2B), Facebook accounts are more effective when they include corporate brand name and avoid "hard sell" commercials [11]. In contrary, "soft sell" commercials would be better to achieve positive results. ...
Facebook, a form of digital marketing tool acts as a valuable element to reach out to the people or potential communities which aids in generating millions of revenues for businesses. Facebook Marketing has become one of the famous online marketing tools besides Google Advertisement. Many businesses ranging from Small Medium Enterprises (SME) to large scale corporations rely on Facebook Marketing because the results yielded are extensively and impeccably lucrative for these businesses. This study aims to provide an overview of literature on Facebook Marketing for the years ranging between 2006 and 2020by using bibliometric analysis of research productivity viewed through Scopus database.The analysis captured the most influential document and source types during this period. It also captured the most significant countries who contributed to the publications, the most productive authors and the most noticeable institutions involved with the related documents. The main method used was searching within the Scopus database,Visualisation of Similarities (VOSviewer) software and Harzing’s Perish software. The results of the analysis revealed that of the 1888 document source type, Journal is the preferred source type for publication with 66.21% (1250 sources). This is followed by Conference Proceeding with 21.21% (408 sources), Book Series covers 5.93% (112 sources), Book covers 5.24% (99 sources), and Trade Journal covers 1.01% (19 sources).
... However, the next period between 2012 and 2016 seem to be spurred by the landmark study on networked narratives by Kozinets et al. (2010). Noteworthily, the focus of this cluster becomes clearer in this period, with authors focusing on topics related to the spread of word of mouth on social media (Swani et al., 2013), the use of user generated content for brand communication (Schivinski and Dabrowski, 2015), consumer perception of online reviews (Lee and Ma, 2012), online review manipulation (Ma and Lee, 2014), and the effect of word of mouth on purchase intention (Mortazavi et al., 2014). In the next period between 2017 and 2021, the topics explored saw more development with authors evaluating the effect of online reviews' source credibility on purchase intention (Chakraborty, 2019) along with other topics carried forward from the previous period. ...
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to present a retrospective of the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing (JRIM) on its 15th anniversary. The retrospective includes an analysis of JRIM’s growth in publication and citation, and an exploration of the journal’s major themes and methodologies employed.
Design/Methodology/Approach – This study used a bibliometric methodology consisting of analytical techniques such as performance analysis, co-authorship network analysis, and bibliographic coupling to present a retrospective of JRIM.
Findings – This study finds that JRIM has grown consistently in terms of its publications and citations with its major themes being social media, advertising and communication, technology adoption, customer behavior, multi-channel marketing, viral marketing, and relationship marketing. This study also reveals that the journal’s contributing authors tend to employ empirical and quantitative methodologies.
Originality – This is the first study to present a retrospective of JRIM and one of the few that present a retrospective of interactive marketing. Besides presenting the major themes, this study also analyzes the growth that such themes have undergone with time and what are the major themes in recent times in relation to the body of knowledge on interactive marketing curated through JRIM.
Keywords Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Bibliometric analysis, Bibliographic coupling, Co-authorship network analysis, Performance analysis, Interactive marketing
... At the same context, Barger et al. (2016) posit the significant association between the content that social media, which provides to consumers via their posts and their engagement with the brand community. Swani et al. (2013) explained the positive associations between consumers' affective posts, on social media platforms, which reflects their feelings and their engagement. De Vries et al. (2012) assert that consumers' brand posts influence consumer brand engagement and thus community engagement. ...
This research aims to investigate the impact of social media marketing activities (SMMa) on brand loyalty directly and through mediating variables community engagement and lovemark. To propose a research model, we used the theories including lovemark theory, engagement theory and brand equity theory. As a result, this research investigates the impact of SMMa, community engagement, and lovemark on brand loyalty. Using an online survey, we collected data from 464 female participants who are following luxury fashion brands on major social networking sites including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. Results using PLS revealed that SMMa positively influences community engagement and lovemark. Moreover, we find positive relationships between community engagement, lovemark and brand loyalty. However, we find that SMMa has no direct influence on brand loyalty.
... The number of likes and comments is representative of a post s popularity. However, while more than 80% brands are actively using Facebook, almost 60% group admins reported they are yet to understand how posts and other information can be effectively used to attract consumers [8]. Given the lack of key information analysis, a majority of group admins tend to passively imitate their competitors. ...
This study explores the interactive characteristics of the public, referencing existing data mining methods. This research attempts to develop a community data mining and integration technology to investigate the trends of global retail chain brands. Using social media mining and ensemble learning, it examines key image cues to highlight the various reasons motivating participation by fans. Further, it expands the discussion on image and marketing cues to explore how various social brands induce public participation and the evaluation of information efficiency. This study integrates random decision forests, extreme gradient boost, and adaboost for statistical verification. From 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2019, the studied brands published a total of 25,538 posts. The study combines community information and participation in its research framework. The samples are divided into three categories: retail food brand, retail home improvement brand, and retail warehouse club brand. This research draws on brand image and information cue theory to design the theoretical framework, and then uses behavior response factors for the theoretical integration. This study contributes a model that classifies brand community posts and mines related data to analyze public needs and preferences. More specifically, it proposes a framework with supervised and ensemble learning to classify information users′ behavioral characteristics.
... Every message on Facebook must correspond to a certain strategy, which takes into account aspects such as the type of product, the target audience, etc., since the response of users of this social network will be highly conditioned by the strategy chosen. Several studies have demonstrated the relationship between message strategy and user response (Ashley & Tuten, 2015;Chauhan & Pillai, 2013;Saxton & Waters, 2014;Swani et al., 2013). ...
... The popularity of a piece of content can be reflected and measured using statistics that can come in the forms of the number of clicks, views, LKs, reshares, comments, RTs and REs, which is commonly exploited by marketing practitioners to evaluate their online reach and presence and to assess the impact of their content [10,11]. It indicates how quickly and how many people interacted with the brand content and performed a brand-related action through social media plugins such as LK, RT and RE after being posted [12]. ...
People create and share content via online social networks, which provide an unparalleled opportunity for brands to gain visibility, promote products or services and drive revenue growth. Much research has focused on why, how, or what social content is popular, trending and “hype”. One central challenge is to forecast the spread (cascades) of information that leads to the popularity of content throughout a social network. Online content tends to have bursts and spikes, experiencing a different cascading pattern depending on the viral propagation. In this paper, we propose and test a flexible framework capable of modelling such patterns and trends. We take temporal and network perspectives and develop a model based on the multivariate Hawkes processes that account for social behaviour and network elements such as follower counts, and activity variation observed in collective re-sharing behaviour. We focus on Twitter as the most widely used micro-blogging online social network and measure the popularity of a brand's tweet by analysing the time-series path of three types of subsequent activities (retweets (RTs), replies (REs) and likes (LKs)). The specific model that we propose in this paper is the multidimensional epidemic-type aftershock sequence (METAS) model, a particular case of the multivariate Hawkes process. It consists of a power-law relaxation governing the timing of activities. It also includes an exponential boost as a reinforcement mechanism for the response amplitude to model the impact of influential users on their followers. Earlier attempts to model online cascades have treated all online responses as one type of activity. Rather than aggregating all the activities into one stream, and therefore, ignoring exciting effects among different types of activities, we incorporate the activity variation into the predictive models of content popularity, explicitly accounting for such excitation effects. We develop epidemic-type mutually exciting Hawkes point processes models to quantify such effects and to predict more accurately the number of follow-up activities (i.e., RTs, REs and LKs) on a brand tweet after it is posted. Our results suggest that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art models in terms of prediction accuracy, as it is able to account for mutual excitations and cross-interactions between sequences of users’ activities from one type to another. These results are relevant for developing and executing a plan for online activities by the brand owners.
Customers make purchases through a multi-stage, omnichannel process, which now extends to social media. A loyalty loop can be achieved when an existing customer bypasses the initial stages-consider and evaluate-to make a direct purchase. However, to build that loyalty loop, a retailer must embrace techniques and software across social media marketing, social CRM, and om-nichannel CRM. Reviewing literature from academic researchers and industry practitioners, this paper identifies emerging industry trends and discusses an illustrative case study of a UK digital retailer. The importance of social media for omnichannel retailing and building loyalty is highlighted and discussed.
Considering the organizations' increasing use of social media, many studies are being conducted in this area. Researchers are faced with a variety of research strategies depending on the nature of the research problem and data. If the right research strategy is not employed, the researcher will lose focus, and the time and effort spent will not necessarily serve the research objectives. When choosing a research strategy, the organization's characteristics should be taken into consideration; otherwise, it may lead to confounding interpretations of the findings. In this regard, the present study aims to introduce an appropriate research strategy for each maturity stage of the organization under study. To this end, using systematic mapping methodology, about 256 articles published within 2011-2021 were investigated, and the relationship between the types of research strategy used and the different stages of an organization's maturity in using social media was reported. Specifically, by synthesizing the social sciences research methodology framework and the social media stage of the growth model, a mapping was developed between the research strategies and maturity stages. Based on this mapping, it is expected that the appropriate strategy for research at the first maturity stage is exploratory, and for the second and third stages are observational and descriptive, respectively. When the organization moves to the fourth and fifth levels, archival and causal strategies are recommended for research. Using the results of this research, researchers will be able to identify the right research strategy for the maturity stage of the organization under study and develop the appropriate research design accordingly.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine what individual motives (e.g., self-expression or rewards) and brand communication aspects (such as content) influence consumers' brand engagement behaviors, and how these behaviors are linked to their intentions in favor of a brand.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted an online survey with a quota sample of 629 adults in the United States. Participants were recruited through a Qualtrics online panel.
Findings
Data indicate that the motivations of entertainment and remuneration are positively associated with consuming and contributing to brand content on social media. In addition, the motive of obtaining information prompts people to consume brand content (e.g., reading a brand's posts or watching videos), while the motivation for self-expression leads to contributing activities (e.g., conversing on a brand's account and uploading videos). After controlling for these motivations, brand communication strategy (such as content and tone) appears to influence consumers' brand-related activities on social media, which subsequently results in consumer intentions in favor of the brand.
Originality/value
Consumer engagement in social media has become the primary focus of corporate communication. This work is one of few studies that have explored how consumer motivation and brand communication come together to generate consumer engagement on social media. The overall findings shed light on how corporate communications can generate consumer engagement on social media and how companies reap benefits from it.
Not all information communication technologies are liked equally by their intended users. Situated within media richness and media ritual theories, this study conceptualizes the notion of liveness for live video streaming and its implementation for Facebook Live. A longitudinal analysis of 21 top hit radio stations in the United States in the years 2016 and 2018 found that, overall, Facebook Live did not garner audience approval. A closer examination of the Facebook Live content showed that while in-studio content featuring radio announcers in their traditional setup did not solicit followers’ likes, Facebook Live posts that featured out-of-studio locations gained more approval in 2018. These findings show how technological-algorithmic platforms are leveraged by radio stations, even if they are not endorsed by social media users. The implication of these findings is that the meaningful integration of video live streaming is still negotiated on social media platforms.
Social media, and in particular Instagram, can provide a suitable communication channel to achieve customer inspiration. However, it is essential to implement the right strategy. This research aims to advance in the concept of social media customer inspiration by analysing three dimensions: inspiration by, inspiration to buy, and inspiration to brand community. To this end, the effect of different executions that combine the call to action with the visual content of the brand (brand name presence) and the fragmentation of the content (publication in carousel) is explored. Three experimental studies are conducted in studies in three sectors (travel, food and beverages), with different targets (brand followers and non-followers) and in two Instagram communication formats (feed posts and stories). Empirical results show interesting implications that contribute significantly to advancing both theory and practice.
Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2021.2014702 .
Not all information communication technologies are liked equally by their intended users. Situated within media richness and media ritual theories, this study conceptualizes the notion of liveness for live video streaming and its implementation for Facebook Live. A longitudinal analysis of 21 top hit radio stations in the USA in years 2016 and 2018 found that, overall, Facebook Live did not garner audience approval. A closer examination of the Facebook Live content showed that while in-studio content featuring radio announcers in their traditional
Creating engaging brand posts is both vital and challenging for social media marketers. While previous research suggests that digital marketers can strategically design brand posts to enhance consumer engagement, it is unclear what post contents work better, for which brand, and in what way. Through the in-depth review of 82 empirical papers on consumer engagement with brand social media posts, this paper shows that previous research has adopted a highly consistent and convergent research design but produced many inconsistent, sometimes even contradictory results. An integrative framework of consumer engagement of brand posts on social media is developed, and four future research agendas are identified and discussed. This paper provides a landscape description on consumer engagement with brand posts on social media research and a roadmap of potential research agendas that can be further explored. This paper also provides digital marketing practitioners useful insights in designing brand posts on social media.
Rapid rise in social media users has spawned a new form of advertising for businesses called social media advertising. Advertisers have long faced one of the most important challenges: low consumer acceptability of commercials. It is vital to identify the most salient elements of social media advertisements that influence how consumers see them. The purpose of this study is to determine the factors that influence how social media advertisements are perceived and their effect on customer purchase intent. We performed a survey and utilized exploratory factor analysis to determine which characteristics significantly influenced how people perceived social media advertisements. Structural Equation Modelling was used to investigate the effect of customer characteristics on purchase intention. The findings indicate that creative characteristics, attention-grabbing details, emotional appeal, and celebrity endorsement all had an effect on how social media advertising was evaluated. The study discovered that elements such as attention-grabbing details, celebrity endorsement, and emotional appeal have a considerable impact on customer purchase intention. A sufficient emphasis on the aforementioned traits would aid in the development of effective social media marketing and increase consumer buying intent.
Creating brand posts that stimulate consumer engagement on social media is both vital and challenging to digital marketers. Despite previous research on this topic, to date, little is known about how the linguistic styles of brand posts influence consumer engagement. Based on the communication accommodation theory, brand anthropomorphism literature, and linguistic research, this paper examined the effects of three brand post linguistic styles, namely, emotionality, complexity, and informality, on consumer engagement. Through analyzing the 15,396 brand posts collected from 104 Facebook pages, we found that the linguistic styles of brand posts can impact consumer engagement, but the effects vary regarding the three consumer engagement behaviors (i.e., like, share, comment). The findings of this paper improve our understanding of the role that language plays in brand-consumer communications on social media as well as provide guidelines for social media marketers on how to design engaging brand posts from the perspective of linguistics.
Brand engagement on social media increasingly draws B2B brands' attention as it may produce positive WOM and bring branding and financial benefits. However, B2B marketers face challenges in creating compelling brand posts on social media. Beyond ‘knowing what to post’, what is even more challenging for B2B marketers is a lack of knowledge of ‘knowing how to communicate’, i.e., knowing how to design the non-informational cues in brand posts to stimulate brand engagement and generate social media WOM. This research makes initial attempts to address this gap by investigating the impacts of post language on B2B brand engagement on social media. Building on the model of B2B effective communication and theories in linguistics, we identify six linguistic features (i.e., post length, language complexity, visual complexity, emotional cues, interpersonal cues, and multimodal cues in rich media) that influence brand engagement, captured using Twitter likes and retweets. Through analyzing 229,272 tweets collected from 156 B2B brands in 10 industries, we found that, in general, linguistic features that facilitate the central or peripheral route processing will have positive effects, while those that hinder the processing will have negative impacts on brand engagement. This research contributes to our knowledge of B2B social media communication by revealing the power of brand language in driving brand engagement and introducing linguistics as a valuable conceptual lens for maximizing the benefits of B2B marketing content on social media. This research also highlights the interpretative nature of social media communication – B2B brands must go beyond the content purpose and strategy decisions to consider the specific language use and communication style of the message.
This chapter explores social media's potential to enhance public involvement to pursue sustainable practices on an international scale across planning and development projects. Using a case-study approach, the international institutions of the World Bank, UN-Habitat, Unilever, and World Business Council for Sustainable Development are investigated. The relationship between public versus the institutions' intake on sustainability is examined. Findings identify strong public push for increased sustainability in international development and show evidence of the ways in which international institutions respond to the public. Contributing to the social media research field, it offers an alternative application to the planning profession via e-planning. This could contribute to an extended form of public engagement through social media that goes beyond the limiting geographical borders of each local community, and assesses planning and development projects for their broader sustainability implications on an international platform.
In a crowded social media marketplace, restaurants often try to stand out by showcasing elaborate “Instagrammable” foods. Using an image classification machine learning algorithm (Google Vision AI) on restaurants’ Instagram posts, this study analyzes how the visual characteristics of product offerings (i.e., their food) relate to social media engagement. Results demonstrate that food images that are more confidently evaluated by Google Vision AI (a proxy for food typicality) are positively associated with engagement (likes and comments). A follow-up experiment shows that exposure to typical-appearing foods elevates positive affect, suggesting they are easier to mentally process, which drives engagement. Therefore, contrary to conventional social media practices and food industry trends, the more typical a food appears, the more social media engagement it receives. Using Google Vision AI to identify what product offerings receive engagement presents an accessible method for marketers to understand their industry and inform their social media marketing strategies.
Business-to-business marketers have begun to appreciate the value social networks -- specifically, the use of social media -- to nurture relationships with current customers and to reach one’s potential customers. This note explores the different facets of social media: what it is, what the risks are, and how best to harness it for use in a B2B context. Despite skepticism regarding their efficacy and whether they accomplish the goals established by the firm, social media have been used increasingly in recent years by B2B marketers, who can use them to attract communities of interest to the firm. The note addresses how to incorporate social media tactics into one’s marketing plan and presents a normative discussion of where social media fit as part of a larger integrated communications program.
This article compares problems and strategies cited in the services marketing literature with those reported by actual service suppliers in a study conducted by the authors. Discussion centers on several broad themes that emerge from this comparison and on guidelines for future work in services marketing.
Social media outlets constitute excellent vehicles for fostering relationships with customers. One specific way to do this is to create brand fan pages on social networking sites. Companies can place brand posts (containing videos, messages, quizzes, information, and other material) on these brand fan pages. Customers can become fans of these brand fan pages, and subsequently indicate that they like the brand post or comment on it. This liking and commenting on brand posts reflects brand post popularity. In this article, we determine possible drivers for brand post popularity. We analyze 355 brand posts from 11 international brands spread across six product categories.Results show that positioning the brand post on top of the brand fan page enhances brand post popularity. But the findings also indicate that different drivers influence the number of likes and the number of comments. Namely, vivid and interactive brand post characteristics enhance the number of likes. Moreover, the share of positive comments on a brand post is positively related to the number of likes. The number of comments can be enhanced by the interactive brand post characteristic, a question. The shares of both positive and negative comments are positively related to the number of comments. Managers of brands that operate brand fan pages can be guided by our research with regards to deciding which characteristics or content to place at brand posts.
This study tests hypotheses regarding differences in brand-related user-generated content (UGC) between Twitter (a microblogging site), Facebook (a social network) and YouTube (a content community). It tests them using data from a content analysis of 600 UGC posts for two retail-apparel brands (Lululemon and American Apparel), which differ in the extent to which they manage social media proactively. Comparisons are drawn across six dimensions of UGC; the dimensions were drawn from a priori reading and an inductive analysis of brand-related UGC. This research provides a general framework for comparing brand-related UGC, and helps us to better understand how particular social media channels and marketing strategies may influence consumer-produced brand communications.
Purpose – Communication strategy is a critical element of new product adoption. The decision to adopt a new product is determined by the success of a sequence of two stages: product awareness and product adoption. Previous studies have shown advertising to be the tool that works best during the first stage of introduction. However, the expansion of new media has facilitated the development and management of WOM campaigns. Recent research has called this strategy WOM marketing (WOMM). The aim of this paper is to determine which communication strategy is more appropriate at the early stages of the diffusion process.
Design/methodology/approach – Two between-subject experimental designs were developed, one with university students and another with a more general population.
Findings – Contrary to assertions in previous literature, the results show that firms should start new product communication with WOMM and then continue it with advertising.
Originality/value – To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first studies to analyze whether WOM should be actively promoted by firms, or naturally promoted by customers after an advertising campaign. The research also contributes to the few experimental studies that have been conducted into new product diffusion.
Word of mouth marketing — the intentional influencing of consumer-to-consumer communications — is an increasingly important technique. The authors overview and synthesize extant word of mouth theory and present a study of a marketing campaign in which mobile phones were seeded with prominent bloggers. Eighty-three blogs were followed for six months. Findings reveal the complex cultural conditions through which marketing “hype” is transformed by consumers into the “honey” of relevant, shared communications. Four word of mouth communication strategies are identified — evaluation, embracing, endorsement and explanation. Each is influenced by communicator narrative, communications forum, communal norms and the nature of the marketing promotion. An intrinsic tension between commercial and communal interests plays a prominent, normative role in message formation and reception. This “hype-to-honey” theory shows that communal word of mouth does not simply increase or amplify marketing messages. Rather, marketing messages and meanings are systematically altered in the process of embedding them. The theory has implications for how marketers should plan, target and benefit from word of mouth and how scholars should understand word of mouth in a networked world.
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to address a recent call for additional research on electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). In response to this call, this study draws on the social network paradigm and the uses and gratification theory (UGT) to propose and empirically test a conceptual framework of key drivers of two types of eWOM, namely in-group and out-of-group.
Design/methodology/approach – The proposed model, which examines the impact of usage motivations on eWOM in-group and eWOM out-of-group, is tested in a sample of 302 internet users in Portugal.
Findings – Results from the survey show that the different drivers (i.e. mood-enhancement, escapism, experiential learning and social interaction) vary in terms of their impact on the two different types of eWOM. Surprisingly, while results show a positive relationship between experiential learning and eWOM out-of-group, no relationship is found between experiential learning and eWOM in-group.
Research limitations/implications – This is the first study investigating the drivers of both eWOM in-group and eWOM out-of-group. Additional research in this area will contribute to the development of a general theory of eWOM.
Practical implications – By understanding the drivers of different eWOM types, this study provides guidance to marketing managers on how to allocate resources more efficiently in order to achieve the company's strategic objectives.
Originality/value – No published study has investigated the determinants of these two types of eWOM. This is the first study offering empirical considerations of how the various drivers differentially impact eWOM in-group and eWOM out-of-group.
The authors explore the role of hubs (people with an exceptionally large number of social ties) in diffusion and adoption. Using data on a large network with multiple adoptions, they identify two types of hubs - innovative and follower hubs. Contrary to recent arguments, hubs tend to adopt earlier in the diffusion process, even though they are not necessarily innovative. Although innovative hubs have a greater impact on the speed of the adoption process, follower hubs have a greater impact on market size (total number of adoptions). Importantly, a small sample of hubs offers accurate success versus failure predictions early in the diffusion process.
The increasing emphasis on understanding the antecedents and consequences of customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions is one of the essential developments of customer management in recent years. This interest is driven much by new online environments that enable customers to be connected in numerous new ways and also supply researchers’ access to rich C2C data. These developments present an opportunity and a challenge for firms and researchers who need to identify the aspects of C2C research on which to focus, as well as develop research methods that take advantage of these new data. The aim here is to take a broad view of C2C interactions and their effects and to highlight areas of significant research interest in this domain. The authors look at four main areas: the different dimensions of C2C interactions; social system issues related to individuals and to online communities; C2C context issues including product, channel, relational and market characteristics; and the identification, modeling, and assessment of business outcomes of C2C interactions.
This article compares problems and strategies cited in the services marketing literature with those reported by actual service suppliers in a study conducted by the authors. Discussion centers on several broad themes that emerge from this comparison and on guidelines for future work in services marketing.
While several sources tout the superiority of word-of-mouth over traditional marketing communication techniques, it still remains unclear how to measure word-of-mouth and how to compare its relative effectiveness in improving long-term performance. Internet social networking sites offer an attractive opportunity to study word-of-mouth due to their consistent and efficient tracking of electronic referrals. The authors test for and find endogeneity among WOM-referrals, signups, event marketing and media appearances. A Vector Autoregressive (VAR) modeling approach captures this dynamic feedback system and gives estimates for the short-term and long-term effects on signups. The authors find that word-of-mouth benefits carry-over much longer than traditional marketing actions do. The long-run elasticity of signups to WOM appears close to 0.5 – at least 2.5 times larger than average advertising elasticities reported in the literature. For the analyzed firm, the estimated WOM effect is about 20 times higher than the elasticity for marketing events, and 30 times larger than that of media appearances. Using the contribution of advertising income from a signup, the authors calculate the economic value for a referral, providing an upper bound for financial incentives to stimulate word-of-mouth.
Retro brands are relaunched historical brands with updated features. The authors conduct a "netnographic" analysis of two prominent retro brands, the Volkswagen New Beetle and Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, that reveals the importance of Allegory (brand story), Aura (brand essence), Arcadia (idealized community), and Antinomy (brand paradox). Retro brand meanings are predicated on a Utopian communal element and an enlivening paradoxical essence. Retro brand management involves an uneasy, cocreative, and occasionally clamorous alliance between producers and consumers.
The growth of international business, combined with an increase in the number of service offerings, underscores the importance of understanding effective promotional strategies for services versus goods in international markets. The current study examines advertising appeals for services and goods across four different countries: Brazil, Taiwan, Mexico and the USA. Results of a content analysis indicate that the use of rational and emotional appeals differs across both product type and country. It is suggested that culture plays a role in the use of the appeals and that the product type × country interaction is strongly reflected in Taiwanese and US advertising.
Brand communities represent highly valuable marketing, innovation management, and customer relationship management tools. However, applying successful marketing strategies today, and in the future, also means exploring and seizing the unprecedented opportunities of social network environments. This study combines these two social phenomena which have largely been researched separately, and aims to investigate the existence, functionality and different types of brand communities within social networks. The netnographic approach yields strong evidence of this existence; leading to a better understanding of such embedded brand communities, their peculiarities, and motivational drivers for participation; therefore the findings contribute to theory by combining two separate research streams. Due to the advantages of social networks, brand management is now able to implement brand communities with less time and financial effort; however, choosing the appropriate brand community type, cultivating consumers' interaction, and staying tuned to this social engagement are critical factors to gain anticipated brand outcomes.
Purpose – Strong evidence suggests that word-of-mouth (WOM) communication varies in its influence according to product type; however, empirical research remains deficient. The purpose of this paper is to propose a procedural model to examine the influence of product type on both the effect and spread of related WOM information at the same time. Design/methodology/approach – Using a self-administered questionnaire, a sample of 895 consumers across 16 different products was collected; results were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings – WOM was found to be more influential and more widely spread for services than for goods. In addition, although the level of receivers' perceived risk (PR) is generally assumed to be a significant antecedent of WOM influence (WI), the results of the study indicate that PR is not a direct function of WI. Instead, WOM request (WR) mediates the effect of PR on WI. Originality/value – To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship between product type and WOM from a dyadic perspective. Moreover, the authors introduced two important mediators – namely, PR and WR – in the model in order to identify different potential effects of WOM in a seeker-initiated context. The results of this study will enhance knowledge about the influences of WOM information.
Corporate branding emerged as a key concept in the late 1990s. A number of leading retailers have embraced corporate branding and, it could be argued, are among its most extensive proponents. There are, however, issues for retailers in corporate branding arising from the nature of retail operations. Internationalization has for many retailers been a key strategy of recent years. Issues also emerge in the relationship of corporate branding to the process of internationalization. This paper discusses examples from the .elds of corporate branding, retailing and internationalization, raising issues about the interaction of these interlinked areas and about the future research agenda.Corporate Reputation Review (2002) 5, 194-212; doi:10.1057/palgrave.crr.1540174
A brand community from a customer-experiential perspective is a fabric of relationships in which the customer is situated. Crucial relationships include those between the customer and the brand, between the customer and the firm, between the customer and the product in use, and among fellow customers. This paper delves ethnographically into a brand community and tests key findings through quantitative methods. Conceptually the study reveals insights that differ from prior research in four important ways. First, it expands the definition of a brand community to entities and relationships neglected by previous research. Second, it treats vital characteristics of brand communities, such as geo-temporal concentrations and the richness of social context, as dynamic rather than static phenomena. Third, it demonstrates that marketers can strengthen brand communities by facilitating shared customer experiences in ways that alter those dynamic characteristics. Fourth, it yields a new and richer conceptualization of customer loyalty as integration in a brand community.
Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing has become a key focus for many organisations. However, little research has sought to identify the dimensionality of WOM. The present research project aims to describe the development of a 12-item measure that can be used to assess WOM at an individual message level for positive and negative WOM and among givers and receivers of WOM. The research includes four studies, a qualitative focus group phase and quantitative phases involving surveys of over 2,000 consumers representing givers and receivers of positive and negative WOM. Three distinct dimensions emerged. Two (cognitive content and richness of content) reflect the composition of the message, while the third, termed strength of delivery, reflects the manner of delivery. The scale has strong psychometric properties and was found to be generalisable in the four contexts – sending positive/negative messages and receiving positive/negative messages. The authors addressed consumers' WOM messages solely in a one-to one-context. The results cannot automatically be extended to a variety of other media, which requires future research. Further, the authors did not test the measure in a goods context. The scale has a variety of potential applications and can serve as a framework for further empirical research in this important area. While much previous research on WOM relates to the sending of positive WOM, this scale has applicability across four WOM contexts, positive and negative giving and positive and negative receiving.
Data based on qualitative judgments are prevalent in both academic research in marketing and applied marketing research. Reliability measurement of qualitative data is important to determine the stability and quality of the data obtained. The authors assume a decision theoretic loss function, formally model the loss to the researcher of using wrong judgments, and show how this produces a new, proportional reduction in loss (PRL) reliability measure that generalizes many existing quantitative and qualitative measures. Because the PRL measure is often cumbersome to compute directly, they provide reference tables that enable the researcher to apply their approach easily. They then use this new approach to explore several important practical issues in conducting marketing research with qualitative judgments. In particular, they address the issues of (1) how reliable qualitative data should be (extending directly from Nunnally's rule of thumb for Cronbach's alpha in quantitative measurement), (2) how many judges are necessary given a known proportion of agreement between judges, and (3) given a fixed number of judges, what proportion of agreement must be obtained to ensure adequate reliability.
Social media provide an unparalleled platform for consumers to publicize their personal evaluations of purchased products and thus facilitate word-of-mouth communication. This paper examines relationships between consumer posting behavior and marketing variables - such as product price and quality - and explores how these relationships evolve as the Internet and consumer review websites attract more universal acceptance. Based on automobile-model data from several leading online consumer review sources that were collected in 2001 and 2008, this study demonstrates that the relationships between marketing variables and consumer online-posting behavior are different at the early and mature stages of Internet usage. For instance, in the early stage of consumer Internet usage, price is negatively correlated with the propensity to post a review. As consumer Internet usage becomes prevalent, however, the relationship between price and the number of online consumer reviews shifts to a U-shape. In contrast, in the early years, price has a U-shaped relationship with overall consumer rating, but this correlation between price and overall rating becomes less significant in the later period. Such differences at the two different stages of Internet usage can be driven by different groups of consumers with different motivations for online review posting.
Purpose: Academics and the business community are interested in learning how social media can benefit (or harm) consumer-brand engagement. As more branding activity goes social, marketers are not always welcome in all social media spaces. In this invited commentary, the authors aim to lay out the challenges that social media faces for enhancing consumer-brand engagement. In doing so, they seek to turn social media challenges into future research directions. Design/methodology/approach: The paper reviews prior literature on social media and brand engagement. Findings: The majority of social media marketing initiatives take the form of communicating sales promotions to already engaged consumers. Practical implications: Marketers need to find ways to use social media to create lasting brand engagement rather than to merely utilize this communication technology to enhance short-term revenue. Originality/value: This critical review provides marketing academics and practitioners avenues for future research and applied considerations. It is an adaptation and extension of Schultz's 2013 paper.
Brands and word of mouth (WOM) are cornerstones of the marketing field, and yet their relationship has received relatively little attention. This study aims to enhance understanding of brand characteristics as antecedents of WOM by executing a comprehensive empirical analysis. For this purpose, the authors constructed a unique data set on online and offline WOM and characteristics for more than 600 of the most talked-about U.S. brands. To guide this empirical analysis, they present a theoretical framework arguing that consumers spread WOM on brands as a result of social, emotional, and functional drivers. Using these drivers, the authors identify a set of 13 brand characteristics that stimulate WOM, including three (level of differentiation, excitement, and complexity) that have not been studied to date as WOM antecedents. The authors find that whereas the social and functional drivers are the most important for online WOM, the emotional driver is the most important for offline WOM. These results provide an insightful perspective on WOM and have meaningful managerial implications for brand management and investment in WOM campaigns.
Several studies have investigated differences between goods and services advertisements, but no research has examined differences between business-to-business services advertising and consumer services advertising. The authors use the content analysis method to investigate differences in several message elements in the context of the two types of services advertisements. In their sample of 186 advertisements, 91 ads were for business-to-business services and 95 were for consumer services. The specific message elements evaluated were message appeal, headline usage, price information, quality claims, and the inclusion of an Internet address. The findings indicate significant differences between business-to-business and consumer services advertisements in the types of message appeals used.
Although services advertising has been studied heavily, researchers concur that programmatic research with a strategic emphasis is still needed on that topic. Such efforts may be hampered without a comprehensive summary of the general findings across studies. Therefore, to assess the current state of services advertising research and to encourage additional investigations, the author offers a conceptual review of the services advertising literature from 1980 to 1995. Those 15 years parallel the last two evolutionary stages of dramatic growth in general services marketing research.
In an exploratory study, two message appeals (rational and emotional) and two media (print and radio) were tested to determine whether certain message or media strategies are more appropriate than others for two broad categories of retail services. For both types of services, a rational appeal generated higher levels of attitude toward the ad than an emotional appeal and radio ads generated higher levels of patronage intention than print ads. In addition, a main effect for service type was found for two of the dependent variables, indicating that more experiential retail services may benefit more, overall, from radio and print advertising than utilitarian offerings.
As the service sector of the U.S. economy continues to grow dramatically, so does the need for increased attention to advertising strategies for the service sector. The author examines print advertising strategy for services by testing whether the presence of a visual tangible cue (a physical representation) and the use of verbal tangible cues (informational cues related to tangible dimensions of the service) influence the effectiveness of the advertisement. Results indicate that for a hotel (a service high in experience qualities), verbal tangible cues are related to more positive attitudes toward the ad and service, higher patronage intentions and higher levels of recall. For an auto service (high in credence qualities), verbal tangible cues are related positively to attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the service, and recall, but not patronage intention. The presence of the physical representation did not affect any of the four dependent variables.
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Self-endorsing-the portrayal of potential consumers using products-is a novel advertising strategy made possible by the development of virtual environments. Three experiments compared self-endorsing to endorsing by an unfamiliar other. In Experiment 1, self-endorsing in online advertisements led to higher brand attitude and purchase intention than other-endorsing. Moreover, photographs were a more effective persuasion channel than text. In Experiment 2, participants wore a brand of clothing in a high-immersive virtual environment and preferred the brand worn by their virtual self to the brand worn by others. Experiment 3 demonstrated that an additional mechanism behind self-endorsing was the interactivity of the virtual representation. Evidence for self-referencing as a mediator is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Advertising is the property of M.E. Sharpe Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
In this research, the authors propose a contagion effect of social media use across business suppliers, retailers, and consumers. After developing and validating social media usage measures at three levels—supplier, retailer, and customer—the authors test social media contagion effects and their ultimate impact on multiple performance measures. The conceptual framework and empirical results offer new insights into the contagion effects of social media usage across the channel of distribution as well as important social influence mechanisms that enhance these effects. Consistent with the predictions, social media use positively contributes to brand performance, retailer performance, and consumer–retailer loyalty. Also, the effect of supplier social media usage on retailer social media usage and in turn on customer social media usage is moderated by brand reputation and service ambidexterity. With the ever-increasing growth and adoption of social media applications and similar technologies, this research provides a framework to promote usage by supply channel partners which ultimately influences performance-related outcomes.
Despite the recognized influence of word-of-mouth (WOM) in the consumer decision making process, research investigating how listeners of WOM use this communication is limited. In this paper, the authors present a model which integrates factors influencing listeners' usage of WOM (WOMU) and the consequences of WOMU in listeners' purchase decisions. Empirical testing of the model indicates that characteristics of both the WOM speaker (trustworthiness, experience, and evidence) and the WOM listener (self-perceived knowledge and purchase involvement) affect WOMU, as well as whether the WOM is face-to-face or online. The results also show that WOMU strongly relates to attitude toward the recommended product. Implications for retailers and marketing researchers are given along with directions for future research.
"Word of mouth" opinions about products still matter, but so do "word of mouse" opinions-from sources prospective buyers may never meet and whose names they may never know. Such opinions disseminated via chat rooms, newsgroups, and electronic consumer forums do come from individuals with strong views about brands and the willingness to express total negativity. But the anonymity of the source also offers confidentiality when "discussion" of a product might be embarrassing. Combining these factors with the authority of the written word means that "word of mouse" offers both threats and opportunities to managers, including the challenge of replacing "market ravens" with more objective sources.
Previous studies of branding either focused exclusively on consumer products or understated the incidence and importance of branding industrial products. This study indicates that branding provides powerful benefits for, and is practical extensively by, industrial companies.This article attempts to reduce the gaps identified by presenting relevant findings drawn from samples of large and small manufacturers of industrial products. Specifically it develops and tests ten propositions concerning the perceived importance of brand names, the incidence of brand-name usage, brand-name strategies, brand naming processes, and managerial resourse commitment to brand naming. Findings from large and small firms are compared and managerial implications are discussed.
Communication strategy is a critical element of new product adoption. The decision to adopt a new product is determined by the success of a sequence of two stages: product awareness and product adoption. Previous studies have shown advertising is the tool that best works at the first stage of the introduction, as WOM needs informed individuals to start the process. However, the expansion of new media facilitates firms to develop and manage electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) campaigns. The aim of this paper is to determine which communication strategy is more appropriate at early stages of the diffusion process. Contrary to assertions in the previous literature, results show firms should start new product communication with e-WOM and then continue it with advertising.
Previous research has established the benefits of branding for business-to-business (B2B) organizations. Various tools can be used to support B2B brands, including the internet and other interactive technologies. Yet research on how organizations use Social Networking Sites (SNS) to achieve brand objectives remains limited. This study addresses the gap by focusing on B2B SMEs and their social networking practices, particularly, usage, perceived barriers, and the measurement of effectiveness of SNS as a marketing tool. Findings from a mail survey show that over a quarter of B2B SMEs in the UK are currently using SNS to achieve brand objectives, the most popular of which is to attract new customers. On the other hand, the most significant barrier is the lack of perceived relevance for particular sectors. Notably, the overwhelming majority of users do not adopt any metrics to assess SNS effectiveness. Almost half of the sample of SMEs that currently use SNS have indicated their intention to increase their marketing spending on this channel, highlighting the growing importance of SNS in a B2B context.
Word of mouth by consumers is attracting increased attention from marketing scholars because of findings that it can affect brand perceptions and sales. There is limited empirical research, however, on the stimulants of consumer word of mouth. An assumption in the literature has been that increased advertising can also stimulate consumer word of mouth and, hence, complement the effects of advertising. We present arguments for why increased advertising may be associated with reductions in online word of mouth. We empirically test this possibility on online word of mouth in the auto industry. Our results suggest that increased advertising can, indeed, be associated with reductions in online consumer word of mouth.
To investigate the determinants of the effects of a viral campaign, we employ the classical framework of a persuasive communication model, designated as "Who says what to whom in which channel and with what effect?" We also consider theories of consumer value, personality, word-of-mouth communication, and source credibility. On the basis of an experiment conducted in Taiwan, we find four main results. First, message recipients who receive emails from close interpersonal sources are more willing to forward them than messages from unfamiliar interpersonal or commercial sources. Second, those who receive more utilitarian or more hedonic messages are more willing to forward them. Third, those who score high on extraversion and openness and low on conscientiousness traits are more willing to forward a marketing message to others. Fourth, those who access the internet via a broadband connection are more willing to forward the message than are those who use dial-up modems.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to state a case for consideration of low attention processing when advertising in industrial markets.
Design/methodology/approach
– Through a critical description of low attention processing the paper demonstrates how this framework can be applied in industrial markets. A case is made that it is relevant to consider low attention processing in industrial markets. Content analysis is subsequently applied to 48 advertisements for products that are deemed to invoke low attention. In the analysis, focus is on whether the advertisements employ emotional appeals in connection to brands and/or use intuitively understandable messages as would be advisable for attitude change through low attention processing.
Findings
– The analysis shows that emotional appeals are used little in advertisements targeted at the selected market and that advertisements in which the brand clearly is displayed in combination with positive emotional appeals are rare. This combination was only seen in three out of 48 advertisements. In addition, most advertisements are not intuitively understandable and thus require that the message receiver is willing and able to allocate resources to cognitively process the advertisement contents.
Originality/value
– This paper states a practical case for increased consideration of low attention processing and the necessity for an increased focus on customers' processing of business‐to‐business (B2B) advertising.
A corporate brand, which is based on the characteristics of the firm as well as its products, can play a critical role in a company's brand portfolio. It can help differentiate the firm, support internal brand building, facilitate brand management, build credibility, and provide a vehicle for communicating with and maintaining support among broad external constituencies. However, defining and successfully managing the corporate brand requires the firm to address a number of challenges, including maintaining its relevance to the company's strategy, demonstrating its benefits to consumers, and avoiding negative associations or controversies.