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This study aims to empirically analyze the effects of marketing communications, such as advertisement/promotion and social network service (SNS) content, on consumer engagement (CE), brand trust and brand loyalty.

The study’s participants were 230 US and 376 Korean consumers who have used (i.e. contacted) a food service establishment (i.e. family restaurant) at least once before and who continue to use an SNS (e.g. Facebook and Instagram). This study conducted a hypothesis test using structural equation modeling analysis. In addition, hierarchical analysis was performed to further generalize and support the statistical analysis results.

Advertisement/promotion and SNS content have a statistically significant positive effect on CE. Advertisement/promotion has a statistically significant positive effect on brand trust, and SNS content has a statistically significant negative effect on brand trust. CE has a statistically significant positive effect on brand trust, and CE and brand trust have a statistically significant positive effect on brand loyalty. No statistically significant differences were shown between the US and Korean consumer groups (critical ratios for difference of path coefficient < ± 1.96). The hypothesis test results of the structural equation model analysis and hierarchical analysis were the same for the entire group.

The findings indicate that the overall mediating role of CE is important. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate which marketing communication channels are most effective in the restaurant sector.

The benefits and problems associated with firm-generated content (FGC) as a key driver of sponsorship effectiveness demand more research attention. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to consider the effect of content marketing on sponsorship-response favorability in the South African energy drink market.

It is theorized that in an FGC environment, sponsor factors, sponsorship factors and event factors drive sponsorship favorability. This notion is tested using a structural equations model among 18- to 35-year-olds.

The results show acceptable model fit and confirm the usefulness of understanding the effects of content marketing on sponsorship favorability. The authors also offer directions for future research.

The results suggest that FGC which is well-designed, packaged and presented can enhance the views of individuals regarding a sponsor – even if the brand operates in a background position as opposed to the conventional foreground position common in promotional material.

The current study considers content marketing in contexts that have largely been avoided so far, or have only featured on a very limited scale in the literature. This study was conducted in an emerging market, business-to-consumer and sponsorship context for the application of a content marketing strategy.

The main objective of this study is identification of the key factors in planning digital content marketing (DCM) strategy in line with the corporate's main marketing objectives in the B2B sector.

In order to identify the different content types and their corresponding marketing goals, content analysis method was served to analyze the content of Instagram pages of 24 top-ranked corporates from three different industries. SPSS version 22 was used to investigate the significant difference levels and the mean ranks of identified content types.

The findings uncovered the twelve content types which are commonly published by the corporates in line with their main marketing goals in the B2B sector. Furthermore, the results revealed the most valuable content types from the B2B audiences' viewpoint and the most efficient content types in persuading audiences to participate in conversations.

This study sheds some light on the ambiguous facets of DCM in the B2B sector, and its findings is useful as the starting point for the scholars who intend to investigate the various aspects of DCM and for the practitioners who work in the related fields.

This research offers a novel contribution to using Instagram as a DCM platform in the B2B sector. Also it contributes to identifying the main factors in communicating to B2B audiences through DCM.

This paper aims to draw attention to the emerging phenomenon of business to business (B2B) digital content marketing, offers a range of insights and reflections on good practice and contributes to theoretical understanding of the role of digital content in marketing. B2B digital content marketing is an inbound marketing technique and hence offers a solution to the declining effectiveness of traditional interruptive marketing techniques.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 key informants involved in B2B content marketing in the USA, UK and France, in five industry sectors.

B2B digital content marketing is an inbound marketing technique, effected through web page, social media and value-add content, and is perceived to be a useful tool for achieving and sustaining trusted brand status. Creating content that is valuable to B2B audiences requires brands to take a “publishing” approach, which involves developing an understanding of the audience’s information needs, and their purchase consideration cycle. Valuable content is described as being useful, relevant, compelling and timely. Content marketing requires a cultural change from “selling” to “helping”, which in turn requires different marketing objectives, tactics, metrics and skills to those associated with more traditional marketing approaches. The article concludes with a theoretical discussion on the role of digital content in marketing, thereby contextualising the findings from this study within a broader exploration of the role of digital content in marketing and relational exchanges.

As the first research study to explore the use of digital content marketing in B2B contexts, this research positions digital content marketing with regard to prior theory, and provides both an agenda for further research, and suggestions for practice.

Although previous research emphasized the importance of inspiration in influencing consumer behavior, there is no categorical response to how social-media inspirational content inspires consumers across cultures. This paper aims to take on this agenda through a vignette experimental study.

This paper devised a vignette study involving subjects (n = 370) recruited from Nigeria and South Africa. The structural equation modeling procedure, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analysis aided the examination of the scale psychometrics and hypotheses testing.

Among other findings, this study shows that: inspirational content (utilitarian vs hedonic) exerts a positive differential effect on customer inspiration (CI) such that the effect of hedonic content is more pronounced than utilitarian content; collectivistic consumers are inspired more than individualists; CI triggers customer engagement behaviors (CEBs) and purchase intention, and an inspired-to component of CI mediates the effect of inspired-by on CEBs and purchase intention.

While this study makes significant contributions to knowledge on CI, the focus on firm-generated content limits the scope of this study. Future research should examine the effect of consumer-generated content on CI. Additionally, the likely contextual influence of product type on CI and its triggers in the context of the foote, cone and belding grid creates the room to further interrogate the research model under conditions of high/low involvement products.

By showing how social-media inspirational content and cultural orientation separately influence and interact to influence CI which consequently triggers CEBs and purchase intention, the findings highlight the psychological mechanisms through which CEBs and purchase intention can be simultaneously triggered.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of social content marketing in social media on the effectiveness of the new product development process of high-tech companies with regard to the e-trust as a mediator between content and effectiveness.

For this study, a descriptive research method has been adopted. Data were collected through a questionnaire. In total, 430 questionnaires were distributed among professionals and managers working in R&D, marketing, sales and strategic departments of firms affiliated with ICT Guild Organization in September 2017. Of this number, 384 complete questionnaires were included in the study. Data were analyzed using structural equation method by Smart PLS software.

Findings show that although social content marketing and e-trust influenced the effectiveness of the product development process, e-trust did not play a mediating role in the relationship between social content marketing and effectiveness of product development process in high-tech companies.

High-tech companies, drawing on the results of this research, can utilize the component of social content marketing in social and mobile media and content publication through e-commerce, social and mobile media and m-commerce while analyzing user-generated content to identify user demands and achieve the proper idea generation. At the time of commercializing, by educating and informing customers, they mitigate fears and risks. This will lead to increasing the effectiveness of the product development process, market share and achieving revenue goals.

This study investigates the social content marketing role in product development process in high-tech companies and tests the model in the context of the Tehran IT industries. The result of this study provides a reference for managers of high-tech companies and helps them lower the failure rate of product development.

This study aims to test the role of branded content marketing on YouTube in brand building and explicates the mechanism through which brand content influences brand loyalty and purchase intentions.

This study uses a quantitative, Web-based, three-step randomized intervention design and recruits YouTube users through the Amazon Mechanical Turk (n = 925).

Post-intervention results (n = 596) show that consumers’ repeated exposure to branded content facilitates their social learning processes. Consumers derive value from the relevant content and subsequently form more favorable brand attitudes, greater brand loyalty and heightened purchase intentions. Brand loyalty mediates the effect of perceived brand content value on purchase intentions.

This study’s findings support the advantages of investing in the creation and dissemination of valuable brand content through a brand’s own social media channel(s). While informative content and entertaining content can both drive brand loyalty, high product-involvement brands are advised to emphasize on informative content to precipitate brand–consumer attachment. Low product-involvement brands, on the other hand, are advised to feature more enticing and captivating content to stimulate consumer devotion.

This study reveals the positive impact of branded content marketing within social media on consumers’ brand attitudes, brand loyalty and purchase intentions. It also explicates the mechanism through which content marketing influences brand evaluation and purchase intentions by coordinating consumer learning and value derivation.

Today, viral marketing is popular as a highly effective marketing strategy with a low cost for mass targeting. This is suitable for the Universal Health Coverage campaign which seeks to attract the whole nation’s population to voluntarily register with social health insurance. It uses the target market itself as a weapon and the marketing content as a bullet. This study aims to determine the exact viral marketing content for the Universal Health Coverage campaign in Indonesia.

Viral marketing content is formulated based on the feelings of the target market toward social health insurance. Qualitative content analysis was conducted to identify the media framing and the audience’s response. Two of the biggest online news websites were analysed to determine the media framing. The audience’s response was identified through a Facebook group discussion.

This study shows that negative media framing makes people question the benefit of participating in social health insurance. Considering the local wisdom of Indonesia, helping poor people through social health insurance would be the best viral marketing content.

Because of the limited number of sources focused on the audience’s responses that have been analysed, the variations in the audience response could not be captured completely. Researchers should also analyse other audience channels (social media and messenger application) besides Facebook.

The paper includes implications for the future marketing agenda of insurance providers in relation to engaging the community.

This study operationally introduced how to use the media channel selected and audience framing in designing an effective viral marketing content in health-care marketing.

This paper aims to uncover the drivers of consumer-brand engagement on Facebook, understood here as users’ behavioral responses in the form of clicks, likes, shares and comments. We highlight which content components, interactivity cues (calls to action [CTA]) and media richness (e.g. video, photo and text) are most effective at inducing consumers to exhibit clicking, liking, commenting and sharing behaviors toward branded content.

This study analyzes 757 Facebook-based brand posts from a media and entertainment brand over a 15-week period. It investigates the relationship between interactive cues and media richness with consumer engagement using a negative binomial model.

Results show positive relationships for both interactivity cues and media richness content components on increasing consumer-brand engagement outcomes. The findings add clarity to previous inconsistent findings in the marketing literature. CTAs enhance all four engagement behaviors. Media richness also strongly influences all engagement behaviors, with visual imagery (photos and videos) attracting the most consumer responses.

The sampled posts pertain to one brand (a radio station) and are thus concentrated within the media/entertainment industry, which limits the generalizability of findings. In addition, the authors limit their focus to Facebook but recognize that findings may differ across more visual or textual social networking sites.

The authors uncover the most effective pairings of media richness and interactivity components to trigger marketer-desired, behavioral responses. For sharing, for example, the authors show that photo-based posts are more effective on average than video-based posts. The authors also show that including an interactive call to act to encourage one type of engagement behavior has a near-universal effect in increasing all engagement behaviors.

This study takes two widely used concepts within the communications and advertising literatures – interactivity cues and media richness – and tests their relationship with engagement using real and actual users’ data available via Facebook Insights. This method is more robust than surveys or wall scrapping, as it mitigates Facebook’s algorithm effect. The results produce more consistent relationships than previous content marketing studies to date.

This paper studies the relationships among consumers’ perceptions of brand personality, consumers’ brand attitudes and brand-owned social media content marketing (SMCM). The moderating effect of the brand content relevancy was also assessed.

A conceptual model was established and examined using two experiments with a total of 363 participants. Hierarchical regression analysis and an analysis of variance were performed to test seven research hypotheses.

Results show that the three forms of brand-owned SMCM, namely: conversation, storytelling and customer interaction and participation, are positively correlated with consumers’ brand personality perceptions and brand attitudes. Also, consumers’ perceptions of brand personality can partially mediate the relationship between brand-owned content marketing and consumers’ brand attitudes. Furthermore, the brand content relevancy does not show a moderating effect on the relationship between content marketing and consumers’ brand personality perceptions or brand attitudes.

First, a framework was established to delineate those paths by which owned social media content marketing (OSMCM) influences consumers’ attitudes towards a brand. Second, the study demonstrates the importance of conversation as a powerful method of OSMCM. Third, with respect to content in marketing strategies, firms do not need to confine themselves to a narrow scope of content or information that is closely related to the brands alone.