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Emotional Connection: The Importance of the Brand Voice in Social Media for Global Growth
Abstract
Branding plays an important role in establishing a brand’s visibility and position in international markets. The brand’s voice is the foundation for establishing a relationship with an audience, and social media is a powerful tool in this process. The author examines social media marketing in the global marketplace through the lens of two dimensions of the Hofstede national culture model—individualism vs. collectivism, and masculinity vs. femininity—and posits that a careful blending of an understanding of cultural dimensions, content localization, and brand voice and consistency results in social media communication that connects emotionally with its intended audience, thereby building both relationships with consumers and brand loyalty.
... The digital environment, intensified by the pandemic, has underscored the importance of emotional relationships in the banking sector (Wallace, 2018). Creating a consistent brand voice and using an emotional tone in social media brand communication establishes a stronger emotional connection with customers, fostering the development of relationships and customer loyalty (Lee, 2021;Rodriguez-Moran, 2019). ...
Through the lens of the emotional contagion theory, it is argued in this paper that retail banks’ brand communication strategies must enhance customers’ financial well-being in a bid to foster more engagement and create more trust. Financial well-being is even more important when customers experience hard economic times, as was the case during the period under review. To engage emotionally with customers in a digital environment devoid of real interaction, retail banks must be more aware of their emotional tone on social media by implementing a brand communication strategy that is more empathetic. Adopting an inductive qualitative research approach, this study assessed the emotional tone most evident in the Twitter corpora of seven South African retail banks’ social media brand communication during a pandemic, from a financial content marketing perspective. These banks were selected because they supply banking services to the general public, as opposed to corporations or other banks. In doing so, several data analysis tools were used to understand the context and the emotional tone characteristics embedded in the corpus, namely linguistic inquiry and word count, NVivo, and the social media analytics tool, Mention. While the retail banks’ financial content marketing initiatives focused on educating consumers about the banks’ products and services and how these may assist them to accomplish their financial objectives, the banks did so with an empathic approach and a positive emotional tone. This study contributes to the literature by highlighting the need for financial brands, particularly retail banks, to focus on a positive emotional tone in their social media brand communication strategies to enhance customers’ financial well-being, especially in developing countries. The findings also accentuate importance of understanding emotional contagion for effective financial content marketing
Social media are viewed as having potential for agricultural extension. This study therefore surveyed social media use by farmers in a developing country, and their role as a source of agricultural information. To this end, 365 farmers in Chiang Mai, Thailand, were sampled and interviewed using a questionnaire. The findings revealed that the majority of respondents (81.92%) did not adopt social media and, these remained marginal as a source of agricultural information for farmers. Those using social media (18.08%) employed certain applications, i.e., LINE, Facebook and YouTube, mainly for communication, new updates and entertainment. Younger farmers and farmers with a higher formal education related to social media use significantly. To fully harness the potentials of social media for agricultural extension, more farmers need to be encouraged to use them, while relevant agencies also are required to provide support for this effort, such as staff training in social media use, and enabling a social media policy.
Bu çalışmada; sosyal medya ortamlarının markalar açısından daha etkili kullanılabilmesi için farklı içerik yaratmanın önemli bir ayırt edici özellik olduğu düşüncesinden yola çıkılarak, sosyal medya pazarlamasında özellikle içerik yönetimi odaklı pazarlamanın yaratıcı bir strateji olduğu düşüncesine ilişkin değerlendirmeler, çalışmanın temel prensibini oluşturmaktadır.
Brands, like humans, can serve as legitimate relationship partners. Brand relationships can provide consumers with resources in making decisions, meeting their needs, and motivating them. Marketers are using social media as a way to promote their brands and build consumer brand relationships. This research examines how emotional, or affect-based brand relationships, are developed in online social communities. It explores this phenomenon in the context of personal branding for music artists and uses Facebook as a social medium. A conceptual model is developed and empirically tested. Findings indicate that emotional relationships are cultivated by the intimacy and self-connection a consumer has toward the brand, or artist. This intimacy and connection can lead to an emotionally based attachment and bond, or affective commitment. Strong affective commitment from the consumer can be extremely valuable to the branded artist and his/her music because it leads to loyalty in the form of purchase behavior, reduced digital piracy, support of artistic vision and advocacy for the artist. However, value co-creation also plays an important role in developing emotionally based brand relationships and value-co-creation interacts with the impact of affective commitment on loyalty and advocacy. Implications for marketers managing brands and consumer brand relationships are discussed.
- keting and advertising. Many recent studies point at the necessity of adapting branding and advertising strategies to the culture of the consumer. In order to understand cultural differences, several models have been developed of which the Hofstede model is the most used. This article describes elements of this model that are most relevant to brand - ing and advertising, and reviews studies that have used the model for aspects of inter - national branding and for advertising research. It provides some cautious remarks about applying the model. Suggestions for more cross-cultural research are added.
Converging technology and disappearing income differences across countries will not lead to homogenization of consumer behavior. Rather, consumer behavior will become more heterogeneous because of cultural differences. As consumer incomes converge across countries, the manifestation of value differences will become stronger. This phenomenon makes it increasingly important to understand values of national cultures and their impact on consumer behavior. Retailing strategies for one country cannot be extended to other countries without adaptation. Hofstede’s model of national culture is applied to understand differences in consumer behavior across countries. Examples are provided of consumption differences, their relationships with culture discussed, and selected implications for international retailing management detailed.
This is a course on the main paradigms of Western translation theories since the 1960s. It adopts a view of translation that includes interpreting (spoken translation) but does not give any special attention to the problems of interpreting. The course is not primarily designed to make anyone a better translator; it is mainly for academic work at advanced levels, although it should be accessible to anyone interested in how the theories invite debate. The basic idea is that all the theories respond to the one central problem: translation can be defined by equivalence, but there are many reasons why equivalence is not a stable concept. So how can we think about translation beyond equivalence? The answers to that question have been more numerous than many suspect, and are often creative and surprising.
This study develops and demonstrates a theoretical framework and corresponding methodology to link variables at the culture level to the individual level and, then, to specific outcome variables. The authors argue that in order to advance theory about culture's influence on communication, researchers must begin to examine how culture affects individual level (psychological) processes and, subsequently, how these processes affect communication. The image of self, referred to as self-construal, is an ideal candidate to perform the role of linking culture to behavior. The self is shaped by cultural forces and affects many, if not all, communication behaviors. The proposed strategy is applied in the test of a path-analytic model linking cultural collectivism with interdependent self-construals and, ultimately, high-context communication. The discussion includes implications for theory development and possible applications to further research.
Emotional branding is widely heralded as a key to marketing success. However, little attention has been given to the risks posed by this strategy. This article argues that emotional-branding strategies are conducive to the emergence of a doppelgänger brand image, which is defined as a family of disparaging images and meanings about a brand that circulate throughout popular culture. This article's thesis is that a doppelgänger brand image can undermine the perceived authenticity of an emotional-branding story and, thus, the identity value that the brand provides to consumers. The authors discuss how the tenets of emotional branding paradoxically encourage the formation and propagation of doppelgänger brand imagery. This article develops the counterintuitive proposition that rather than merely being a threat to be managed, a doppelgänger brand image can actually benefit a brand by providing early warning signs that an emotional-branding story is beginning to lose its cultural resonance. This article demonstrates these ideas through an analysis of the doppelgänger brand image that is beginning to haunt a paragon of emotional branding—Starbucks. The authors conclude with a discussion of how marketing managers can proactively use the insights gained by analyzing a doppelgänger brand image.
Online virtual environments have been identified as emerging marketing channels, whereby consumers can learn about brands through experiences that involve both functional and social interaction. This research examines the impact of virtual experiences on attitude formation, and offline purchase intentions, and identifies three types of channel congruence (perceived diagnosticity, self-image congruence, and behavioral consistency) that help explain the cross-channel effects. The findings from this study indicate that multichannel effects exist between virtual brand experiences and real-world purchasing decisions. These effects depend on the extent to which the virtual shopping experience is believed to be accurate and useful for evaluation, shared self-concept with other users of the brand, and perceived behavioral consistency across marketing channels.
Although social media has become a source of interaction between consumers and their favorite brands, surprisingly little academic research has sought to understand how social media is situated within a firm's existing marketing communications strategy. In the present research, the authors conducted case studies with both managers and agency personnel responsible for making social media decisions in order to understand how managers incorporate social media into an existing marketing communications strategy. Seven in-depth interviews were conducted with these managers to understand their approach to social media, the challenges they face, and the solutions they have implemented. Findings suggest that managers categorize social platforms into four categories: relationship management, news gathering, creativity, and entertainment. Though social platforms differ in purpose, a cohesive brand personality is created across each platform by following the four C's of integration: consistency, customization, commitment, and caution. Findings offer insights into how brand managers position social media within the communications strategy and utilize different social media platforms to understand and address individual customer needs. The authors also suggest a number of tools to guide implementation and management of social media communications across platforms.
This article develops an information economics perspective on the value (or equity) ascribed to brands by consumers. Unlike research based on cognitive psychology, the proposed signaling perspective explicitly considers the imperfect and asymmetrical information structure of the market. It motivates the role of credibility (determined endogenously by the dynamic interactions between firms and consumers) as the primary determinant of consumer-based brand equity. Thus, when consumers are uncertain about product attributes, firms may use brands to inform consumers about product positions and to ensure that their product claims are credible. Thus, brands may signal product positions credibly. Brands as market signals improve consumer perceptions about brand attribute levels and increase confidence in brands' claims. The reduced uncertainty lowers information costs and the risk perceived by consumers, thus increasing consumers' expected utility. This chain of relations that drives consumer-based brand equity is presented as a structural model and tested empirically in the linear structural relations framework using survey data on jeans and juice. The results are consistent with the proposed relations embodied in the signaling perspective on brand equity.
Brands play a critical role in establishing a firm's visibility and position in international markets. Building a coherent international brand architecture is a key component of the firm's overall international marketing strategy because it provides a structure to leverage strong brands into other markets, assimilate acquired brands, and integrate strategy across markets. The authors examine the way firms have developed international brand architecture and the drivers that shape the architecture. The authors discuss implications for the design and management of the firm's international brand architecture.
Extant research has widely investigated linear functional forms in satisfaction and loyalty models. Though complex nonlinear nature of satisfaction loyalty link is suggested by several researchers, few attempts have been made to empirically examine nonlinearity. Moreover, researchers have used divergent functional forms to model nonlinearity and their findings are often inconclusive. In this study we use nonlinear form to describe the relationship between satisfaction, attitudinal loyalty, purchase loyalty and customer behavioral intentions such as willingness to pay more and external and internal complaining responses in the context of business-to-consumer ecommerce. We find modest empirical support for nonlinear effects in the relationship. Results support nonlinearity only in the case of attitudinal loyalty to internal complaining response link. Results also present evidence about the mediating role of attitudinal loyalty in the relationship between satisfaction, purchase loyalty, willingness to pay more and internal complaining responses.
A global voice for global growth
- Interbrand
Four ways social media impacts emotional branding
- Businessesgrow
The 6-D model of national culture
- Geert Hofstede
Individualism and collectivism
- C Kagitçibasi
Global marketing and advertising: Understanding cultural paradoxes
- M De Mooij
- M Mooij De