Introduction
Social media marketing is an attractive marketing method for fostering relationships with customers. About 30% of social media users find social networking sites important when searching for information about brands as well as showing their support towards them (Nielsen, 2017). This engagement with brands on social media is one of the factors driving company outcomes. For example, consumer engagement in social media brand communities is found to have a positive impact on purchase spending (Goh, Heng, and Lin, 2013), brand equity (Christodoulides and Jevons, 2012), and brand attitude (Schivinski and Dabrowski 2016). Consumer engagement involves both consumer interaction and co-creation of the content (Smith and Gallicano, 2015). In order to enhance engagement with brand content, marketers must persuade consumers to interact with those messages by sharing, commenting or liking them (Chang, Yu, Lu, 2014). Hence, interaction is the crucial step towards improving consumer engagement. While marketers rely on experimenting in order to find elements that drive consumer interaction, researchers use vast social media data in order to examine relationships between brand message characteristics and consumer interaction with those messages. For example, (Vries, Gensler, and Leeflang, 2012) studied the impact of post’s vividness, interactivity, content, position of a post and valence of comments on brand post popularity as represented by number of likes and comments. Other researchers such as (Wang et al ,2016) examined the impact of topic, tone and the length of post on social media engagement defined not only by the number of likes and shares, but also by the likability of characters featured in the post. Chang, Yu, and Lu (2014) studied how argument quality, post popularity, and post attractiveness can lead to consumer engagement. Similarly, (Lee and Hong, 2016) investigated the impact of emotional appeal, informativeness and creativity of a message on positive consumer behavior towards brand message. However, little is known so far about the effects of the frequency and spacing of brand-generated content on the dynamics of consumer interaction. Advertising research shows that advertising frequency has an impact on various consumer behavior and attitude outcomes and suggests that there is an optimum level of exposure to advertising that yields greatest results (Schmidt and Eisend, 2015; Broussard, 2000). Moreover, research on advertising repetition in traditional channels suggests an inverted u-shape relationship between ad repetition and message effectiveness. This happens because at a certain number of exposures negative factors, such as boredom and irritation (Heflin and Haygood, 1985), kick in and overweigh positive ones. As a result, the effectiveness of an ad starts diminishing. This effect is also known as the wear-out effect. On the other hand, (Lee, Ahn, and Park, 2015) suggest that inverted U-shape relationship between repetition and attitude towards the brand does not hold true in online environments. This is the case because users can control their exposure to advertising, therefore they do not expose themselves to the ad to the extent that they feel adverse toward it. As firm-generated brand content on social media is a form of advertising, it is interesting to examine, whether wear-out effect occurs in the context of social media and user interaction. In addition, the effect of advertising repetition is found to depend on the time period, or space, between ad exposures (Janiszewski, Noel, and Saywer, 2003). Spacing between exposures affect learning (Sawyer, Noel, and Janiszewski, 2009), attitude towards the brand (Schmidt and Eisend, 2015), purchase spending (Sahni, 2015), attrition rate and customer response (Dreze and Bonfrer, 2008). Moreover, recent study by (Wang, Greenwood, and Pavlou, 2017), who investigated the influence of posting on the propensity to unfollow the brand on the largest social media in China WeChat, found that posting leads to higher likelihood of unfollowing the brand, which in turn has a negative effect on the long term sales. However, WeChat may be considered to be more intrusive than Facebook because of the differences in how followers get notified about new brand posts. Therefore, it is interesting to examine whether the same effect of posting holds true on Facebook. Finally, viral marketing research suggests that the growth rate of interaction with the content depends on the rate of creation of other messages (Karnik, Saroop, and Borkar, 2013). Based on the findings from previous studies, it is evident that frequency and spacing may have a significant influence on the level and growth rate of user interaction. Furthermore, two-sided advertising research suggests that inclusion of negative information in product related messages can yield better results in terms of persuasive power than if no negative information is included (Eisend 2006). In addition, political communication researchers found that sentiment-carrying Twitter messages tend to be retweeted more often and more quickly (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan, 2013). Therefore, it is suggested that the effect of message frequency and spacing on the level of consumer interaction is moderated by the sentiment of the message. In other words, the optimal level of message frequency is expected to be higher for emotionally-charged firm-generated brand messages as compared to neutral ones. Hence, the following research questions are proposed:
RQ1: How does frequency and spacing of brand-generated content affect the dynamics of consumer interaction on social media and how is this effect moderated by the sentiment of the content?
RQ2: How does posting on social media affect the unfollowing by brand followers?
RQ2a: Does the spacing between messages help reduce the negative effect of posting on the unfollowing by brand followers (if such effect is present)?
Research Design & Theoretical Development
In order to answer these questions two data sets were gathered via Facebook’s API consisting of 6,471 and 932 brand posts respectively. Two separate data sets were needed to examine the frequency effects on the overall level of consumer interaction as well as on the growth rate of interaction. Therefore, post and page data for 7 international brands from 5 different product categories for the period of 2 years were collected to examine the frequency effects. To investigate the effect of posting on the growth rate of consumer interaction, 11 brands were tracked for the 7-week period in order to capture the development of the interaction. In addition, the impact of posting on the propensity to unfollow the brand was examined. Consequently, three separate regression models were built to test the hypotheses. Results showed that frequency of posting and the level of consumer interaction has an inverted u-shape relationship and that the level of consumer interaction is positively influenced by the space between the posts. Further, findings suggest that posting on social media is positively associated with unfollowing by followers and that the growth rate of interaction of the post depends on the rate of new message generation by the same brand. The conceptual model is presented below.
Result and Conclusion
The study has few theoretical and practical contributions. Answering to the call for research (Vries, Gensler, and Leeflang, 2012) to include the dynamic aspects of interaction, this study contributes to the social media literature by examining the effects of the rate of new message generation on the growth rate of interaction of the post. In addition, this study adds to the stream of research on the wear-out effects in online environments by including higher number of exposures and by testing the type of firm communication (social media communication) that previously has not been studied. Finally, this study contributed to the recent research (Wang, Greenwood, and Pavlou, 2017) by examining the effect of posting on the unfollowing by brand followers. As for practical contributions, findings of this study have implications for marketing managers with respect to the frequency and spacing of posting. This study provides evidence for a more moderate posting strategies in terms of frequency.
본 연구는 FDR(Frequency Domain Reflectometry) 센서를 이용하여 코코넛 코이어 배지에서 급액 공급관리에 적합한 수분측정 장소를 찾고 보다 정밀한 측정 방안을 제시하기 위한 기초 실험으로 급액구에서의 측정거리와 위치 그리고 노이즈 필터 사용에 따른 수분변화와 편차를 조사하였다. 시판되는 코코넛 코이어 슬라브 중 coir dust 와 chip의 함량이 10:0, 7:3, 5:5, 3:7인 배지들을 사용했고 배지 윗면과 측면에 급액구부터 5, 10, 20, 30cm의 거리를 두어 센서를 설치하여 동일한 급액을 공급한 후 수분변화를 측정하였으며, 노이즈 필터 사용 여부에 따른 수분변화는 내부가 균일한 인공토양인 글라스 비드를 포수하여 설치간격 0, 6, 12, 21cm에서 측정하였다. 배지조성에 상관없이 센서가 급액구에 가까울수록 높은 수분함량 증가를 나타내었다. 배지 조성 3:7과 10:0에서는 윗면과 측면 측정에 따른 배지 수분함량 변화 특성이 차이를 보이지 않았으나 5:5와 7:3에서는 윗면을 측정시 보다 높은 수분함량 증가를 보였다. Chip 함량이 상대적으로 많은 3:7 배지에서는 다른 배지들보다 수분함량 증가가 낮았다. 노이즈 필터를 사용하게 되면 측정치 변동과 편차가 감소하였다. 따라서, 코코넛 코이어 배지에서 FDR센서를 이용해 배지 수분 계측시 급액구에 가까운 거리의 윗면을 측정하는 것이 급액 이후 배지내 변화를 관측이 용이하다. 다수의 센서를 사용하여 측정할 경우에는 센서 간 간격을 21cm 이상으로 넓게 설치하도록 하며, 노이즈 필터는 측정 안정성 향상을 위해 사용을 권장한다.
본 연구에서는 고주파 유도경화처리한 중탄소강의 회전접촉 피로거동을 0.44wt.%C강과 0.55wt.%C강을 사용하여 조사하였다. 회전접촉 피로시험은 Polymet RCF-1 시험기에서 탄성유체 윤활 조건으로 회전속도 8,000rpm, 최대 Hertz응력 492kg/mm2을 가하면서 실시하였다. 미세한 lath마르텐사이트가 고주파 유도경화한 0.44wt.%C강과 0.55wt.%C강의 표면경화층에 형성되었고 소량의 페라이트가 일부 형성되었으며 0.44wt.%C강과 0.55wt.%C에 비해 비교적 큰 페라이트가 나타났다. 회전접촉 피로시험 후 표면경도가 거의 유지되는 표면경화층에서 회전접촉 피로시험전에 비해 경도가 상승하였다. 이 경도증가량의 최대치(δ Hvmax)와 피로수명과의 관계를 조사한 결과 0.55wt.%C강이 0.44wt.%C강에 비해 회전접촉 피로중에 일어나는 소변형에 대한 높은 저항성에 주로 기인하여 δ Hvmax값은 낮게 나타나고 피로수명은 높게 나타났다.