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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”.

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.

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.

Customer interactions are integral to service brands. Indeed, many product brands have added services in order to create more opportunity for customer interaction. This paper deals with the strategic use of customer interactions to build a strong brand. Customer interaction strategy has evolved considerably beyond traditional sales and advertising in how customer interactions are conducted. Yet the Pareto rule (e.g. 80% of sales from 20% of customers) continues to guide who brands interact with. Conventional wisdom is that firms should target heavy users or customers high on the recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) value of purchases. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to examine how brands can use brand purpose and brand communities to target light users and even nonuser stakeholders as well.

There is reason to hypothesize that brands can go beyond the heavy user limit of targeting customer interactions by developing brands around purpose. Purpose can be based on engagement with personal goals or values or on societal values about doing good for others. Brand purpose can be reinforced by either life purpose brand communities or societal purpose brand communities.

The paper reviews findings in the brand interaction, brand purpose and brand communities literature.

The two types of brand purposes and brand communities offer the possibility of growing a brand by targeting customer interactions at light users and nonuser stakeholders.

There are important future research issues to be addressed, but this approach could increase the value of brands to consumers and extend the life cycle of brands for organizations.

Furthermore, the concept of societal brand purpose could allow firms to focus on creating shareholder value as well as addressing social and environmental problems.

This paper broadens the current conception of customer interaction strategy and is thus relevant to relationship and experience marketing.

Despite the fact that prosocial motivation is related to word of mouth (WOM), few studies have been conducted to investigate the psychological and behavioral processes that mediate the two constructs. This study aims to explore customers’ relational interactions, specifically customer-to-employee interaction (via customer participation), customer-to-customer interaction and customer-to-brand interaction (via brand commitment), as mediators of the prosocial motivation–WOM linkage. Specifically, this paper examines the serial mediation model, in which prosocial motivation increases customer participation and customer-to-customer interaction, which in turn increase brand commitment and WOM sequentially.

This study collected survey data from two different samples, including higher degree research education and fitness gym services (highly interactive, people-processing service contexts), and used partial least square method to analyze the multiple serial mediations.

The results of this study show two serial mediating processes through which prosocial motivation influences WOM: 1. prosocial motivation → customer participation → brand commitment → WOM; and 2. prosocial motivation → customer-to-customer interaction → brand commitment → WOM.

The findings provide managerial insights into how marketers can foster a more interactive service environment to encourage prosocial customers to engage in WOM more effectively.

This study contributes to the literature on services WOM by illustrating the behavioral and psychological processes that underlie the effect of prosocial motivation on WOM.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of emotions in developing customer engagement and brand image during virtual service interactions. The authors explore the concept of engagement platforms (EPs) and how their extrinsic characteristics or cues (i.e. C2C interactions–and personalization-related cues) originate both non-transactional (i.e. customer engagement and brand image) and transactional (i.e. purchase intentions) responses. Specifically, the authors propose that customer emotions (i.e. pleasure, arousal and dominance) mediate the influence of EP cues on customer responses. The authors also analyze how the engagement developed during interactions in EPs contributes to brand image perceptions and the effect of these two concepts on purchase intentions.

Building on servicescapes and stimulus-organism-response theories, the present paper carries out two studies. Study 1 adopts an experimental approach to explore C2C interactions–and personalization-related cues. Study 2 focusses on the importance of customer emotions to foster engagement and brand image, and also analyzes their effect on purchase intentions. It employs structural equations modeling techniques. Both studies analyze the effect of customer engagement on brand image.

Findings corroborate that, during interactions in the platform, customer engagement with the firm influences brand image. Moreover, the pleasure and arousal experienced by customers influence their engagement while dominance modifies brand image. Finally, customer engagement and brand image have a positive effect on purchase behavior.

This paper contributes to research demonstrating the key role of emotions in interactions with EPs. The authors demonstrate the importance of fostering pleasant and arousing experiences to enhance the level of customer engagement with the firm in first interactions. Dominance constitutes a key dimension to improve brand image in EPs. Finally, the research demonstrates that engagement develops customers’ transactional behaviors and not only non-transactional ones, as seen in previous literature.

In digital worlds, EPs emerge as touch points beyond purchase that allow individuals to integrate resources and co-create value between them and with the firm. Despite the interest of BCPs, few works have analyzed how interactions with these platforms and the elicited emotions contribute to developing customer engagement and brand image, key factors for understanding customer participation and behavior in interactive media.

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 paper aims to investigate how social media usage by children determines their interactions with consumer brands. The paper also examines the nature of the processes evident.

A qualitative approach was implemented using both paired and single in-depth interviews of New Zealand children (both boys and girls) in the age group of 11-14 years. The data were analysed by thematic analysis of the interview transcripts.

The study demonstrates that children use three main processes – discerning, reacting and forming – when interacting with brands on social media. Each of these processes has different levels of interaction episodes depending on the amount of social media activity by each child. Discerning has noticing, a lower level of interaction and identifying which uses already internalised brand knowledge. Reacting consists of describing and evaluation which involves more active interaction resulting in opinion formation. Forming can involve a distant “watching” interaction or a more active relating behaviour when children are using multiple social media platforms.

The study identifies three key modes of brand interaction behaviour when young consumers use social media, which each have two interactions. The implication for marketers, parents and policymakers is that there is a range of behaviours, both passive and active, that children show when interacting with consumer brands when using social media.

The current study offers a way to deepen the understanding of how children approach online communications with brands in the social media context. The research finds that the children’s use of social media is more active and dynamic than previously thought, giving rise to connections with brands that are meaningful to the children. Specific codes of practice for online brand marketers may be necessary so that children are helped to understand the commercial intent of brand practices on social media.

The findings shed light on the range of interaction behaviour of young consumers, and such information provides insights into how children acquire brand knowledge, react to social media communication and decide the value of such communication for themselves. Brand marketers have a role to play in ensuring their brand communications practices avoid deception and clearly indicate commercial intent.

Investigating how children individually process brand information in a social media context provides insights into their interaction behaviour. These findings show differing levels of interest in both brand and social media activity amongst children.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of interaction-based features of social media reviewing channels and vloggers’ self-disclosure in consumers’ parasocial interaction with vloggers.

The study was conducted using an online survey, and data was collected using Amazon MTurk. The respondents were asked to think of an online reviewing channel that they watch regularly and subsequently responded to a series of questions. The analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling via AMOS.

Both channel interactivity and vloggers’ self-disclosure displayed a positive impact on consumers’ parasocial interaction with vloggers, which eventually led to perceived trustworthiness, brand identification, communal–brand connection with the channel, purchase intention toward the recommended products and willingness to pay a premium price for extra services.

Future research can examine the robustness of the findings by using a sample of internet users who are similar in terms of frequency, enthusiasm and duration of active usage.

Marketing managers can benefit from the findings of this study by understanding the dynamics of how influencers shape consumer perception and behavior. Owners of reviewing channels can gain insight on how to strengthen their bond with their viewers.