Effective entrepreneurial marketing on Facebook – A longitudinal study

Matthias Fink,Monika Koller,Johannes Gartner,Arne Floh,Rainer Harms

doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.10.005

Abstract

Social media offers a myriad of opportunities for entrepreneurial marketing strategies that leverage the power of communities, especially when they are combined with traditional approaches such as celebrity endorsement. The reach, frequency, and speed of communication on social media offer the ideal leverage for the drivers of entrepreneurial marketing. However, the rapid rate of change may threaten the effects of investments in entrepreneurial marketing on social media and they might become only short-lived. Employing structural equation modeling, we test the long-term effect of Facebook-based celebrity endorsement on purchase intention among 234 members of a Facebook fan community in a two-wave longitudinal design. We argue that this relationship is mediated by a sponsor's brand image and moderated by brand differentiation. This study is the first to investigate the long-term effects of entrepreneurial marketing on social media. We present the contributions and implications of our findings as they affect research and practice.

Highlights

Entrepreneurial marketing is a practice and field of research that has developed rapidly over the last three decades (Hills & Hultman, 2011; Hills, Hultman, & Miles, 2008; Kilenthong, Hultman, & Hills, 2016) It leverages the new logic of social media and has the potential to disruptively innovate consumer communication in the emerging digital economy
Because the brand image held by members of fan communities changes with cues associated with the brand (Fazio & Williams, 1986; Houston & Fazio, 1989), we suggest a brand employing an endorsement by credible celebrities will benefit beyond the short term
Regarding the short-term base effects, we find celebrity endorser credibility does not show any impact on purchase intention, a finding that foils the idea that celebrity endorser credibility has a short-term effect on purchase intention

Summary

Introduction

Entrepreneurial marketing is a practice and field of research that has developed rapidly over the last three decades (Hills & Hultman, 2011; Hills, Hultman, & Miles, 2008; Kilenthong, Hultman, & Hills, 2016) It leverages the new logic of social media and has the potential to disruptively innovate consumer communication in the emerging digital economy. For the strategy to be fully effective, the celebrity endorser must have solid credibility among the members of the target group (Dwivedi, Johnson, & McDonald, 2015; Louie & Obermiller, 2002), and the goods or services endorsed must be capable of being differentiated from similar market offers (Hoeffler & Kevin, 2002; Keller, 1993) Under these conditions, celebrity endorsement can boost purchase intention (Pradhan, Duraipandian, & Sethi, 2016); Journal of Business Research 113 (2020) 149–157 we do not yet know whether this holds true in social media settings (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010). While in 2016, over 12% of total marketing budgets was spent on social-media channels, only about a half of firms reported an impact on their performance (Moorman, 2017)

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Conclusion