Display omitted •Firm-generated content has negative impact on purchase intention on new clients.•Brand equity and attitude have significant influence on purchase intention.•Our study provides better consumer insights for digital marketers.•The study expands the knowledge on firm-consumer interactions.•Marketers must rethink their online marketing strategies regarding FGC. The COVID-19 pandemic brought lockdowns upon consumers and firms alike, and social media became the vehicle by which brands attract more customers into their sales funnels. Accordingly, firm-generated content (FGC) has become a popular tool, allowing brands to use various content types to show consumers sharable, informative, and comment-worthy information. From the customer's perspective, this content type competes with, and complements, user-generated content (UGC). As current research focuses mainly on UGC, several questions regarding the social media marketing role of FGC, remain unanswered. Hence, this study aims to explain how FGC influences customer purchase intention, using online survey data. We use partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze the data and determine users' attitudes toward FGC. The findings suggest that FGC negatively influences purchase intention and has little effect on brand equity and attitude. These results challenge marketers to rethink their online marketing strategies.