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Engagement with Social Media and Outcomes for Brands: A Conceptual Framework

Camilla Bond, Monash University, camilla.bond@monash.edu

Abstract

Since its inception earlier this decade, social media has continued to experience exponential
growth. However, within existing literature the phenomenon is still very much in its infancy,
and to our knowledge there is very limited research that focuses on behavioural outcomes of
social media. In this article, we present a conceptual framework of the proposed relationship
between social media participation and engagement, and behavioural outcomes. These
outcomes include brand awareness, willingness to provide word of mouth, purchase intention,
and satisfaction. We propose that these relationships are mediated by brand engagement and
motivation.

Keywords: social media, social media engagement, brand engagement, brand equity, uses and
gratifications theory.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Felix Mavondo, of the Department of Marketing at
Monash University, for his valuable guidance.

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Engagement with Social Media and Outcomes for Brands: A Conceptual Framework

Introduction

The phenomenal uprise of social media has sent business managers and marketers worldwide
into a spin, trying to keep up with changes in consumer behaviour as well as harness the
potential of this new online channel. With the similarly rapid development and uptake of
mobile technology, social media is now accessible anywhere and at any time. For marketers,
social media has the power to achieve great results for very minimal cost, and in less time;
however doing so creates incalculable risks that many businesses are not yet prepared to take.
One such risk relates to the issue of how engagement with consumers via social media might
impact consumers’ subsequent behaviour. This research conceptualises these relationships,
and explores a range of variables which are proposed to have an effect on behavioural
outcomes. The conceptual framework presented herein was developed based on existing
literature on online consumer behaviour, interactive marketing, and theoretical perspectives
such as Uses and Gratifications Theory, as well as the findings from an exploratory
qualitative research project conducted by the Australian Centre for Retail Studies in May
2010.

Despite exponential growth of social media, there is limited research on its potential effect on
brand awareness, word of mouth, brand promotion, and consumer purchase intentions.
Though many of these elements have received individual attention (albeit predominantly
using an online context rather than social media), limited research has sought to bring these
concepts together. This conceptual paper makes an important contribution creating the
fundamental linkages between consumers’ engagement with social media, their engagement
with brands, and the effects of this engagement on behavioural outcomes.

Literature Review

The Social Media Phenomenon

There is a plethora of trendy business press but limited academic research in the area of social
media that could provide marketing managers with direction as to how best to integrate this
media into their Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) (Mangold and Faulds, 2009).
Research in the area of online and digital communications is relatively well established
(Martin and Todorov, 2010), however not all of these insights can be superimposed onto the
comparatively new, unrefined concept of social media which is still in its infancy in terms of
conceptual development. Though many conflicting ideas have surfaced with regard to
similarities and distinctions between social media, Web 2.0 and user generated content, in this
paper we adopt the definition of social media by Kaplan and Haenlein (2009), who propose
that social media describes “Internet-based applications that help consumers share opinions,
insights, experiences, and perspectives” (p.565). These applications can include collaborative
projects (i.e. Wikipedia), blogs, content communities (e.g. YouTube), social networking sites
(e.g Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life) and virtual
game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft) (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010).

Within extant research on social media, Web 2.0 and user-generated content, authors have
focussed their attention on areas including user segmentation and participation (Berthon, Pitt,
and Campbell, 2008; Forrester Research, 2010); motivations for adoption of social media

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(Gangadharbatla, 2008); electronic word of mouth (Okazaki, 2009; Riegner, 2007); and
online brand communities (de Chernatony and Christodoulides, 2004; de Valck, Van Bruggen
and Wierenga, 2009; Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001). Advertising research has focused on
motivations, perceived interactivity, and advertising outcomes (Ko, Cho and Roberts, 2005;
Zeng, Huang and Dou, 2009), gender differences and interactivity (McMahan, Hovland and
McMillan, 2009), consumer attitudes towards interactive advertising (Ming-Sung Cheng,
Blankson, Shih-Tse Wang and Shui-Lien Chen, 2009), the effectiveness of advertising media
on Facebook (ACNielsen and Facebook, 2010) and the relationship between online
engagement and advertising effectiveness (Calder, Malthouse and Schaedel, 2009).
Uses and Gratifications Theory

From a theoretical perspective, uses and gratifications theory (U&G theory) could be used to
explain some elements of consumer behaviour through social media (Calder, Malthouse and
Schaedel, 2009; Ko, Cho and Roberts, 2005; Raacke and Bonds-Raacke, 2008; Rubin, 2009).
U&G theory is underpinned by seven principle elements: psychological and social
environment; needs and motives to communicate, the media, attitudes and expectations about
the media, functional alternatives to using the media, communication behaviour, and the
outcomes or consequences of behaviour (Rubin, 2009). The principle objectives of U&G
theory are threefold: 1) to explain how people use media to gratify their needs; 2) to
understand motives for media behaviour; and 3) to identify functions or consequences that
flow from needs, motives and behaviour (Rubin, 2009). Ko, Cho and Roberts (2005)
successfully used this theory to guide their study of the antecedents and consequences of
interactivity in advertising, which lends credibility to its use for analysing social media
behaviour.

Towards a New Conceptualisation of Social Media

Previously researched concepts have been adopted from various disciplines within marketing,
consumer behaviour and communications research, and have been integrated into the
proposed framework. These include social media participation and engagement, brand
engagement, consumer motivations, and behavioural outcomes. These are outlined as follows.

Social Media Consumption

Building a profile of consumption behaviour is important to this framework as this can be

used to analyse which social media activities are most effective in producing favourable
behavioural outcomes. ACNielsen (2010) regularly collect data on social media consumption.
The results from ACNielsen’s 2010 Social Media Report show factors such as the fastest
growing social media activities, most popular social media websites, and uptake of mobile
social networking. However, the extent to which consumption of social media impacts upon
brand engagement and behavioural outcomes is not covered. Previous research has found that
frequency of service use often lends itself to higher expectations, however this negative
relationship has been shown to be mitigated in an online context (Shankar, Smith and
Rangaswamy, 2003).

Engagement with Social Media

Calder, Malthouse and Schaedel (2009) studied the concept of how consumer engagement
with a website can increase advertising effectiveness. The authors examined types of

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engagement in relation to a range of specific experiences, and found that both personal and
social-interactive experience were positively correlated with advertising effectiveness and the
fundamentals of their study could be applied to the context of social media (Calder,
Malthouse and Schaedel, 2009). Zeng, Huang and Dou (2009) focussed specifically on social
factors relating to user perceptions and responses to advertising via social networks and found
that responses to advertising depended on perceptions of advertising relevance and value, as
well as being influenced by social identity and group norms.

Consumer Roles in Social Media

Consumer roles and motivations in user-generated content have been explored in some detail
(Berthon, Pitt and Campbell, 2008; Bonhomme, Christodoulides and Jevons, 2009;
Daugherty, Eastin and Bright, 2008), however within social media literature, discussion of
these constructs is limited. Forrester Research (2010) developed a ‘Social Technographics
Ladder’ of consumer behaviours, which defines seven classifications of online social
behaviours: Creators, Conversationalists, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, and
Inactives. As an example, Creators participate in publishing a blog, publishing their own web
pages, uploading self-created video, audio and music, and writing articles or stories and
posting them online; these activities occur at least monthly (Forrester Research, 2010). This
study provides a hierarchy of consumer roles in the social media context.

Brand Engagement

Active brand engagement is viewed as potentially the strongest substantiation of brand

resonance, the final stage of brand development in the consumer-based brand equity pyramid
proposed by Keller (2001; 2009). Interactive marketing communications such as social media
have a distinct advantage in their ability to encourage learning, teaching, expression of
commitment, and observation of brand loyalty amongst consumers (Keller, 2009).

Moti vation

Motivations for using the internet, including information seeking, convenience, entertainment
and social interaction (Ko, Cho and Roberts, 2005; Papacharissi and Rubin, 2000) has
provided the basis for identifying motives for engagement with social media. These
motivations include motivation for participation with social media as well as motivation for
participation with brands.

Behavioural Outcomes

Social media have been applauded for revolutionising life for the consumer (Kaplan and
Haenlein, 2009; Mangold and Faulds, 2009), having dramatic influences on every stage of the
consumer decision-making process including information acquisition, brand awareness,
purchase behaviour, and post-purchase communication and evaluation, as well as influencing
general opinions and attitude formation (Mangold and Faulds, 2009). In spite of this, there is
no empirical research to date which explores the relationships between social media
participation and engagement and these influences on behavioural outcomes. Furthermore, a
brief review of Keller (2001) on consumer-based brand equity suggests that the concepts of
brand awareness (brand salience), word of mouth referral, purchase intention and satisfaction
with social media tools are all worthy indicators, or building blocks, towards consumer-based
brand equity.

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Social and interactive media can dramatically enhance the breadth and depth of brand
awareness and salience, through its distinct ability to target consumers during the information
seeking process (Keller, 2001; 2009). Brand awareness is the foundational building block of
consumer-based brand equity (Keller, 2001; 2009).

The scale for word of mouth by Smith, Coyle, Lightfoot and Scott (2007) could be used to
measure the propensity of consumers to refer advertisements viewed on social media
platforms to friends. This could be complemented by electronic word of mouth (Okazaki,
2009; Riegner, 2007).

Purchase intention is often used as an effectiveness measure to anticipate a response

behaviour (Li, Daugherty and Biocca, 2002; Morwitz, Steckel and Gupta, 2007).

Overall satisfaction with social media enhances behavioural and attitudinal loyalty, and the
positive relationship between satisfaction and loyalty is stronger online than offline (Shankar,
Smith and Rangaswamy, 2003).

Conceptual Framework

Our review of literature results in a conceptual framework shown in Figure 1. The model
hypothesises that social media consumption, social media engagement, and consumer roles in
social media are antecedents to brand awareness, word of mouth, purchase intention and
satisfaction with social media. It further hypothesises that brand engagement and consumer
motivation mediates the relationship between these antecedents and behavioural outcomes.
This gives rise to the following testable hypotheses.

H1: Positive social media experience will lead to more favourable behavioural outcomes
H2: Personal Engagement with social media will be positively associated with behavioural
outcomes
H3: Social-Interactive Engagement with social media will be positively associated with
behavioural outcomes
H4: Social media consumption will have a positive effect on behavioural outcomes
H5: There will be significant differences in behavioural outcomes between Creators,
Conversationalists, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives
H6: Brand engagement will mediate the relationship between social media and behavioural
outcomes
H7: Consumer motivation will mediate the relationships between social media participation
and engagement and behavioural outcomes

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Figure 1: Conceptual Framework

SOCIAL MEDIA PARTICIPATION

AND ENGAGEMENT
BEHAVIOURAL OUTCOMES
Social Media Consumption
 Tools in Use Brand Awareness
 Frequency of Use

Brand Engagement Word of Mouth

Social Media Experience
 Personal Engagement
 Social-Interactive Engagement Purchase Intention
Consumer Motivation

Consumer roles in Social Media Satisfaction with Social

 Creators, Conversationalists, Media
Critics, Collectors, Joiners,
Spectators, Inactives

Directions for Future Research

Mangold and Faulds (2009) discuss the impact of the interactions among consumers via social
media on the development and execution of IMC strategies, suggesting the development of a
new communications paradigm. This notion is supported within the broader IMC literature
with discussion of effective brand building through IMC and its effect on customer-based
brand equity (Keller, 2009; Reid, Lu xton and Mavondo, 2005. We believe that the proposed
framework can make important contributions to the empirical testing of claims of social
media effects on brand awareness, word of mouth referral and purchase intentions. The
findings of the study would be useful for academics, marketers, advertisers, business
managers and social media companies. In proposing the model we have suggested ways in
which the variables could be measured making this more useful to researchers.

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