Humour in customer engagement on Chinese social media – a rhetorical perspective

Abstract

Goal and objectives of the dissertationGoalTo develop a framework of customer engagement through humour on social media, which embraces both firm-initiated activities and customers' reactions in the context of destination marketing on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.Objectives1. To develop a taxonomy to systematically classify and map firm-initiated humour strategies aimed at engaging customers in social media conversations.2. To describe and categorise the respective customer responses to these persuasive firm posts.MethodologyRhetorical analysis was adopted as the methodology to allow for an in-depth examination of customer engagement on social media from a persuasion perspective. Specifically, this research adopted the rhetorical triangle, comprising of author, text and audience (Burke, 1969), to analyse firmcustomer conversations involving humour. The author position in the triangle refers to both firms who initiate humour posts and customers who publish comments. The text consists of messages as well as social media-afforded modalities (e.g. photos, hashtags and emojis). The audience includes firms, specific customers and general social media users at which the posts and subsequent comments are directed. Data collection for taxonomy development in the main study occurred from 25 October 2014 to 28 December 2014. It included two phases: 1) selecting all firm-initiated conversations that took place from 10 September 2014 to 10 October 2014; and 2) selecting firm-initiated conversations involving humour (n=271) and respective customer responses (n=1013). Following the same process, additional data, including 25 firm-initiated humour posts published in March 2016 and respective customer verbal responses (n=158), was collected to confirm the taxonomy. A mixed approach to taxonomy development, including three-phase data analysis, was used. The first phase - conceptual to empirical analysis - identified firm-initiated humour strategies and respective consumer responses by applying the conceptual framework developed on the basis of persuasion and humour theories. The second phase - empirical to conceptual analysis - analysed the leftover data. The third phase - re-conceptual to empirical analysis - applied the expanded conceptual model to new data and was able to confirm the established taxonomy.ResultsFirst, the findings reveal a large array of social media-afforded verbal and non-verbal interactions through which firm-customer conversations are structured and sustained. Second, various types of firm-initiated and customer-responded humour posts/comments were identified, and evidence of humour coconstruction on social media was revealed. Third, distinct rhetorical appeals embedded in firm-initiated humour were found, depicting the means through which firms, and in particular destination marketing organizations, use humour to generate customer responses. Finally, interesting patterns of multimodal forms of text were found in these conversations, shedding light on social media-afforded multimodalities.Theoretical ConclusionsThe research findings are significant in that they make an original contribution to social media marketing and tourism marketing literature, as well as to the four theoretical streams of 1) customer engagement; 2) humour; 3) persuasion; and 4) social media affordances. The strength of the research lies in developing important conceptualizations and in presenting taxonomies that advance our understanding of customer engagement on social media and provide critical support for future research in these areas.Practical applicationsGiven the increasing challenges of marketing on social media (Gretzel and Yoo, 2013), knowledge about engaging customers on these platforms is critical. The results offer strategic implications for social media marketing, with a specific focus on destination marketing. This dissertation also has wider implications for the implementation of cross-cultural communication and value co-creation in the context of social media marketing. …