BUS631: Brand Management

This study integrates two dimensions of content strategies of brand message and response strategies of social presence, extends the theoretical framework of brand social media strategies, and empirically tests it in a differentiated framework of brand image and discretionary purchases. To do so, we conducted a multiple linear regression analysis using data collected from Weibo. Our results extend the literature by providing novel insights into the role of DCEs within a social media context. We aim to answer the three research questions mentioned above. Regarding the first questions, this study compares the effects of three content strategies on different levels of digital customer engagement. Compared to the other two types of content strategies, action content strategy had a significant positive impact on different levels of digital customer engagement. The findings indicate that the action content strategy is the most effective in stimulating cognitive and affective processing as well as advocacy. In contrast to the previous findings, community content strategy was less effective in stimulating digital customer engagement due to higher interactive requirements, where information content strategy was more effective than community content strategies in positively filtering and advocacy. Regarding the second question, brand social media response strategies have a mixed impact on digital customer engagement. Cohesive response strategies are the most effective way to promote digital customer engagement. A key advantage of a cohesive response strategy is that it focuses on highlighting brand affinity and showcasing the human side of the brand to create familiarity and intimacy. Regarding the third question, in the brand image dimension, "warmth" is associated with a higher level of digital customer engagement compared to "competence". In the dimension of discretionary purchases, we find no significant differences between material purchases and experiential purchases on the cognitive and affective processing dimension of digital customer engagement. In addition, we find that the level of brand social media response strategy has a greater impact on digital customer engagement in terms of "competency" brand image and material purchases, the higher the response level, the higher the digital customer engagement level.

Theoretical Implication

This study makes some initial contributions to the customer engagement and brand literature, and from it we draw three main theoretical insights. First of all, this study focuses on the effectiveness of two categories of brand social media strategies, which are content strategy and response strategy, in terms of digital customer engagement. The study shows that in terms of content strategies, action content strategy has the most significant impact on digital customer engagement, with the largest share at the level of facilitating shares. Rewarding and gamified content strategies play a crucial role in triggering digital customer engagement. Brands should proactively incentivize online users, with incentives such as monetary incentives and relationship incentives, which are expected to achieve higher level of digital customer engagement. Information strategy effectively influences the likes and shares levels of digital customer engagement, so brands can focus on presenting information about product or service quality aspects and corresponding detailed experiences or descriptions that reflect brand competence and customer preferences. Next, contrary to our hypotheses, the community strategy did not obtain higher level of digital customer engagement than the information strategy, which may be due to the fact that community requires the establishment of deeper level of interaction as part of self-expression. In addition, we extend social presence theory to social media contexts and have distinguished three types of response strategies based on social presence theory, each of which differentially influenced different levels of digital customer engagement. The results show that this study does not find that all response strategies significantly affect digital customer engagement. The impact of response strategies on digital customer engagement is not homogeneous and requires different corresponding strategies based on different goals, which ultimately lead to different levels of digital customer engagement. For example, affective response strategy tends to exhibit more positive cognitive and affective processing behaviors, while cohesive response strategy is more influential in increasing the number of advocacy. Lastly, most of the previous studies take single-focus brands into consideration and do not extend it to be the differentiated impact on digital customer engagement between different brand types. Therefore, we illustrate that digital customer engagement is influenced by brand image and discretionary purchases differentiation through two comparative studies of brand image and discretionary purchases, and the findings reveal the interaction of brand social media response strategies with brand image and discretionary purchases and demonstrate the extent to which they influence digital customer engagement, further enriching the existing insights.

Management Implication

This study has several enlightening insights for managers or marketers who use social media. First, social media offers greater flexibility in terms of usefulness, relevance, timeliness, and customization of information. This study encourages managers to consider brand social media strategy as an important element of their brand strategies. We use the most common engagement metrics to look at digital customer engagement and link brand social media strategies to these metrics and further stimulate user engagement, trust, and relationship development. We recommend that brands carefully measure and examine digital customer engagement behaviors, considering consumer behaviors in general, including the behaviors across different platforms, devices, and digital touchpoints. Second, from a practical perspective, managers are advised to carefully select, design, and promote brand-related messages on social media pages, including goals related to the marketing purpose, multi-stakeholder impact, and a high degree of brand personality/cultural identity engagement. In addition, managers need to enrich and leverage the functional interactive features of social networks to improve digital customer engagement. However, many brands rarely respond to user comments, and social media’s conversational features are underutilized. Therefore, brands can demonstrate brand personality and sincerity through conversations to promote mutual understanding between brands and consumers. Finally, the focus dimension of customer engagement may be different for different brand image and discretionary purchases. This study focuses on the impact of differentiated attributes of brands on digital customer engagement, which helps to strengthen authentic and effective marketing communication, provide product and brand matching differentiated service operations, and strengthen coordination capabilities with partner brands to continuously improve the level of digital customer engagement.

Limitation and Future Research

This study exists limitations. First, this study explores brand social media strategies and digital customer engagement from a micro perspective. For future research, we suggest exploring other perspectives, e.g., the socio-technical phenomenon based on a socio-technical perspective to explore the integration of digital engagement behavior with digital technology. Second, the data used in this study is limited to the official social media pages of each brand. We suggest further exploring the factors that influence digital customer engagement, e.g., leader self-disclosure, opinion leaders, and group opinions. Future research should strive to extend social media data, such as whether opinion leader engagement leads to higher digital customer engagement or whether it affects the conversion of digital customer engagement validity. Third, digital customer engagement can vary by media context. There is only one social platform selected for this study, resulting in the lack of information on other social platforms, which implies that consumers who use social platforms such as Tiktok or WeChat or other platforms simultaneously may have self-selection bias. Cross-platform domain research can help to fully take in the relationship between social media and digital customer engagement. Fourth, we recommend that researchers further investigate, test, and validate more granular aspects of digital customer engagement. Future researchers can delve deeper into digital customer engagement types and how engagement types are linked to downstream outcomes (e.g., purchases rates or brand value). Finally, there are limitations to a single source of brand expressiveness, and many brands optimize their brand resourcing and integration capabilities through brand association mechanisms. The future researchers can focus on exploring whether the differentiated or consistent choice of brand association type facilitates the generation and validity of customer engagement.