Abstract
Firms are struggling with developing effective consumer engagement strategies on social media. Emoji have been identified as a potent tool for consumer engagement. Yet, their use in this context is not well understood. Treating emoji as digitally mediated visual signs, this study provides a framework of five functional building blocks of emoji in the consumer engagement domain (i.e., beatification, affection, information, participation, conversation), and offers emoji strategy recommendations (i.e., branding aesthetics, brand humanization, social listening, online community engagement). The proposed framework can advance visual semiotics theory by applying it in the context of social media, and also broaden emoji and consumer engagement literatures by providing conceptual support that addresses the symbolic significance of emoji in the complex and dynamic digital space. Utilised individually and together, these building blocks allow marketers to understand emoji as a new form of marketing semiotics, while also guiding them to enable and shape consumer engagement on social media.
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