How trust moderates social media engagement and brand equity

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to develop and measure customer engagement scale in context to social media (SM); second, to elucidate the variables that impact customers’ brand engagement on SM and its impact in building customer-based brand equity; and finally, to examine the moderating role of trust in SM brand engagement and brand equity relationship. Design/methodology/approach The data were collected from 767 SM users working in multinational corporations of Gurgaon city, using purposive sampling technique. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were undertaken to analyze the data. Findings The paper outcomes indicated SM brand engagement as a bi-dimensional construct comprising information interest and personal interest. Both social factors and consumer-based factors significantly influence customers’ SM brand engagement. Specifically, results depicted that tie-strength and social identity (social factors); and opportunity seeking and product selection (consumer-based factors) strongly influence customers’ SM brand engagement in comparison to other factors. Research limitations/implications The research has two major limitations. First, it is limited to Gen Y only. How older and younger consumers interact with brands via SM can stimulate theoretical development as well as furnish potentially valuable strategic opportunities to brand managers in future research. Second, relationship between SM brand engagement and brand equity is examined using trust as a moderating variable. Thus, the effect of other moderating factors like perceived risk and gender can be investigated in the future. Originality/value The paper makes a maiden attempt to examine the moderating role of trust in the relationship between SM brand engagement and brand equity. It adds value to the marketing literature in the development of SM brand engagement scale for Gen Y.

Gap Analysis of the Online Reputation

“…However, there are other indicators, such as engagement, that measure the level of people's interaction with the product, service, or brand demanded, compared with the number of people who visit a given channel, social media, or website. Chahal and Rani [67] (p. 314) state that "social media brand engagement refers to the participation of customers-physically or psychologically-in varied brand-building activities that impact their decision-making". This is the case of Ryanair, Booking.com, and HolidayCheck, where the number of sales is determined in relation to the number of visits received on the page of a given lodging.…”

Online Brand Communities in Social Commerce: Identifying Factors Affecting Customer Engagement

“…In the literature, several studies aimed to find the significant factors affecting customer engagement in brand communities (Jayasingh and Venkatesh, 2015;Carlson et al, 2017;Guo et al, 2017). They focused on various factor types including social factors such as tie strength, trust, social identity, trust and reciprocity (Chahal et al, 2017;Kang et al, 2016;Carlson et al 2017;Tsai et al, 2017;Bohari, 2016), content based factors such as perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment (Guo et al, 2017;Carlson et al, 2017;Dessart et al, 2015;Chahal et al, 2017), brand related factors such as satisfaction ore brand image (Dessart et al, 2015;Carlson et al, 2017) and customer related factors such as self image enhancement and altruism (Simon et al, 2016;Jahn et al, 2012;Luarn et al, 2016;Marbach et al, 2016). Heinonen (2017) focused on the effect customer based factors on behavioral, emotional and cognitive dimensions of customer engagement.…”

“…Various social factors have been proposed as drivers of customer engagement (Simon et al, 2016;de Castro, 2017;Luarn et al, 2016;Carlson et al, 2017;Chahal et al, 2017;Huang et al, 2013). Also, Jahn et al (2012) suggested that one most prominent needs of customers is related to content-oriented area which is based on functional and hedonic values.…”

Customer Brand Engagement as a New Component of Service Value and Supply Chain in the Social Media Age

“…Specifically, researches into the concept of 'CBE' have been rapidly developed in the academic marketing literature during the last five to seven years [2] . Key contributions in this area include the development of theoretically related conceptualizations, including 'customer brand engagement' , 'social media engagement' [3] (Hardeep Chahal & Anu Rani, 2017), 'audience engagement' (D Woodford et al, 2015), 'customer engagement behaviors' (Jaakkola & Alexander, 2014), 'brand engagement in self-concept' (Elaine Wallace et al, 2014) and 'social media engagement behavior' (Dolan, Conduit, Fahy, & Goodman, 2016). While the proposed conceptualizations are subject to specific theoretical differences, they predominantly reflect an individual's psychologically-based willingness to invest time in interacting with particular engagement objects (e.g.…”