Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how digital content marketing (DCM) users can be engaged with business-to-business (B2B) brands and determine how such engagement leads to value-laden trusted brand relationships. Design/methodology/approach Through an online survey, data were collected from the email marketing list of a large B2B brand, and the hypothesised research model was analysed using covariance-based structural equation modelling. Findings This paper identifies a bundle of helpful brand actions – providing relevant topics and ideas; approaching content with a problem solving orientation; as well as investing in efforts to interpret, analyse and explain topics through DCM – to foster relationship value perceptions and brand trust. Critically however, cognitive-emotional brand engagement is shown to be a necessary requirement for converting these actions into relationship value perceptions. Research limitations/implications This paper furthers the understanding of the dual role of helpful brand actions in functionally oriented DCM. Additionally, this paper offers evidence of the central role of cognitive-emotional brand engagement in influencing value-laden customer–brand relationships. Practical implications This paper introduces a bundle of helpful brand actions that forms the basis for the dual roles of a brand in enhancing customer value and in fostering brand engagement and building relationships. This approach helps practitioners to steer brand-related perceptions arising from DCM interactions towards building trusted brand relationships. Originality/value This paper contributes to the marketing literature by revealing a potential approach to DCM in managing customer relationships. Instead of focusing solely on the content benefit-usage link to support engagement, this paper reveals the potential of helpfulness as a brand-initiated DCM engagement trigger in engaging customers with the brand, vis-à-vis the content.
To do this, we use structural equation modeling to analyze data from two groups, skim readers and avid readers, who vary in terms of the behaviors they invest in the reading of brand-extended thematic-content. The findings reveal that brand-extended thematic-content affects divergently on the brand attitude formation of these two groups. Specifically, this study reveals that, for skim readers on social networking sites, brandextended thematic-content affects brand attitude primarily through an affect transfer effect, whereas, for avid readers, brand attitude is shaped primarily by brand familiarity following reading frequency.
This study aimed to examine the effects of content characteristics (i.e., informational and emotional characteristics), language, and nonverbal information on social media engagement (SME) (i.e., likes, shares, and comments) in the context of global brands operating in an emerging market and implementing TikTok as a tool for social media marketing. The dataset comprised 680 posts, 1,527,340 likes, 58,529 shares, and 18,743 comments collected from global smartphone brands’ TikTok accounts, specifically targeting Indonesian consumers. The findings confirm that informational content mainly generates higher SME than emotional content. English and code-switched languages generally improve SME, while nonverbal information mostly has no significant effects. Furthermore, English and code-switched languages mainly have negative moderating effects on the relationship between content characteristics (both informational and emotional characteristics) and SME. Theoretically, this study provides a preliminary understanding of effective SME enhancement strategies for global brands targeting consumers on TikTok in emerging markets. Practically, the results of this research can provide guidelines for global brands engaging with consumers in emerging countries. These insights can also assist global brands in creating “TikTok famous” content.
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