Following too much on Facebook brand page: A concept of brand overload and its validation

Abstract

As consumers increasingly engage in online brand communities, the demand of brand-related activities (e.g., finding relevant product information and sharing product information) also increases. Consumers may feel overwhelmed by these brand-related activities. To provide an understanding of this phenomenon, we conceptualize it as brand overload and then empirically examine its antecedents and consequences based upon the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework in the context of online brand community. Using two rounds of surveys to collect data from 409 American consumers, our results show that consumer-generated content and social interaction quality are the primary drivers of information and social overload. Consumer-generated content quality has a quadratic effect on information overload following an inverted U shape. Social interaction quality also significantly affects social overload following an inverted U-shaped relationship. Information and social overload are both positively related to brand overload, which in turn leads to brand disloyalty as the negative consequence. In addition, to supplement the quantitative study, a qualitative study was used to test and substantiate the proposed research model. With its mixed-method design, our study contributes to the literature by proposing the concept of brand overload and empirically investigating its antecedents and consequences from the SOR perspective. Practically, our study delivers insights for companies on how to use online brand communities strategically and efficiently to avoid negative impacts.