Second Person Pronouns Enhance Consumer Involvement and Brand Attitude

Abstract

Online brand messaging, e.g., blogging or posting on social media platforms, has an important role in digital marketing strategy. Such messaging is largely text based and provides an opportunity for brands to interact with many consumers simultaneously. The marketing literature, however, has yet to provide sufficient guidance on effective online brand messaging strategies. In particular, research has yet to address how the inclusion of second person pronouns in online brand messaging affects relevant consumer outcomes. The present research proposes that second person pronouns should work to enhance consumer involvement and brand attitude as a result of increasing the extent that consumers engage in self-referencing. A field study involving actual brand posts on Facebook and two subsequent experiments provide support for this hypothesis. In addition, drawing on cultural dimensions theory, individual levels of collectivism are identified as a boundary condition. The presence (vs. absence) of second person pronouns in online brand messaging enhances involvement and brand attitude for consumers that are lower, but not higher, in collectivism. The results provide marketers with needed guidance for creating effective online brand messaging.

Investigating the Impacts of Brand Social Media Posts’ Linguistic Styles on Consumer Engagement

“…To digital marketers, enhancing consumer engagement with brand posts on social media is both vital and challenging [2][3][4]. Consumer engagement with brand posts is positively related with: brand awareness, preference, and consideration [5][6][7][8]; brand equity [5,9]; and brand performance (e.g., sales, new customer acquisition, brand value, etc.) [2,7,10].…”

“…Although academic research suggests that marketers can strategically design brand posts that improve consumer engagement, it is not clear what contents work better for which brand and in what way [12]. While previous research in this area has mainly focused on specific brand post characteristics, such as content type, media type, and post timing, few of them has examined the language used by brand [6,12,15]. Arguably, as a critical medium that communicates brand meanings, language plays a significant role in the underlying processes of consumers identifying, experiencing, integrating, signifying, and connecting with brands and affects consumers' responses to brands in terms of perception, memory, attitude, as well as behavior [16].…”

Consumer Engagement with Brand Posts on Social Media: Current State and Research Agenda

“…), and within a variety of contexts (e.g., single/multiple industries, B2B/B2C, product/service, etc.) (see 5,6,8,10,13,14,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. Slightly differing in the research design (e.g., sample size and variable operationalization), previous research is mainly rooted in traditional advertising literature and marketing communication theory and dependent on the field study method that uses manual content analysis to analyze data collected from Facebook brand pages.…”

“…Khan et al [37] found that the impacts of content type and media type of brand posts on consumer engagement vary across different cultures. Cruz, Leonhardt, & Pezzuti [6] found that the relationship between second person pronouns usages in online brand messaging and consumer engagement is moderated by individual levels of collectivism. Specifically, the presence (vs. absence) of second person pronouns in online brand messaging increases engagement only for consumers that are lower (vs. higher) in collectivism.…”

“…For marketers, consumer engagement with brand posts is crucial because it is essential for creating social contagion effects, whereby a brand's message reaches non-subscribers or those not participating in a conversation with the brand [4]. Research has also shown that consumer engagement with brand posts is positively related with: brand awareness, preference, and consideration [3,[5][6][7]; brand equity [8]; and brand performance (e.g., sales, new customer acquisition, value, etc.) [3,7,9].…”