CONVAL: A Measurement Model for Assessing Consumer-Perceived Firm-Generated Content Value in Social Media

Abstract

The rise of social media increased the necessity for firms to establish a presence on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. As a means to engage with consumers, firms create content for their fan pages (i.e., firm-generated content). In this context, publishing content that is perceived as valuable by consumers is crucial to achieve a firm’s advertising goals. However, marketers are insecure about what consumers perceive as valuable and how to measure it. Current literature lacks of an appropriate model that measures consumers’ perceived value of firm-generated content in social media and guides marketers in content creation. Based on a solid conceptualization, an extensive explorative study, and a large-scale study using 902 U.S. users of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, the author develops and validates CONVAL — a 4-dimensional second-order measurement model including 17 items to assess firm-generated content value in social media. The results indicate a reliable and valid instrument, which is applicable by researches and practitioners. In addition, the author calculates a multi-group model, revealing that marketers should particularly pay attention to emphasize informative content on Twitter, entertaining content on Instagram, and empathic content on Facebook.