Purpose
This study aims to examine how message strategy influences consumer behavioral engagement in social media. To this end, the study develops a comprehensive typology of branded content in ...social media and tests for its effect on consumer behavioral engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of brand posts derived from the official Facebook pages of top corporate brands was double-coded using an elaborate coding instrument. Message strategy was operationalized using three main message strategies (i.e. informational, transformational and interactional) and their paired combinations. Consumer behavioral engagement was operationalized using consumer actions of liking and sharing brand posts. Proposed relationships were tested with MANCOVA and univariate ANOVAs.
Findings
Results indicate that the transformational message strategy is the most powerful driver of consumer behavioral engagement, while no significant difference is observed between the informational and the interactional message strategies. Further, complementing the informational and interactional message strategies with the transformational message strategy markedly enhances their effectiveness.
Practical implications
Useful managerial guidance to develop effective message strategies is offered. In particular, the importance of transformational messages, both as a standalone and a complementary message strategy, is underscored. By mastering and deploying transformational messages more frequently in their social media communication, marketers could improve their effectiveness.
Originality/value
Drawing on a theory-driven typology, this study sheds light on how message strategy shapes consumer behavioral engagement in a social media context. Importantly, the study documents pioneering empirical evidence regarding the effect of combined message strategies on consumer behavioral engagement.
The widespread adoption of social networking sites among college students has motivated an increasing number of researchers to discern the relationship between social networking site use and academic ...performance. However, these studies mainly address the direct effect of social networking site use on academic performance, thus failing to identify and incorporate relevant explanatory mechanisms. The present study addresses this gap by examining the mediating role of student engagement in the relationship between social networking site use and academic performance. The study gathered pertinent data from a sample of college students (
N
= 180) by using a questionnaire, which measured social networking site use based on the number of hours students spent daily on six popular social networking sites, student engagement using a ten-item scale adapted from the literature, and academic performance using semester grade-point average. An empirical test of the mediation model using the PROCESS macro demonstrates that student engagement mediates the negative association between social networking site use and college students’ academic performance. This study contributes to the literature by documenting pioneering evidence of the mediating role of student engagement.
With the widespread adoption of social networking sites among college students, discerning the relationship between social networking sites use and college students’ academic performance has become a ...major research endeavor. However, much of the available research in this area rely on student self-reports and findings are notably inconsistent. Further, available studies typically cast the relationship between social networking sites use and college students’ academic performance in linear terms, ignoring the potential moderating role of the intensity of social networking sites use. In this study, we draw on contrasting arguments in the literature predicting positive and negative effects of social networking sites use on college students’ academic performance to propose an inverted U-shaped relationship. We collected data on social networking sites use by having college students install a tracking app on their smartphones for 1 week and data on academic performance from internal college records. Our findings indicate that social networking sites use indeed exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with college students’ academic performance. Specifically, we find that spending up to 88.87 min daily on social networking sites is positively associated with academic performance, but beyond that, social networking sites use is negatively associated with academic performance. We discuss the implications of our findings.
•Multihoming delay is associated with lower user adoption of mobile apps in the multihomed platform.•Multihoming customization is associated with higher user adoption of mobile apps in the multihomed ...platform.•Both multihoming delay and multihoming customization have stronger effects on the adoption of hedonic than utilitarian mobile apps.•Mobile app developers face a trade-off between multihoming delay and multihoming customization.
Developers release their mobile apps through multiple app store ecosystems to extend their reach and reduce their dependency on a single distribution platform and its governance mechanisms. While this topic has piqued the interest of a growing number of studies, key multihoming decisions faced by developers including when to multihome mobile apps and whether and how much to customize them for the multihomed platform have not yet been jointly examined. In addition, the potential role that the user value of mobile apps (hedonic or utilitarian) plays in developers’ multihoming decisions has largely been overlooked. To address these gaps, the present study jointly investigates the effects of multihoming delay and multihoming customization on the user adoption of mobile apps on the multihomed platform. It further investigates the moderating effects of the user value of mobile apps. The study employed a large dataset of mobile apps that were initially released through Apple's App Store and subsequently multihomed into Google's Play Store (N = 24,906). By combining traditional count regression model with a machine learning approach, the study derives a range of theoretical and predictive insights that significantly contribute to the mobile app multihoming literature.
•Product type is investigated as a boundary condition to campaign communication strategy.•Objective information is associated with greater campaign success for intangible products.•Positive emotions ...are associated with greater campaign success for intangible products.•Campaign photos are associated with greater campaign success for tangible products.•Campaign videos are associated with greater campaign success for intangible products.
Online crowdfunding platforms allow creators to raise funds from a large crowd of distributed backers. In these platforms, creators’ campaign communication strategy plays a crucial role in persuading backers to support their projects. At the same time, creators may need to modify their campaign communication strategy depending on the product type they are raising funds for (i.e., tangible products or intangible services and experiences). However, research has not considered the possibility of product type moderating the effect of creators’ campaign communication strategy on campaign success. Drawing on theoretical insights from the advertising and services communication literature and employing a dataset of over 8000 reward-based crowdfunding campaigns from kickstarter.com, the current study tests the moderating effect of product type. A computational algorithm deciphered creators’ campaign communication strategy. The findings contribute to the literature by offering nuanced insights about the effects of creators’ campaign communication strategy on the success of tangible product and intangible service and experience campaigns.
PurposeYouTube's vast and engaged user base makes it central to firms' digital marketing effort. With extant studies focusing on viewers' post-view engagement behavior, however, research into what ...motivates viewers to click on and watch YouTube videos is scarce. This study investigates the implications of marketers' video optimization practices for video views on YouTube.Design/methodology/approachThe study employed a data set of videos (N = 4,398) gathered by scraping YouTube's trending list. Using a combination of text and sentiment analysis, the study measured four video optimization practices: information content of video titles, emotional intensity of video titles, information content of video descriptions and volume of video tags. It then analyzed the effect of these video optimization practices on video views.FindingsThe study finds that greater availability of information in video titles is negatively associated with video views, whereas intensity of negative emotional sentiment in video titles is positively associated with video views. Further, greater availability of information in video descriptions is positively associated with video views. Finally, an inverted U-shaped relationship is found between volume of video tags and video views. Up to 17 video tags can contribute to more video views; however, beyond 17 tags, the relationship turns negative.Originality/valueThis study investigates the effect of marketers' video optimization practices on video views. While extant studies mainly focus on viewers' post-view engagement behavior, such as liking, commenting on and sharing videos, this study examines video views. Similarly, extant studies investigate videos' internal content, while this study investigates elements of the video metadata.
Purpose
This study aims to propose an experiential model of consumer engagement focusing on Facebook brand pages. Building on the brand experience literature, the study synthesizes the experiential ...affordances of Facebook brand pages along perceptual, social, epistemic and embodied dimensions and tests their impact on consumer engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
The study operationalized key variables of the proposed model at the brand page level and assembled pertinent data, using systematic content analysis, on a sample of Facebook brand pages (n = 85). Poisson regression tested the proposed model.
Findings
The findings indicate that brands that facilitate greater number of experiential affordances on their Facebook brand pages generated higher levels of consumer engagement. For both brand post likes and brand post shares, the contributions of experiential affordances were significant and positive.
Practical implications
The findings offer actionable managerial insights for brands seeking to implement an experiential model of consumer engagement on their fan pages.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature by proposing and testing an experiential model of consumer engagement in the context of Facebook brand pages. To date, the experiential value of Facebook brand pages has rarely, if at all, been tested in an empirical study.
•The concept of app store strategy is introduce.•The hedonic and utilitarian value of mobile apps is investigated as a moderator.•Contributions of app size, app versions and the paid app revenue ...model to app rating are stronger for hedonic mobile apps.•Contribution of length of mobile app names to app rating is stronger for utilitarian mobile apps.
Concerns about the performance of mobile apps have spurred a stream of research on factors contributing to the success of mobile apps in the major app stores. However, identified success factors have not been synthesized into a unified framework. Similarly, reported findings typically address main effects. The present study introduces the concept of app store strategy to synthesize the mobile app success factors that developers implement in the major app stores. The study synthesizes four such factors consisting of app size, app versions (major and minor), revenue model and mobile app names. Further, drawing on IS literature, the study distinguishes between hedonic and utilitarian mobile apps. Using a dataset of mobile apps from Play Store (N = 8325), the study investigates to what extent app store strategy interacts with the hedonic and utilitarian value of mobile apps in driving app rating. The study employed a combination of traditional regression and machine learning approaches to test proposed hypotheses. The findings make a two-fold contribution to the literature first by introducing the concept of app store strategy to synthesize mobile app success factors and second by examining hedonic and utilitarian mobile apps as a boundary condition in the relationship between app store strategy and app rating.
Brand posts are concise and recurrent updates created by brands and sent out to their followers on social media. Brand posts play a crucial linking role by connecting brands to their customers and ...fans on a daily basis. Brand posts represent a rich form of communication that convey various brand meaning and experiences using multiple media formats. Despite this, however, brand posts have not been subjected to formalized analyses in the literature. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to conduct a formalized analysis of brand posts and propose a systematic framework to categorize them. With this aim, the study performed qualitative content analysis involving three interrelated coding procedures. First, the study reviewed the relevant literature to identify pre-existing coding categories (deductive coding). Second, the study drew together systematic inferences from a purposive sample of brand posts (n = 371) to derive new coding categories (inductive coding). Finally, the study implemented a double-coding procedure on a probabilistic sample of brand posts (n = 249) to validate the initial coding categories (validation coding). Together, the three coding procedures produced 12 exhaustive and mutually exclusive categories of brand posts. The proposed categorization offers a comprehensive framework to think about brand posts. For marketers, it provides guidance to create the stream of content necessary to stimulate daily customer interaction on social media. For researchers, it offers a solid conceptual foundation to categorize, code and model brand posts.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to analyse Facebook brand posts along dimensions of vividness, interactivity, novelty, brand consistency and content type and tests how these characteristics ...influence audience response in terms of liking and sharing brand posts.
Design/methodology/approach
– The sample comprised 191 brand posts sourced from the Facebook brand pages of five top selling automotive brands in the UK. Audience response was operationalised using brand post likes and brand post shares, while brand post characteristics were operationalised according to relevant theory. Poisson regression models were tested to measure the effect of brand post characteristics on audience response.
Findings
– The findings indicate that brand post vividness has a significant positive effect on brand post shares, but not on brand post likes. Brand post interactivity has a significant negative effect on both brand post likes and brand post shares. Brand post novelty and brand post consistency have a significant positive effect on both brand post likes and brand post shares. Finally, brand post content type has a significant positive effect on brand post likes, but not brand post shares.
Practical implications
– The findings underscore the need for marketers to develop a systematic content strategy for Facebook brand pages. With this in mind, the study proposes several evidence based suggestions.
Originality/value
– This study contributes to the literature first by synthesising and testing brand post characteristics that were overlooked in prior research and second by developing theoretically consistent operationalisation for already familiar brand post characteristics. These enhancements resulted in a final model with a superior explanatory power.
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