What messages to post? Evaluating the popularity of social media communications in business versus consumer markets

Consumer Engagement with Brand Posts on Social Media: Current State and Research Agenda

“…), and within a variety of contexts (e.g., single/multiple industries, B2B/B2C, product/service, etc.) (see 5,6,8,10,13,14,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. Slightly differing in the research design (e.g., sample size and variable operationalization), previous research is mainly rooted in traditional advertising literature and marketing communication theory and dependent on the field study method that uses manual content analysis to analyze data collected from Facebook brand pages.…”

“…While previous research mainly focused on the characteristics of the posts per se, some further indicated that the relationship between brand post characteristics and consumer engagement is moderated by brand type (e.g., service vs. product, B2B vs. B2C, etc.) [24][25][26]. For example, Swani et al [26] found that the use of brand names and rational message appeals have a higher number of likes and comments for B2B brand posts than B2C posts.…”

“…[24][25][26]. For example, Swani et al [26] found that the use of brand names and rational message appeals have a higher number of likes and comments for B2B brand posts than B2C posts. Swani, Milne, & Brown [24] found that emotional message appeals generate more likes in service brand posts than in product brand posts.…”

“…Previous research has also shown a convergence on the operationalization of CEBPSM (see Table 1). As shown in Table 1, most of previous research operationalized consumer engagement with one brand post either by directly measuring the counts of likes, comments, and shares the post receives [see 8,10,13,[17][18][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] or through creating a new variable that is calculated using these counts [see 5-6, 16, 19]. While research collecting data before 2012 only focused on the number of likes and comments, research after 2012 usually operationalized consumer engagement with brand posts with one additional measurement, i.e., the number of shares.…”

“…and examine the cognitive and emotional dimensions and other facets (i.e., consuming and creating) of the behavioral dimension of consumer engagement. Furthermore, solely focusing on the perspective of quantity (e.g., number of likes, comments, and shares), previous research has proposed that researchers could also examine the valence of consumer engagement [4,8,[25][26]. Considering the important role that positive sentiment plays in eWOM and currently available tools for sentiment analysis, future research could also explore the impact of brand content characteristics on the valence of consumer engagement (e.g., the sentiment of consumer comments, etc.).…”