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Purpose This paper aims to explore the impact of brand authenticity dimensions (i.e. aesthetic, symbolism, heritage, originality, quality commitment and virtue) on consumer engagement in the context of social media. This study answers to the need of scholars to understand consumer behaviour towards family and non-family firms’ brand authenticity constructs and for practitioners to find the correct levers to increase consumer engagement. Design/methodology/approach Top 10 European family firms with a retrievable Facebook (FB) page from the Global Family Business Index have been selected. Then, the study analysed family firms’ social media consumer engagement versus their non-family business direct competitors on a sample of 21.664 FB posts over a four-year period, leveraging multi-group analysis. Findings The results outline that three out of six brand authenticity dimensions posted on FB are statistically arousing more interactions respect to non-authenticity-related contents when posted by family firms. However, there are no statistically significant findings when brand authenticity content is posted by the non-family competitors. Practical implications This research is helpful for practitioners and entrepreneurs who might want to strengthen their social media brand strategies. With this regard, the study provides insights on which elements of brand authenticity are perceived by consumers as more engaging and which levers to use when communicating the familiness of the company. Originality/value To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is one of the earliest studies crosscutting the family business and brand authenticity literature streams to conduct an empirical analysis based on official FB data with a data set of over 20,000 observations. Moreover, this study assesses that not every dimension of the brand authenticity construct is relevant in the context of social media and that its effectiveness depends on the firms’ familiness.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, online commerce has been gradually taking over and shaping the global marketplace. This has led several scholars to study the phenomenon from different angles, from consumer habits to privacy risks to related technological innovations. However, only recently has a branch of literature addressing the online channel management phenomenon from the manufacturers’ perspective emerged. This rapidly expanding literature strand remains rather fragmented, raising the need for a systematic literature review to comprehensively structure and discuss it. This study, accordingly, proposes a systematic literature review on online channel management from the manufacturers’ perspective. Firstly, it provides relevant bibliometric insights into the ongoing research on the topic. Secondly, applying the bibliographic coupling methodology individuates 92 interconnected contributions published by 31 December 2021. Three different, albeit interconnected, thematic clusters are discovered and reviewed, revealing their focus on (a) strategic marketing issues around manufacturervsretailer conflict, (b) pricing policies and trade-offs among pricevsservices, and (c) operational interactions and strategies between supply chain members. Finally, after a systematic literature review the authors develop thirteen original research propositions concerning new research pathways and theoretical advancements to be designed and implemented.

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