Informing brand messaging strategies via social media analytics

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer a theory-driven, evidence-based approach to developing a brand’s messaging strategies on social media encompassing three messaging dimensions, namely, appeal, content, and richness. Design/methodology/approach – Using longitudinal data from three Fortune 200 companies – Delta Airlines, Wal-Mart, and McDonald’s – the authors empirically investigate comprehensive strategic messaging framework. Using ANOVAs and regression analyses, the authors test a set of hypotheses regarding the relations between a brand ' s purchase involvement, its message appeal, message content, and message richness, and engagement. Findings – Findings reveal significant relations between purchase involvement and appeal. Furthermore, the authors find that abstract content categories are best combined with richer media. Finally, both transformation appeal and richer media have a highly significant and positive effect on engagement. Research limitations/implications – The authors offer a theoretical ground and empirical validation of both a comprehensive typology of content categories and a holistic strategic messaging framework that can fill a significant void in the social media marketing literature that lacks integrative models for assessing, classifying, analyzing, and in turn, informing future social media marketing strategies. Practical implications – The validated framework can help managers better understand the diversity of messaging components as well as offer an analytical tool for assessing the nature of engagement associated with each appeal and category. Originality/value – To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper offers the first comprehensive typology of content categories and validates it in the context of a strategic messages framework using real-world data finding strong support for all hypotheses.

Do different kinds of user-generated content in online brand communities really work?

“…Figure 1 illustrates the overall research model. From the perspective of vividness and richness of online UGC, reviews and comments are only text messages and are characterised as low level of vividness and richness (Coursaris et al, 2016;Luarn et al, 2015). Previous research obtains mixed results regarding the influence of valence of users' reviews (i.e., whether comments are positive or negative) on sales (Floyd et al, 2014;You et al, 2015) and other psychological outcomes (Purnawirawan et al, 2015).…”

“…Discussions developed by users in the forum section of OBCs are also characterised as low level of vividness and richness in this research, mainly because the content found in these discussions is text based (Coursaris et al, 2016;Luarn et al, 2015). Previous research offers evidence about the role of UGC in forums/discussions in performance measures, such as product adoption.…”

“…In this regard, users' posts on OBCs sometimes contain images, photos, videos, or links to other pages. These different types of UGC in OBCs make posts more or less vivid (Jeon et al, 2016;Luarn et al, 2015), and rich (Coursaris et al, 2016). Vividness refers to "the ability of a technology to produce a sensorially rich mediated environment" (Steuer, 1992, p. 80).…”

“…From the point of view of vividness and richness of online UGC, previous research proposes that, compared with UGC comprised of only text, information containing pictures and photos can provide users with more vivid and richer information about a product (Coursaris et al, 2016;Luarn et al, 2015). Therefore, in general, as UGC in OBCs has been proven to be a good predictor of sales (Adjei et al, 2010;Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006) and the adoption of new products (Gruner et al, 2014;Thompson and Sinha, 2008), the present study considers that UGC characterised by more vividness and richness than simply text (i.e., graphic UGC in the form of screenshots and artwork) also has a positive effect on product success.…”

“…Previous research is mainly focused on volume and/or valence of customers' reviews (i.e., only text based), obtaining mixed results on their influence on sales (Floyd et al, 2014;You et al, 2015) and other psychological outcomes (Purnawirawan et al, 2015). Moreover, previous research focused on the analysis of different types of UGC merely examines their influence on brand popularity and brand engagement (Coursaris et al, 2016;Luarn et al, 2015). Therefore, this research uses the video games industry in order to investigate the impact that a wide set of different types of UGC found in OBCs has on product success.…”