Measuring consumer brand engagement on social media with annoyance as a moderator

Abstract

Consumer brand engagement (CBE) is indisputably an emerging topic in the marketing literature, yet the amount of research on its antecedents and outcomes is limited. Besides academics, it has also gained traction among practitioners who have started to experiment with new methods to engage consumers with their brands. Most of these marketing efforts have started to take place in social media, as the number of consumers who can be reached with services such as Facebook, Instagram or YouTube is increasing exponentially. While the corporate investments in social media are increasing, many marketing practitioners have trouble reaching the positive outcomes of consumer brand engagement suggested by the academics, such as increase in brand usage intent or spreading of word of mouth between consumers. One of the proposed reasons for this is annoyance experienced by the consumers due to repeated exposure of social media content published by the brands they initially are fond of. This study aims to validate the CBE scale developed by Hollebeek, Glynn and Brodie (2014), while expanding the model by proposing word of mouth as a consequential construct to CBE, in addition to brand usage intent. Furthermore, annoyance is introduced to the research model both as a moderating and predictive factor. Data of 161 responses was gathered with an online survey for quantitative research purposes. The analysis was done with structural equation modelling using SmartPLS 3.2 software. The results of the study demonstrate that consumer involvement precedes CBE, which consists of cognitive, affective and behavioural dimensions. On the other hand, CBE positively affects brand usage intent and word of mouth in social media context. Annoyance was not found to moderate the paths between CBE and its outcomes; however, it has a direct negative effect to word of mouth. As a conclusion, this study proposes theoretical and practical implications regarding the subject and the results are in line with previous CBE studies. CBE is proven to drive positive corporate outcomes in social media context, while the possible negative aspects related to social media marketing should also be considered.