Brand-related Information Research Articles

Color congruence on Instagram: the role of flow and aesthetic experience

PurposeSocial media has emerged as a prominent platform for marketers and brands to disseminate brand-related information. This study aims to investigate the impact of color congruence between themes and background on marketing effectiveness, focusing specifically on Instagram.Design/methodology/approachA laboratory experiment was conducted to investigate how color congruence between themes and background in brand posts influences flow and aesthetic experience, subsequently affecting marketing communication parameters such as brand attitude, visit intention, and eWOM on Instagram. Moreover, Adidas Originals was selected as the focal brand, and blue and white color was chosen as the primary color palette for the experimental material.FindingsThis study demonstrates that color congruence, regardless of brand layout or post, significantly influences flow and aesthetic experience, subsequently affecting marketing effectiveness.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the theoretical understanding of congruence theory and social media marketing, providing valuable insights for brands to enhance their communication through photographs and effectively manage their official Instagram accounts.

Evaluating the Influence of Celebrity Endorsement in Advertising: Insights from Eye-Tracking Analysis

In an increasingly competitive business landscape, many brand owners turn to celebrity endorsements as a marketing strategy to promote their products. This study explores its impact to ascertain the effectiveness of this celebrity-driven approach in communicating brand-related information and influencing consumers. Participants in this research were randomly assigned to two groups, ensuring a balanced gender distribution. Each group viewed different advertisements: one featuring celebrities as models and the other utilizing non-celebrity models. Throughout the experiment, an eyetracking device recorded participants’ gaze patterns. The eye-tracking results reveal celebrity endorsements enhance their focus on the promoted product. Furthermore, an intriguing gender-based distinction emerges, with female participants demonstrating greater attention for male models over their female counterparts. Additionally, post-trial surveys indicate that a higher proportion of female participants are inclined to consider celebrities as influential factors in their purchasing decisions. This study contributes valuable insights into the phenomenon of the “celebrity effect” in advertising. It enhances the understanding of how celebrities impact consumer attention and purchasing decisions, offering brand owners a deeper understanding of leveraging this strategy effectively in their product promotion efforts.

Internal Branding of a University Business Through Building and Gaining from Employee-Based Brand Equity

ABSTRACT Like other businesses, universities spend to build their brands, but rarely measure the sources and benefits of brand equity, especially employee-based brand equity (EBBE). We borrowed from an EBBE model, the Associative Memory Network Theory, social information processing, and exchange theories to examine the impact of brand-related information generated and disseminated to employees in a private African university on role clarity, brand knowledge, brand commitment, and four EBBE benefits. Cross-sectional data was collected from 588 lecturers, administrators, and technical staff. Structural equation modeling results revealed that brand information generated and disseminated impacted role clarity, brand knowledge, and commitment. Brand commitment impacted three EBBE benefits: brand citizenship behavior, employee intention to stay in organization and spread positive word-of-mouth. Role clarity and brand knowledge were significant mediators. Thus, for sustainability, university managers should communicate explicitly through frequent verbal brand communications and orientation, and implicitly through behaviors that reflect brand prestige.

When attention-grabbing tactics backfire during media multitasking: The detrimental effect of atypical advertising slogans on brand attitude

Emerging technologies have transformed traditional single-screen viewing into a new form of audience behavior called media multitasking (e.g. surfing the internet while watching TV). This shared attention in media-multitasking situations poses a challenge to media planers when attracting the audience’s attention. However, attention-grabbing tactics might backfire on companies as they make manipulative intent salient and, therefore, decrease levels of brand attitude. This study advances the extant research by challenging the suitability of silence as an attention-grabbing practice in advertising during media multitasking. More specifically, we test if atypical (i.e. silent) slogans in TV commercials impact on consumers’ evaluation of brand-related information when media multitasking. Utilizing a one-factor (two-level) between-subject laboratory experiment (N = 66), this study examined participants’ feelings of manipulation and brand attitude when exposed to typical versus atypical TV advertising slogans in a media-multitasking situation. The results demonstrate that a typical TV advertising slogan (i.e. audio in addition to vision) during media multitasking results in lower salience of manipulative intent compared to an atypical slogan (i.e. silent) and positively impacts on brand attitude.

Immunizing customers against negative brand-related information

In today’s connected market, brands are more likely than ever to face negative press that can put their customer relationships to the test. Building and fortifying positive aspects of the brand-customer relationship (such as brand commitment, brand love and self-brand connections) may ward off some of the impact of negative information on customers, but this does not always provide full protection. Even customers who love a brand can turn against it when negative information enters the picture. Considering this, the current study provides an exploratory investigation into a new way to build up customer resilience that would otherwise not be formed simply by strengthening positive attributes of the customer-brand relationship. It argues that brands can strengthen their customers’ immunity to negative brand-related information by using an immunity metric (i.e., merely asking customers to reflect on their immunity makes them more resilient to actual negative information in the future). The construct of immunity has the dual benefit of being diagnostic of relationship strength, as well as acting as an immunizing agent. We test this effect and the process underlying it using three pilot studies, three multi-method studies, and interviews with customers and managers across different contexts. By doing so, the study establishes the theoretical and practical value of customer immunity to negative information and makes critical conceptual and pragmatic contributions to the existing body of customer research.

The impact of social media marketing activities on brand equity in the banking sector in Bangladesh: the mediating role of brand love and brand trust

PurposeThis research aims to explore the impact of social media marketing (SMM) activities on brand equity (BE) in the banking sector in Bangladesh. Moreover, brand love and brand trust are examined as a mediator of SMM activities and BE.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from a total of 289 banking customers in Bangladesh through a structured questionnaire and the hypotheses were examined using structural equation modeling (SEM).FindingsThe results validated that SMM activities have no significant influence on BE directly. Furthermore, brand love fully mediates the linkage between SMM activities and BE. Likewise, brand trust was found to have a partial mediation effect on SMM activities and BE.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was based on a specific sector in a particular geographic area. Hence, cross-cultural studies on different sectors need to be conducted to generalize the findings of the current research.Practical implicationsThe study offers useful insights for bank marketers to successfully manage SMM activities that can generate consumer interest toward a bank's brand and prevent switching behavior. Furthermore, the proliferation of authentic brand-related information over a firms' social media pages can build strong brand trust, which in turn contributes to BE for the banks.Originality/valueThe study further extended the current knowledge by showing that how SMM activities influence BE in the banking sector in Bangladesh. Also, this study empirically corroborates the mediation influence of brand love and brand trust on SMM activities and BE in the banking sector in Bangladesh, which was rarely tested in prior studies. Hence, the findings will add value to the nascent literature of BE from an SMM perspective.

Multiple instances of negative publicity: the role of publicity domain similarity

ABSTRACT Although it is typical for consumers to be exposed to multiple instances of negative publicity about a brand, existing research has focused on consumers’ reactions to one-time negative publicity instances. Given the important role of self-brand connection in consumers’ reactions to negative brand-related information, the current study investigates how consumers with different self-brand connection levels react to multiple instances of negative publicity in a single domain; which refers to the areas of a firm’s policies and actions, versus across different domains. Two experimental studies were conducted with U.S. adult participants to examine the interactive effect of self-brand connection and negative publicity domain similarity on consumers’ reactions. The results show that consumers with low self-brand connection, who are likely to perceive negative brand-related information very diagnostic, have less favorable reactions after exposure to multiple instances of negative publicity across different domains versus in the same domain. However, for consumers with high self-brand connection, who are likely to be defense motivated, there is not any significant difference in their reactions after exposure to multiple instances of negative publicity across different domains versus in a single domain. Additionally, this research shows that perceived responsibility assigned to the brand derives the observed results.

Alexa, do voice assistants influence consumer brand engagement? – Examining the role of AI powered voice assistants in influencing consumer brand engagement

Artificially Intelligent (AI) voice assistants (VAs) are continuing to grow in popularity amongst consumers. While in their infancy, several brands are now utilising VAs such as the Amazon Echo to deliver brand-related information and services. However, despite the increasing use of VAs, we have little understanding of what motivates consumers to use such devices for brand-related information. Focusing on the Amazon Echo in-home VA, and its associated Alexa Skills, this research uncovers the key drivers of consumer brand engagement through VAs. In study 1, through a set of in-depth exploratory interviews with 21 respondents, we established three factors as key drivers of why consumers use VAs to engage with brands: AI attributes, technology attributes, and situational attributes. Study 2 examines these specific drivers via a questionnaire with 724 respondents. The findings outline the VA as an actor in the engagement process and affirm the importance of the VA’s AI attributes of social presence, perceived intelligence, and social attraction in influencing consumer brand engagement. Additionally, technology attributes influence consumer brand engagement, along with the utilitarian benefits derived from interactions with brand-related information. Hedonic benefits do not influence consumer brand engagement via VA technology, while trust concerns play a negative role in brand engagement behaviour. Lastly, the results convey that consumer brand engagement via a VA influences brand usage intention, but in contrast to previous research, does not directly influence future purchase intention.

Brand Activation in Driving Customer Engagement: Theoretical and Practice Review

Brand Activation claimed to be a promotional tool use by organizations in order to induce their customers towards the brand. Literature evidence proves brand activation as an experiential learning technique compels customers to retain brand related information within the minds. The inconclusive literature on brand activation provides the platform further to investigate the area of brand activation with customer driven concepts. The review enlighten the avenues of brand activation in advance, customer engagement use as the outcome variable with brand activation as the predictor variable. The study adopted the literature and case review as the methodology. The review identified that brand activation is as a manipulative factor on customer engagement, and customer loyalty is the final result of it.

The influence of perceived social media marketing elements on consumer–brand engagement and brand knowledge

PurposeThis paper investigates the impact of social-media marketing elements, namely entertainment, customisation, interaction, electronic word-of-mouth (EWOM) and trendiness, on consumer–brand engagement and brand knowledge.Design/methodology/approachUsing an online survey, the study collects data in Hong Kong from 214 experienced social-media users, as indicated by their consumption of a durable technology product, a smartphone. We used partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS–SEM) to test the links between social-media marketing elements, consumer–brand engagement and brand knowledge.FindingsThe results reveal that interaction, electronic word-of-mouth and trendiness are the key elements directly influencing consumer brand engagement, then strengthening brand awareness and brand knowledge. This contrasts with the non-significant results found for the influence of entertainment and customisation on consumer–brand engagement.Research limitations/implicationsHaving cross-sectional nature, the study focuses on one single product, smartphones, at one location, Hong Kong. Future research may enhance the generalisability of the findings by replication in other countries with diverse cultures, such as countries in Latin America and Africa and examine other industries and other products, such as the service sector and convenience products with a low involvement level.Practical implicationsMarketers may strengthen consumer–brand engagement by using content that is trendy, along with encouraging interaction and positive EWOM on social-media platforms, in order to build strong and positive brand knowledge in consumers' minds.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the branding literature by providing an understanding of the role of social-media marketing elements in the brand-building process. Social media is a marketing channel recognised by its effectiveness in communicating brand-related information and its role as a means to stimulate consumers' brand engagement and brand knowledge. However, how effective these elements are for these purposes remains to be established. By empirically testing a theoretical model, this study confirms that specific social-media marketing elements, namely interaction, EWOM and trendiness, are critical drivers in the brand-building process in Hong Kong.

Do Social Capital Affect In-Role and Extra-Role Consumer Behavior in Pakistan: The Mediatory Role of Consumer-Company Identification and Brand Image

Consumers are no longer merely passive recipients of brand-related information, but rather, act as dynamic participants and co-creators of value, and of brand meaning. Hence the success of a brand is linked in its social capital making social capital and consumer behavior mutually reinforcing. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of social capital on consumer attitudinal evaluations. We propose a theoretical framework thereby applying Sun & Lii (2018) mediation framework because of social capital. We hypothesized that social capital would enhance the brand image as well as consumer-company identification, these would in turn make favorable in-role and extra-role consumer Behavior towards the brand. Empirical validity was established by conducting a survey using a close-ended questionnaire. Data was collected from 425 respondents mainly students from Karachi and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structured equation modeling. The results showed that social capital had a positive and significant relationship with consumer Extra role behavior, as well as with two mediators i.e. brand image and consumer company identification. Moreover, both mediators also have a significant impact on both in-role and extra-role behavior. However, the direct effect of social capital on in-role behavior is not substantiated. This research would help companies in gaining a competitive edge by giving a little more focus on social capital in order to enhance the image of their brands as well as their relationship with their customers.

Why are industrial firms high or low brand sensitive? An empirical investigation

ABSTRACTGrounded in information processing and risk theories, this study examines organizational brand sensitivity as a three-dimensional construct that includes brand-related information acquisition, processing, and buying center memory. The study validates that buying center structure (degree of lateral and vertical involvement) mediates the relationships between antecedents (purchase situation) and consequences (brand sensitivity). The relative influence of buying center roles, the type of buyer–seller ties, and the number of supplier brands moderate these linkages. For example, higher lateral involvement implies lower brand information acquisition. Presence of influential technical roles in the buying center and availability of major branded offerings strengthen this association.

Fashion brands are engaging the millennials: a moderated-mediation model of customer-brand engagement, participation, and involvement

Purpose Millennial generation is fashion inclined, interactive and informative social beings. They are very conscious of the brands they wear. Millennia seek, share, inform and exchange fashion brand-related information on social networking sites (SNS). Marketers are subsequently engaging the young prospects and customers to keep up or improve enthusiasm and participation. The study attempts to investigate the role of customer-brand engagement (CBE) of millennials with fashion brands on SNS. The study simultaneously tests the moderating role of involvement levels affecting participation and CBE leading to brand loyalty. Design/methodology/approach The study followed a purposive sample by collecting 466 respondents from the graduate students of a university. The study adopted structural equation modelling (SEM) and Hayes process macros in SPSS 20.0 to test the moderated-mediation model. Findings The study confirms the mediating role of CBE in the relationship between participation and brand loyalty. Different degrees of involvement moderate the mediating role of CBE. Higher levels of involvement enhance the positive effect of participation on CBE. Originality/value The study is first of its kind to investigate the role of CBE and involvement among the millennial group. It also contributes to the related theories like service-dominant logic, social exchange theory and consumer culture theory regarding a unique population group, which is promising and profitable.

Managing Marketing Decision-Making with Sentiment Analysis: An Evaluation of the Main Product Features Using Text Data Mining

Companies have realized the importance of “big data” in creating a sustainable competitive advantage, and user-generated content (UGC) represents one of big data’s most important sources. From blogs to social media and online reviews, consumers generate a huge amount of brand-related information that has a decisive potential business value for marketing purposes. Particularly, we focus on online reviews that could have an influence on brand image and positioning. Within this context, and using the usual quantitative star score ratings, a recent stream of research has employed sentiment analysis (SA) tools to examine the textual content of reviews and categorize buyer opinions. Although many SA tools split comments into negative or positive, a review can contain phrases with different polarities because the user can have different sentiments about each feature of the product. Finding the polarity of each feature can be interesting for product managers and brand management. In this paper, we present a general framework that uses natural language processing (NLP) techniques, including sentiment analysis, text data mining, and clustering techniques, to obtain new scores based on consumer sentiments for different product features. The main contribution of our proposal is the combination of price and the aforementioned scores to define a new global score for the product, which allows us to obtain a ranking according to product features. Furthermore, the products can be classified according to their positive, neutral, or negative features (visualized on dashboards), helping consumers with their sustainable purchasing behavior. We proved the validity of our approach in a case study using big data extracted from Amazon online reviews (specifically cell phones), obtaining satisfactory and promising results. After the experimentation, we could conclude that our work is able to improve recommender systems by using positive, neutral, and negative customer opinions and by classifying customers based on their comments.

Consumer engagement in sharing brand-related information on social commerce: the roles of culture and experience

ABSTRACT Social commerce facilitates conversations among buyers across the world and enhances eWOM sharing. This paper investigates the key roles of online shoppers’ culture (collectivism vs. individualism) and past experience as drivers of engagement with brand-related information sharing. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and consumer culture theory (CCT), a conceptual framework was developed and tested empirically. Data collected from a representative sample of online shoppers (N = 559) was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. Findings reveal that shoppers’ experience is indirectly related to brand-related information sharing, and mediated by three TPB beliefs (attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavior control). These relationships were moderated by customer culture. The impact of attitude on information sharing was greater for collectivist shoppers, whereas the influence of subjective norms was stronger for individualist shoppers. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.

A big data approach to examining social bots on Twitter

PurposeSocial bots are prevalent on social media. Malicious bots can severely distort the true voices of customers. This paper aims to examine social bots in the context of big data of user-generated content. In particular, the author investigates the scope of information distortion for 24 brands across seven industries. Furthermore, the author studies the mechanisms that make social bots viral. Last, approaches to detecting and preventing malicious bots are recommended.Design/methodology/approachA Twitter data set of 29 million tweets was collected. Latent Dirichlet allocation and word cloud were used to visualize unstructured big data of textual content. Sentiment analysis was used to automatically classify 29 million tweets. A fixed-effects model was run on the final panel data.FindingsThe findings demonstrate that social bots significantly distort brand-related information across all industries and among all brands under study. Moreover, Twitter social bots are significantly more effective at spreading word of mouth. In addition, social bots use volumes and emotions as major effective mechanisms to influence and manipulate the spread of information about brands. Finally, the bot detection approaches are effective at identifying bots.Research limitations/implicationsAs brand companies use social networks to monitor brand reputation and engage customers, it is critical for them to distinguish true consumer opinions from fake ones which are artificially created by social bots.Originality/valueThis is the first big data examination of social bots in the context of brand-related user-generated content.

Conceptualising and measuring consumer authenticity online

The aim of this paper is to conceptualize and measure consumer-based authenticity online and its relationship to consumption behavior, mediated and moderated by rational and experiential thinking. It is hypothesized that when consumers engage in online consumption behavior, authenticity is a multidimensional experience conceptualized and defined as: iconic, identification, practical/impersonal, production/situation, social, moral, pure approximate and virtuous-self, forms of the authentic experience. To test the hypothesized model, 491 usable responses were collected using a questionnaire through face-to-face interviews by random intercept interview method. The conceptual model was developed through confirmatory factors analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) using mediation and moderation analysis. The findings identify the importance of rational and experiential thinking to authentic consumption experiences. In experiential thinking there is a greater emphasis on the role of brands to enhance perceptions of fantasy, and symbolism linked to self. Rational thinking is dominated by brand-related information linking the brand to objective standards, original time of manufacture, history, and a commitment and feeling for its creator. Research implications are discussed.

The Effectiveness of Using Sexual Appeals in Advertising

Abstract. This study empirically investigates the effectiveness of using visual sexual appeals on the memory of men and women. It examines memory for the commercials activated by sexual versus nonsexual visual appeals. A mixed-factorial experiment was conducted. Visual recognition and free recall were recorded in 146 participants (males = 71 and females = 75). The results substantiate the evolutionary psychology claims. Support for the motivational information-processing and the distraction hypothesis was found in male viewers. The results indicate that sexual appeals enhance memory for the advertisements themselves, but they distract men from processing brand-related information. Male participants encoded and recalled less brand-related information from advertisements with sexual appeals. The study offers guidelines for advertisers and marketing producers while also providing insight into gender/sex differences in processing sexual stimuli. It also makes a key theoretical contribution to the field by parsing out the influence of sexual versus nonsexual visual content from the confounding impact of visual sexual versus verbal nonsexual memory.

The South African Women Purchasing Behavior and the Zero Moment of Truth

The decision-making process after online consumers have been stimulated through traditional advertising is a new and crucial part of the traditional three-phase marketing model. This paper was undertaken to understand the relevance of the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) to women in Living Standard Measure (LSM) B in Durban, South Africa. The three questions that were the main focal point of this study aimed to assess the relevance of the ZMOT theory to women in Durban, South Africa within LSM B, the most frequented product categories as well as the platforms that were accessed to gain brand-related information in order to make the purchase decision. Data for this study was collected through mixed methods with a sample group of 100 women. The findings from the research suggest that there is a link between the relevance of core products like groceries and basic household items and the need to make smart purchases, as money needs to be spent wisely. The most frequently accessed category amongst women in LSM B was basic household items and groceries, this category was closely followed by skin care and cosmetics. The most widely accessed platform to search for brand information was the Google search engine.

SMILK, trait d’union entre langue naturelle et données sur le web

As part of the SMILK Joint Lab, we studied the use of Natural Language Processing to: (1) enrich knowledge bases and link data on the web, and conversely (2) use this linked data to contribute to the improvement of text analysis and the annotation of textual content, and to support knowledge extraction. The evaluation focused on brand-related information retrieval in the field of cosmetics. This article describes each step of our approach: the creation of ProVoc, an ontology to describe products and brands; the automatic population of a knowledge base mainly based on ProVoc from heterogeneous textual resources; and the evaluation of an application which that takes the form of a browser plugin providing additional knowledge to users browsing the web.