Developing brand advocacy through brand activities on Facebook

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how brands’ social media activities (credible content delivery, co-creation and responsiveness) impact brand advocacy. The paper also examines the influence of brand advocacy on purchase intentions of brand advocates and the moderating effect of the amount of time spent on Facebook on the relationship between brand advocacy and purchase intentions. Finally, the moderating effect of brand type (goods vs services) on the relationship between brands’ activities and brand advocacy is explored. Design/methodology/approach US adults who use Facebook as their primary social media platform participated in a survey via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The three brand activities are positively related to users’ advocacy of brands toward other users. Brand advocacy also positively influences purchase intentions of brand advocates. The amount of time spent on Facebook moderates the relationship between brand advocacy and purchase intentions. The brand type moderates the relationship between co-creation and brand advocacy. Originality/value This study differs from the existing research, which has typically used a user-oriented perspective (e.g. impact of user motivations) to explain brand advocacy and has not considered the outcome of brand advocacy on the brand advocates’ purchase intentions.

Analysing Donors' Behaviour in Non-profit Organisations for Disaster Resilience: The 2019--2020 Australian Bushfires Case Study

“…Additionally, Wilk et al 2018 reported that customers -i.e., supporters of a charity who donate -have more impact on consumer (i.e., donor) decision-making than brand-sponsored marketing messages thanks to a process called voluntary brand advocacy. More specifically, people who mention a charity on social media and engage in brand advocacy (on Facebook) are more likely to donate (Wallace et al 2017;Choi et al 2021).…”

CSR Unconscious Consumption by Generation Z in the COVID-19 Era—Responsible Heretics Not Paying CSR Bonus?

“…In this respect, it is highly relevant to perform a longitudinal observance of a solvent customer group with a growing impact-Generation Z which is socially aware, e-literate (Turner 2015) and Internet and social media dependent (Bassiouni and Hackley 2014;Choi et al 2021). Generation Z organically continues trends launched by the preceding Generation of Millennials which established the four components cyclic customer journey: connect, explore, buy and use in the context of the real and electronic universe (Mele et al 2021).…”

“…At the same time, their determination, social and digital awareness might induce the idea that they will automatically opt for CSR and, if not totally selfish, then they should be ready to pay a CSR bonus (D'Adamo and Lupi 2021; ). However, we should keep in mind that Generation Z is very much oriented towards digital media, spends a great deal of time looking for information posted on various portals or in social media (Choi et al 2021) and considers propositions by various influencers (Gajanova et al 2020). They definitely do not reduce themselves to conventional content analysis of reports (Vourvachis and Woodward 2015).…”

“…Undoubtedly, a proper CSR leads to an increase of legitimacy and facilitates customer engagement (Carroll 2016), but members of Generation Z are not only more inclined to actively support CSR than older consumers (D'Adamo and Lupi 2021), but as well they are very autonomous in deciding what they perceive as a good or bad CSR and what and how they will support it. They do not hesitate to look for information via physical as well as digital platforms (Mele et al 2021) and gladly share their opinions, experiences and attitudes via various social and other media (Choi et al 2021;Pelikánová and MacGregor 2020a). Members of Generation Z know very well that businesses can do something completely different from what they state, see the impression management issue (Meyer and Rowan 1977;Roman et al 2019).…”

“…He or she will explore not only economic, but as well legal and ethical dimensions and accordingly will decide whether he will purchase goods and/or services from such a business and if yes, then for how much. If such a customer is a member of Generation Z, then it must be emphasized that he or she will look for information and the media (Choi et al 2021), which is typically excluded from deliberative analyses, will play an important epistemic role (De Bakker et al 2019). Indeed, preferences by the generation of consumers able to truly speak with their purchasing decisions in the next decades, i.e., members of Generation Z with a sufficient financial potential (Pelikánová and MacGregor 2020a), are indispensable and critical for the multi-stakeholder model supporting sustainability and CSR.…”