Effect of message orientation/vividness on consumer engagement for travel brands on social networking sites

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how consumer-brand engagement on social networking sites (SNS) is an outcome of the message orientation/vividness. Design/methodology/approach Message design is proposed to include two components, namely, orientation and vividness. The message orientation is classified as either task/instrumental or socioemotional. The message vividness is measured through content type. The consumer-brand engagement is conceptualized at three levels, namely, cognitive (comment), affective (shares) and conative (likes). A total of 1,000 posts were collected from the official Facebook pages of the 10 most popular travel brands, five each from India and the USA. These two countries were chosen as they are culturally different, with the former representing a largely collectivist culture and greater social connectivity and the latter representing primarily an individualistic culture. Findings The study reveals that greater message vividness, with more interactive/audio-visual content, leads to higher engagement. The task/instrumental message orientation leads to low-/medium-level engagement. Overall, a combination of high-vividness and socioemotional orientation generates maximum engagement. India and the USA depict unique effects of message orientations/vividness on the consumer-brand engagement levels, indicating cultural implications for the brand SNS messages – effectiveness. Research limitations/implications The study’s conceptualization of consumer-brand engagement reflected through the consumers – responses to brands – SNS messages, represents new knowledge. The unique effects of message vividness and orientation on consumer-brand engagement and the variations across cultures is also a novel contribution to the extant branding literature. Practical implications The brand marketers should not only design their SNS messages with appropriate vividness/orientation but also tweak them across cultures, for maximum consumer engagement. Originality/value The study is a novel attempt to deploy the interaction process analysis framework in an SNS setting.

Non-sponsored brand-related user-generated content: effects and mechanisms of consumer engagement

“…From a behavioral perspective, consumers' involvement in brand-related social media activities is largely accepted as an expression of engagement (Vivek et al, 2012;Yousaf et al, 2020). In these contexts, consumers engage as co-creators of brand messages (Jahn and Kunz, 2012;Iglesias et al, 2019;Guzel et al, 2020;Merrilees, et al 2021), as part of the digital ecosystem (Morgan-Thomas et al, 2020), as contributors in offering their viewpoint, and as followers (Dessart et al, 2015).…”

“…Functional value reflects the perceived utility of the valuedelivering attributes or characteristics of offerings (Smith and Colgate, 2007). It may involve different types of characteristics: (a) aesthetics, quality, customization or creativity; (b) reliability, performance quality, or service-support outcomes; (c) strategic value, effectiveness, operational benefits and environment benefits (Woodruff, 1997); d) price/value for money; and (e) performance/quality (Sweeney and Soutar, 2001). Emotional value reflects the value perceived as a result of offerings´ ability to "arouse or perpetuate feelings or affective states, such as comfort, security, excitement, romance, passion, fear or guilt" (Smith and Colgate, 2007, p: 8), with types of responses changing according to the context (Smith and Colgate, 2007).…”

Fostering consumer engagement with marketer-generated content: the role of content-generating devices and content features

“…Previous studies have found that different MGC content features can affect consumer engagement, for example, sharing, commenting and liking (Weiger et al, 2019;Yousaf et al, 2021). For example, remunerative MGC increases consumers' commenting, and informative content increases consumers' sharing of MGC (Chandrasekaran et al, 2019).…”

“…Previous studies have found that different MGC content features can affect consumer engagement, for example, sharing, commenting and liking (Weiger et al. , 2019; Yousaf et al. , 2021).…”

The dark and light sides of engagement: an analysis of user-generated content in wildlife trade online communities.

“…As group members will not process the information via the central route, it will be more efficient to maximise the potential of the peripheral cues to create behaviour change. This can be done by using high quality videos or photos combined with texts and links, as was shown by Yousaf et al (2020).…”