When Posting About Products on Social Media Backfires: The Negative Effects of Consumer Identity Signaling on Product Interest

Abstract

Consumers frequently express themselves by posting about products on social media. Because consumers can use physical products to signal their identities, posting about products on social media may be a way for consumers to virtually signal identity. The authors propose that there are conditions in which this action can paradoxically reduce a consumer’s subsequent purchase intentions. Five experiments demonstrate that posting products on social media that are framed as being identity-relevant can reduce a consumer’s subsequent purchase intentions for the same and similar products, as this action allows consumers to virtually signal their identity, fulfilling identity-signaling needs. Fortunately for retailers, the authors suggest theoretically and managerially relevant moderators that attenuate this negative effect on intent to purchase. These findings have important implications for how firms can conduct social media marketing to minimize negative purchase outcomes.

The Power of Brand Selfies in Consumer-Generated Brand Images

“…First, further research might elaborate on the sender perspective, the motivations of sharing product-related content and its impact on sender behavior. For example, Grewal, Stephen and Coleman (2019) suggests conditions under which posting identity-relevant content can inhibit subsequent purchase intentions. Descriptively, we find fewer consumer selfies with visible consumer faces than the other two brand image types, suggesting consumers are reluctant to affiliate with products in this way.…”

“…Relatedly, Klostermann et al (2018) uses and tags social media images related to the McDonald's brand to create an associative network. From the sender perspective, Grewal, Stephen and Coleman (2019) finds that sharing images serves important social objective in terms of identity signaling.…”

“…Academic research provides ample evidence for the effectiveness of images in advertising (e.g., Hanssens and Weitz 1980;Xiao and Ding 2014). Recent studies have also explored the motivations to share content and take photos and how this impacts subsequent sender behavior (e.g., Barasch, Zauberman and Diehl 2018;Grewal, Stephen and Coleman 2019). However, little is known about how observers respond to brand images in social media.…”

Using website information to reduce postpurchase dissonance: A mediated moderating role of perceived risk

“…Online shoppers develop prepurchase cognition based on their online product searches and analyses of product information (Watkins & Smith, 2008). Retailers display product performance, quality, and availability to consumers through their website content (Grewal, Stephen, & Coleman, 2019; Peterson, Kim, & Jeong, 2019). Suminski and Petosa (2006) noted that high‐quality websites are essential for online sellers because they affect customers' cognitive states and emotions.…”

Creating, Metavoicing, and Propagating: A Road Map for Understanding User Roles in Computational Advertising

“…The power of users in this dynamic environment is already evident from existing research. For example, user-generated content has been shown to significantly affect brand choice and sales (e.g., Grewal, Stephen, and Coleman 2019). The rise of active users has created a corresponding shift in the role of advertisers.…”