Unpacking social media engagement: Exploring the role of message strategy and contextual dynamics
Abstract
To clarify the relationships between marketing strategy messages and customer engagement, this paper proposes and tests a holistic framework, including a typology of message categories (functional versus emotional), and examines how product type (utilitarian versus hedonic) and firm type (business-to-consumer versus business-to-business) affect digital user engagement. The paper analyses 103 brands collected from the Twitter (now X) social media posts. Using the official Twitter application programming interface and specific filtering criteria, the authors obtain tweets related to each brand, including original tweets, retweets, quotes and replies. The results show that advertising message types exert different effects on customer engagement on social media. In particular, the impact of functional messages on customer engagement is more significant for utilitarian products than hedonic products. This paper offers essential managerial guidance and recommended practices for effective social media marketing strategies on platforms such as Twitter. The paper also provides novel, practical insights into enhancing customer engagement in the social media context. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Wootae Chun is an associate professor of marketing at the University of Northern British Columbia. His research focuses on international marketing, cross-cultural marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing, corporate social responsibility and sustainability in business practices. Dr Chun holds a PhD degree in international business and marketing from the John Cook School of Business, Saint Louis University, USA, an MBA degree from the University of Texas–Pan American (now The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA) and a BSc degree in business administration from the Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, USA.
Kafui Monu is an associate professor with the School of Business, University of Northern British Columbia. He received his PhD from The University of British Columbia in 2011. His research interests include system analysis, gamification and video games and social media. Specifically related to this paper, his research includes studies on consumer and community communication on social media.
Fan Jiang is an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Northern British Columbia. He holds a BCSc (Honours), MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Manitoba. His research spans big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and includes over 60 publications. In 2023, he received the UNBC Excellence in Research Award and was nominated for the Excellence in Teaching Award. Since 2018, he has served as the Chair for the IEEE Northern BC Sub-Section, supporting technological and educational advancement in the region.
Chengbo Fu is an associate professor of finance at the University of Northern British Columbia. His research focuses on sustainable finance, asset pricing and international finance. He is interested in teaching investment, financial modelling, fixed income securities, portfolio management, derivatives, international finance and corporate finance.
