Search results

Social media has significantly impacted the value creation processes within the consumer–brand relationship. This study aims to examine value formation processes within a cosmetics social media brand community and to establish the types of value formation associated with different categories of interactions within a social media brand community.

The research adopted a netnographic approach and followed the operational protocols of netnography. Conversations in one large cosmetics social media brand community were observed and downloaded for analysis over a two-month period. Examples of value-creation and formation processes were identified using netnographic interpretative procedures to develop higher-order themes.

The findings supported the creation of a “Consumer and brand value creation and co-creation framework” highlighting disparate value types within the following interactions: consumer-to-consumer; brand-to-consumer; and consumer-to-brand. The identified value types were specific to the actors (i.e. consumers and brands) involved in value formation processes. The analysis also revealed consumers’ ability to independently generate value through direct interaction with a social media brand community and the brands’ role in supporting consumers in value formation through value facilitation.

The pivotal role of disparate actors’ interactions in value formation processes is highlighted, alongside the autonomous ability to form value with the aid of resources stored and shared within the social media brand community. The network of interactions and value-creation processes contribute to a holistic understanding of the interactions in a social media brand community. Furthermore, the research explores and highlights the emerging role of social media brand communities as “value vestiges”.

This paper investigates the impact of consumer relationships with brand communities on behavioral interactions on Instagram. The objective is to identify different types and stages of relationships between consumers and brand communities on Instagram using social penetration theory and explain the behavioral interactions of consumers resulting from these relationships across different stages.

A mixed method strategy was employed combining a qualitative multi-case study and an online survey. Eight individuals following restaurant and apparel brands on Instagram participated in the first study and 202 samples participated in the online survey.

Fifteen different types of relationships were identified between consumers and brand communities on Instagram and were classified into five stages ranging from orientation to de-penetration. The results reveal that behavioral interactions (i.e. consuming and participating) rise across the first four stages of brand community relationship development and fall down at the fifth stage.

This paper introduces new relationship types and stages and brings together different pieces of extant literature to explain the rising and falling of behavioral interactions resulting from consumer relationships with brand communities on Instagram.

An increasing number of brands are using algorithms to embed brand-related content to targeted consumers’ social media pages. This paper aims to analyze how do consumers’ motives of using social media in general influence their potential brand–consumer interactions and the following branding outcomes. To examine this, this study selected Facebook as the social media platform and Nike as the brand to conduct an online survey experiment to examine the effects of social media usage motives on consumers’ interactions with the brand in social media.

An online survey experiment using Nike’s Facebook page as the stimuli was conducted to analyze the interactions between consumers and a specific brand’s social media page in a natural setting. Data were collected in the USA via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk).

This study demonstrated that brand–consumer interactions, both content-consumption and content-contribution intentions, can be fostered by certain motives of using social media: information-seeking and self-identity. This study also suggested that content-consumption behavior has significant associations with consumers’ positive attitudes toward the brand’s social media pages, while content-contribution behavior does not show significant effects.

This study provides new insights about how consumers’ general motives of social media usage influence their intentions to interact with the brand in social media from two levels (i.e. content-consumption and content-contribution).

The current increase in social media activity related to brand–consumer interactions is progressively influencing the manner in which brands and their customers communicate. Whereas this attention to social media is warranted, researchers and brand managers must also recognize that consumers connect and engage with brands across other communication platforms as well. Accordingly, this study aims to examine brand–consumer interactions taking place across social, online and physical platforms, as well as consumer motives for initiating these brand interactions across various platforms.

A mixed-method approach integrating quantitative and qualitative data was used. We administered a written diary to 102 individuals over a two-month period, in which study participants recorded their motivations and platform use in their interactions with a brand. We evaluated latent-class mixture models for complex data and multi-level latent-class mixture models to identify classes of interactions based on participants’ motivations and platform use as well as customer segments based on the identified motives-by-platform classes.

The findings reveal ten categories of motives for interacting with brands, including promotions and incentives, timely information, product information, engagement, browsing, purchase, customer service, branded content, entertainment, and personalization/exclusivity. Furthermore, six motives-by-platform interaction classes are identified. The findings suggest three consumer segments differentiated by their motives-by-platform profiles.

This study adds to past research investigating the motives behind brand–consumer interactions in social media by investigating both social media and non-social media-related interactions, and offering a typology of interaction profiles that considers interaction motives and platform preferences.

This study illustrates that consumers are driven to interact with brands based upon the ten motive categories. These motives, in turn, are associated with different platform uses. Thus, it is important for brands to adopt ambidexterity across multiple communication platforms.

This research adds to the understanding of brand–consumer interactions conducted on online and offline communication platforms.

This study aims at investigating how the level of brand–consumer interaction between luxury brands and consumers on social media may affect the perception of brands’ luxuriousness. In particular, this study is focused on the moderating role of consumers’ materialism.

This study adopted a quantitative approach. Data were collected with two online experiments. Study 1 was run to test whether a luxury brand’s product description was perceived as more luxurious when published on a social media platform versus the brand’s website, and if consumers’ materialism influences this effect. Study 2 explains the underlying psychological mechanism by underlining the mediating role of psychological distance.

The results show that branded luxury products are perceived as more luxurious when these are communicated on a social media platform (vs on the brand’s Web page), and consumers are high (vs low) in materialism, due to high psychological distance.

Previous literature has neglected the relationship between materialism and social media communication, as well as the potential differential effect that a high versus low level of brand–consumer interaction may have, for luxury brands, in the online context. This study fills this gap by investigating the role of a consumer-related characteristic (i.e. the level of materialism) that represents an important dimension in luxury consumption. Moreover, this study sheds light on the mediating role of psychological distance in the context of luxury brands’ online communication.

Online social media are dramatically changing the ways in which firms and their consumers interact. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter among younger consumers (“digital natives”) in their interactions with brands. To investigate this, the authors conduct a mixed-method study including latent class analysis (LCA) to examine the role of social media among younger consumers (referred to as “digital natives”) in their interactions with brands.

A mixed-method approach including both qualitative analysis and LCA was used to analyze daily interactions between consumers and specific brands across two primary social media platforms (Facebook and Twitter). Data were collected by means of a social media platforms (Facebook and Twitter). Data were collected by means of a social media diary collected over a one-week period.

The findings from this study suggest that brand-consumer interactions driven by social media can be characterized by five primary motivations or themes: entertainment, brand engagement (specifically identification with or connection to the brand), timeliness of information and service responses, product information, and incentives and promotions. The authors also identify relationships among these themes related to respondents' age, gender, and social media use.

Although social media have become a widespread form of communication and interaction between brands and consumers, research regarding the nature of social media-driven brand-consumer interactions is only now developing. Drawing on the perspectives of consumer online engagement and uses and gratifications theory, the results from this study are important to guiding future brand-customer interaction research. These findings help extend previous research by identifying consumer motivations that underlie social media usage in brand engagement.

These results highlight the role of social media in helping brands to be proactive in their consumer communications and interactions, in areas such as communicating product information, addressing customer service issues, engaging consumers with content relevant to the brand, providing timely information regarding promotions and new product launches, and fostering consumer-generated comments. Managers should also recognize that younger digital natives interact with brands via social media differently (e.g. for pure entertainment) than older individuals.

This study provides new insights to the nature of brand-consumer interactions, engagement, and outcomes driven by social media.

This study aims to examine current practices of social media marketing among major global brands across five product categories (namely, convenience, shopping, specialty, industrial and service). Assessing the frequency, media type and content orientations of corporate Facebook pages, this study aims to isolate the qualitative factors of a brand’s social media message that are most likely to facilitate a consumer response.

A content analysis of 1,086 social media posts was conducted from the corporate Facebook pages of 92 global brands during a one-month (snapshot) time horizon in July 2013. The data collected from each individual post include its media type (i.e. text, photo or video), its content orientation (i.e. task, interaction and self-oriented) and the number and type of consumer response it generated (i.e. likes, comments and shares).

Research findings reveal that global brands actively utilize social media, posting on average three messages per week and generally use photos (as a media type) and interaction-focused content (as a content orientation) to secure consumer responses. However, differences in consumer responses exist along various product categories, message media type and message content orientation.

Findings imply that marketers should not only carefully consider the media type they use to message consumers on social media but should also try to consider the individual consumer’s motive for interaction.

This article suggests a new way to study social media content by applying pre-existing communication frameworks from salesmanship literature as a way to define message content orientation.

Monetary incentives have been widely adopted by brands to promote consumer engagement in their brand communities on social networking sites. This paper aims to explore how the interactions triggered by an emerging monetary incentive, red packets, affect consumers’ brand attitude in the context of WeChat brand groups (WCBGs).

According to whether brands ask for commercial returns from consumers, two types of interactions were identified, namely, exchange red packet interaction (ERPI) and communal red packet interaction (CRPI). The corresponding influences on brand attitude were examined in three experiments.

Compared to CRPIs, ERPIs elicit greater normative community pressure, inducing a less favorable brand attitude. Moreover, this impact is moderated by the time frame of brand communities. In the long-term WCBGs, a significant difference exists between ERPIs and CRPIs, while such difference attenuates or even disappears in short-term WCBGs.

When using red packets as an engagement strategy, brand managers should be alert to their potential negative influence. Specifically, in short-term brand communities, ERPIs enable managers to acquire commercial returns without hurting brand attitude. In long-term brand communities, managers are advised to implement CRPIs to foster a positive brand attitude.

This study investigates red packet interactions in brand communities, which have been widespread but unexplored. The results expand the literature by addressing the undermining effect of ERPI and the moderating effect of the time frame.

This study presents one of the earliest empirical investigations on how brand chatbots' anthropomorphic design and social presence communication strategies may improve consumer evaluation outcomes via the mediators of parasocial interaction and perceived dialogue.

This study employs a 2 (high vs. low social presence communication) by 2 (anthropomorphic vs. non-anthropomorphic bot profile) between-subject experimental design to evaluate how chatbots' high social presence communication and anthropomorphic profile design may enhance perceptions of parasocial interactions and dialogue with the chatbot, which in turn drive user engagement, interaction satisfaction and attitude toward the represented brand.

The influences of chatbots' high social presence communication on consumer engagement outcomes are mediated by perceived parasocial interaction and dialogue. Additionally, chatbots' anthropomorphic profile design can boost the positive effects of social presence communication via the psychological mediators.

This study advances the interactive marketing literature by focusing on an emerging interactive technology, chatbots. Additionally, distinct from prior chatbot studies that focused on the utilitarian use of chatbots for online customer support, this study not only examines which factors of chatbot communication and profile design may drive chatbot effectiveness but also examines the mechanism underlying the messaging and design effects on consumer engagement. The findings highlight the mediating role of interpersonal factors of parasocial interaction and perceived dialogue.

Do luxury consumers negatively evaluate digital interactions (website and social media) by international luxury brands? The topic has received much debate. The authors argue that luxury brand personality (modern vs. traditional), which encompasses a more stable form of brand identity in global markets, affects evaluations of digital interactions. They further investigate the role of self-brand connection in this process.

Three experiments on Prolific use a European sample and manipulate a single factor between subjects (modernity: less vs. more; traditionality: less vs. more) of French luxury brands and measure evaluations as the dependent variable. Two studies assesses self-brand connection (continuous) as a moderator (studies 2a, 2b). Study 2b rules out some alternative explanations, with culture (independent vs. collectivist) as an independent variable. A fourth study, using a North American sample on CloudResearch, assesses the effect of personality manipulation (more modernity vs. more traditionality) on consumer evaluations of an Italian brand, and assesses ubiquity perceptions as a mediator.

Consumers evaluate digital interactions of international luxury brands less favorably when luxury brand personality exhibits more (vs. less) modernity or less (vs. more) traditionality. Perceptions of ubiquity mediate these relationships. When self-brand connection is high, this effect is attenuated.

The research sheds light on the debate on whether luxury brands should create digital interactions in international markets, given that these global brands operate in multiple channels. Findings show that luxury brands can develop strategies based on aspects of their brand identity, a less malleable feature of brand identity within global markets. Additionally, the research contributes to the conversation about a global luxury market. In short, the findings offer evidence in favor of brand identity (personality) influencing the digital channel strategy a brand should undertake in international markets, first, followed by consumer needs.