Consumer’s Online Brand-Related Activities in Instagram and their Impact on Word-of-Mouth

Abstract

A comprehensive examination of COBRAs concerning word-of-mouth marketing has yet to be fully conducted. A brand needs to know whether such activities can also entail offline consequences for the brand, i.e. in the form of word of mouth. The distinction between relevant and irrelevant activities is important from the brand’s managerial point of view for cost-effective management and the pursuit of its stated goals. The paper intends to examine the consequences of consumers’ online brand-related activities, along with word-of-mouth marketing, in the setting of the Instagram social network. Instagram is currently a highly effective medium for fostering brand growth in the digital sphere. The dataset comprises 335 standardised questionnaires amassed in the first half of 2021. Based on the current state of the literature and research, together with the research question, one statistical hypothesis was formulated for analysis. The study focused on determining whether certain consumers’ online brand-related activities had a statistically significant effect on word-of-mouth about the brand. The statistical examination of the presented issue made use of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) employing Maximum Likelihood Estimation (ML) as well as Partial Least Square – Path Modeling (PLS PM). This method was selected based on the fact that the items do not interfere with the internal structure of factors in the instrument, which captures specific aspects of attitudes and perceptions regarding brand-related activities on social networks. The findings revealed that consumers’ online brand-related activities exert two statistically significant effects on brand word-of-mouth, specifically concerning content consumption and content creation, at a 0.05 significance level. The context and potential consequences of this discovery are examined in the concluding discussion section, with reference to existing literature and ongoing research.