Consumer Trust Towards Content Marketing of Food & Beverage Businesses on Instagram: Empirical Analysis of Taiwanese and Singaporean Consumers

Abstract

Nowadays, food and beverage businesses need some adjustments regarding their marketing strategy as people's lifestyle, and dietary patterns are varied. One of the marketing strategies on social media which local restaurant marketers can adopt is content marketing. However, content marketing will not work until trust is established (Newman, 2014). Marketers must ensure that the contents are genuine and transparent enough to develop trust (Kee & Yazdanifard, 2015). This study aims to examine the effect of product transparency on consumer trust to increase the effectiveness of content marketing and investigate whether one of Hofstede's cultural dimensions, uncertainty avoidance, can be the moderator of this relationship. The valid respondents of the online survey were 111 Taiwanese and Singaporean. It was revealed that product transparency positively influences consumer trust, and uncertainty avoidance cannot be the significant moderator of this relationship. Furthermore, an additional analysis provided evidence where uncertainty avoidance has a negative influence on consumer trust. Therefore, providing transparent information regarding food products in content marketing would help to increase the effectiveness of local restaurant's marketing strategy through social media, and recognizing the cultural dimensions of where the business operates will give an initial hint of the consumer's propensity to trust. The importance of this research is to recognize the possible factor that can help to increase the effectiveness of content marketing for food and beverage businesses, specifically for local restaurants. Marketers need to evaluate their strategy depending on the consumers' perception of trust and transparency and choose their content strategy appropriately based on the trust beliefs of the consumers of a country where the business will be performed.

Content Value Versus Influencer Credibility: What Matters More for Followers’ Trust and Behavioral Intention Towards Collaborative Brands?

“…Based on the fourth hypothesis testing results, it can be inferred that advertising content value had a positive and significant direct effect on brand trust. The results of this study confirm the previous research by Lou and Yuan [5] and Mohammad [26]. The content that is considered to explain best the role of advertising content value shared by influencers is fun content, content that helps understand the product better, and content that followers can enjoy.…”

A Scoping Review of the Effect of Content Marketing on Online Consumer Behavior

“…When the digital brand content is clear, presented appealingly, and focuses on user value while consumers can opt out any time, brand trust is enhanced (Hollebeek & Macky, 2019). On the other hand, Mohammad (2020) found that brand trust is enhanced with digital brand content that promotes product transparency.…”