The power of social media is colossal considering that the number of worldwide users is expected to grow even more in the future reaching 2.95 billion by 2020. Because of the apparent customer engagement in these platforms, companies spend on average 11% of marketing budgets on social media and this expenditure is expected to grow to 19% over the next five years (CMO Survey, 2017). However, the main challenge the companies are facing is how to convert the social media investments into effective marketing and contribution to company’s performance. The customer engagement (CE) in social media catches a strong attention from scholars (Brodie et al., 2013) as well as experts of online marketing (Dessart, Veloutsou, & Morgan-Thomas, 2016). Even though there is a significant progress in the conceptual (Van Doorn et al., 2010) and empirical (Brodie et al., 2013) analysis of CE, its clear understanding remains still insufficient. Customer engagement’s definition requires more attention as there is inconsistency in the terms because of a lack of agreement on the terminology (van Doorn et al., 2010). Noticeable differences exist concerning also the measurement of CE and what exactly this phenomenon encompasses (Dessart et al., 2016). Particularly, the empirical studies show incongruity in the number and the nature of the dimensions (Sprott et al., 2009; Brodie et al., 2013). To investigate the complex and emergent occurrence of CE in social media, this research endorses a managerial-oriented approach using rich qualitative data from three different sources covering a variety of views for different social media platforms (41 companies/24 advertising/communication agencies, and 10 research/consulting firms). The results illustrate the gaps among customer engagement’s conceptions, the customer engagement dimensionality, and the metrics of social media performance beyond customer engagement.

This paper utilized the dual coding theory (Yang, Hlee, Lee, & Koo, 2017) and theory of latent state–trait (LST) (Steyer, Schmitt and Eid, 1999) to the application of consumer impulse purchasing behaviors and further revealed that the number of reaching can thus be identified as a trigger for impulse buying on social media. Three inputs (number of color, text length, number of photo) and three outputs (number of likes; number of comments, and shares; and number of clicks on post) are used to develop this marketing message performance assessment model in the social medial based on the literature and expert opinions through data envelopment analysis (DEA). The disaggregate efficiencies are also assessed in order to improve the individual input resource performance in a total-factor framework. Resource-saving target ratios (RSTR) for 60 marketing message in a five-star hotel chain. The empirical findings indicate that the average total-factor text length efficiency (TFTLE) is worse than the total-factor photo efficiency (TFPE) in the Facebook platform in the five-star hotel chain. This result suggests that photo message is more attractive for viewer than the text message. Managerial discussion and the future studies are discussed.

Social media-based brand community becomes an important information channel strategy for marketing firms. Despite the growing academic interest in the issue, little knowledge exists on how social media-based brand community (hereafter SMBBC) could influence consumer brand evaluation. Accordingly, this study attempts to remedy the literature gap by integrating the community integration model, engagement in the OBC or SMBBC, and consumer brand evaluation to propose a conceptual model for investigating the effect of SMBBC environment on consumer brand evaluation. This study collected data from 402 respondents experienced in using SMBBC. The result revealed that SMBBC identification and company identification have a positive impact on brand engagement; whereas brand identification has a positive effect on SMBBC engagement, peer identification has a positive influence on company identification. In addition, both brand engagement and SMBBC engagement are found to benefit corporate brand equity and corporate reputation, respectively.

Reports indicate that in 2017, social commerce had become a 20 billion dollar industry. Given the developing world’s fatigue with social media, social commerce growth will likely be fueled by consumers from developing economies. While literature has investigated social commerce in the context of established brands in developed economies (e.g. Kim and Ko, 2012), it cannot yet explain consumers’ engagement with the uniqueness of social media commerce in developing economies. Social commerce in Southeast Asian economies are largely conducted amongst individuals or micro businesses. Since social media platforms largely do not provide commerce security nor support, consumers are more vulnerable to fraudulent practices. What factors motivate these purchases despite such risks? This study offers insights into how consumers’ motivated reasoning influences their willingness to purchase over social media. We focus on the social media store’s ease of use and perceived security as antecedents of trust. Specifically, we argue that perceiving a lack of ability to purchase from other channels would induce higher trust towards a social media store, despite low perceptions of ease and security of transaction. Data was collected from 224 Indonesian social media users who have been exposed to social media stores on Instagram. The findings suggest that when consumers perceive high control of how they could obtain desired goods, trust becomes a logical function of the perceived safety and ease of use of the shops. However, under low perceived control, consumers display high trust in social media shops despite not being convinced that they are safe nor easy to use. The findings extend our understanding about the antecedents of value creation in social commerce (Stephen and Toubia, 2010). Our results enrich prior literature by showing how motivated reasoning leads to biases in judgment to be in favor of desired goals (Blanton and Gerrard, 1997), and extends it in the novel context of social media commerce. Furthermore, by incorporating the literature on perceived behavioral control and motivated reasoning, the current study provides important empirical evidence for the presence of perceived control over alternate channels as a significant driver for trust towards social media shops. The current research also has a number of implications for social commerce providers in developing economies. This study shows that it is advantageous for managers to cultivate trust using interactivity and reliability to elicit a sense of security and ease of use. However, our findings also offers a caution for firms to not be lulled into a false sense of comfort by taking consumers’ trust at face value.

Why are CEOs not active on social media? It is increasingly critical for CEOs to not only be physically present at work but also be virtually present in the digital sphere. However, many CEOs are still reluctant to adapt social media or struggle to find the efficient approach to incorporate the tools into their communication strategy. The study explores how CEOs orient themselves in the digital world and make sense of social media. In particular, based on the view of impression management and institutional work, the research examines how CEOs translate their understanding into communication and selfpresentation strategies and activities. The results from 31 in-depth interviews with Chinese and Dutch CEOs suggest that leadership communication on social media is still going through the process of legitimisation in both institutions. Despite the growing popularity of personal branding, most CEOs do not interpret social media as the outlet for their personal and private use or independent from the organisational identities. While most CEOs champion the necessity of digital transformation for their organisations, they do not see clearly how their personal digital habits could potentially influence the process, despite their leadership roles. They typically identify social media as the functional platforms for information circulation and network connection. Multiple narratives and orientations do, however, coexist and they dictate social media decisions simultaneously depending on the context. There is also a prominent difference between the narratives of social media in the Netherlands and in China. Most Dutch CEOs wish active engagement from the organisations but practice passive roles themselves, while most Chinese CEOs are active for both personal and organisational use pressured by the intuitional norms. The research highlights the significance of cultural context regarding leadership communication even on social media. Given most platforms are designed, and arranged to have an international audience, CEOs and companies should be aware of distinctive norms and beliefs they are operated in the different societal institutions.

As information technology advanced, customers’ service consumption process heavily shifted to the online environment, particularly social media and mobile. A new topic, customer engagement, has emerged along with the fast advancement of social media. Customer engagement refers to a type of customer behavior that is beyond purchase such as spreading word-of-mouth, providing recommendations to family and friends, interacting with fellow customers, and writing online reviews (Bijmolt et al., 2010; Verhoef, Reinartz, & Krafft, 2010). This study introduces the Flow theory, which is especially important to understand consumers’ online experiences, with the intention to shed light on how to better engage consumers in the hospitality industry (Bilgihan, Okumus, Nusair, & Bujisic, 2014; Hoffman & Novak, 2009). The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents of flow and further investigate its influence on positive attitude and continuance intention among restaurant social media users. This study specifically examines restaurant customers who use social media through their smart phones in searching information and sharing experiences with others. A self-administered questionnaire was developed and a Structure equational modeling (SEM) was employed to test the proposed hypotheses. Study results support the hypotheses, indicating the importance of creating flow to increase customer engagement. Academically, this study contributes to the limited body of literature on flow experience and customer engagement in the hospitality context. Additionally, it provides practical insights for hospitality marketers on how to gain competitive advantages by strategically managing customer engagement on social media marketing through flow.

Introduction Current research investigated whether emotionality of content would facilitate the possibility to share information on social media by using event-related potentials. Theoretical development Emotionality is an excitatory state which evokes autonomic nervous system. Previous studies suggested that stimuli with high emotionality elicited increased P100/P200 amplitudes relative to stimuli with low emotionality (Huang & Luo, 2006). Research design We tested the purpose in an affective priming paradigm in which participants were exposed to online content (i.e. the "prime" stimulus) followed by a stimulus (i.e. the "target" stimuli) from International Affective Picture System. Participants were required to judge whether the target was neutral white picture. Next, a nine-point Likert scale was followed to assess the level of emotionality for online content. Result and conclusion We observed a congruency effect in the priming effect. More importantly, early brain potentials P100/P200 were higher when participants were exposed to online content with more possibility to share than online content with less possibility to share. This finding could be explained by the "response level account" theory (Fazio, 2001). This study provides an insight to neural mechanism underlying emotionality of online content.

The demand for cosmetic products is generally declining globally, but growing among female Generation Y (Gen Y). Gen Y (18-34 years) are large in size and disposable income and are high users of various social media platforms. Thus, cosmetic companies are competing to capture this market segment. However, the type of social media platforms, which can best attract and induce cosmetic products interest among this fickle and notoriously disloyal market segment is unknown. This study therefore employed the AIDA model to examine the effectiveness of YouTube, Instagram and Facebook in igniting female Gen Y South Africans‟ interest in cosmetic products. Data was collected from 220 respondents. Structural equation modeling results revealed that the cosmetic products interest is ignited by YouTube and Instagram ads and not Facebook ads. Implications are provided.

Despite the recent promising findings on the influence of social media engagement on brand performance outcomes (e.g., De Vries & Carlson, 2014), researchers suggest that consumer engagement in social media sites requires a deeper understanding (Islam & Rahman, 2016). To respond to this call, we conducted this research to examine an important, yet under-researched, question on the underlying mechanism by which consumer engagement on social media drive improved brand performance. In this research, we develop and empirically test a conceptual model to investigate the relationships among consumer engagement, psychological brand ownership, brand loyalty, brand performance, and consumer’s word of mouth (WOM) in the context of social media. The findings suggest that consumer engagement influences brand outcomes through its indirect impact on consumers’ psychological ownership of the brand. When consumers engage themselves with the brand at social media sites, they tend to form bonds with the brand and develop a sense of community, of which they feel they are a part. Feelings of ownership motivate consumers to care for and nurture the growth of the brand, which manifests itself in terms of brand loyalty, positive word of mouth, and improved brand performance. The focus of consumer engagement in social media communities provides convincing evidence to support the benefits of using social media to connect with consumers. This research offers promising insights on how relationship with a brand can help create sense of community and feelings of ownership among consumers, which in turn drives better brand performance.

China is the world’s largest social network market in the world. The importance of tapping this massive market with rapid growth rate can’t be overstated. It has been widely acknowledged that culture is a significant variable in consumer attitudes and consumer behavior. Given that culture may influence individual’s interaction and consumption through social media, it is imperative to examine cultures’ influence in social media usage where much of the information is usually user generated. Traditionally, demographics like age, gender, education etc., are also considered as the key socioeconomic factors determining consumers’ media selection and buying decisions. To fill the research gap, this study is designed 1) to investigate the relationship between cultural dimensions and social media usages in China by introducing mediating factors of attitudes toward social media; 2) to investigate the role of individual characteristics (e.g., gender and living location) play on social networks usage in China. Pretest among small groups was first conducted for the purpose of scale validity evaluation. Later, a translation and back-translation method was employed to achieve the translation equivalence. A random stratified sample was obtained from an online panel in China in January 2018. A computer-assisted web interviews was conducted with adults age above 18. Total 600 usable samples were obtained in China in January 2018. The findings of this study evidenced the important role culture plays in defining the social context within which individuals behave. The result showed a strong positive relationship between power distance and negative attitude toward social media. This study also found a negative relationship between masculinity and using social media for direct purchase. The finding supports the fact that social networking, which has a strong focus on relationship building, is a relatively feminine value. Thus, the members of social networking, which espouses feminine values, demonstrate a more social orientation and expectation of shared values. Marketers need to ensure that they make their social media outlets user friendly and their spaces encourage communication and connectedness for their users.

This study attempts to investigate consumers’ perceptual process of influencer advertising and its impact on brand attitude formation on social media. Perceived congruence between the influencer and the product and sponsorship disclosure are manipulated as key independent variables. In so doing, this study examines whether consumers can infer two types of motives (affective vs. calculative) from different levels of perceived congruence (high vs. low) and sponsorship disclosure (present vs. absent). The impact of multiple motive inference on brand attitude is also examined in this study. The result indicates that perceived congruence of influencer and posting has a significant effect on the affective motive inference. When the posting is perceived to be relevant to and expected from the influencer, the participants infer the affective motive of the influencer. However, the participants do not infer calculative motives from the incongruent posting of the influencer. As native advertising can obfuscate the boundary between editorial and commercial contents (Conill, 2016), perceived congruence is significant to successfully cover the posting as a natural posting by influencer and induce affective motive inference. In addition, the disclosure of sponsorship did not reveal any effect on the calculative and the affective motive inferences. Even though the disclosure of sponsorship can make viewers recognize an advertising intent (Boerman, Willemsen, & Van Der Aa, 2017), the message did not induce motives inference behind it. It is significant to investigate whether there are intervening variables that moderate the linkage between sponsorship disclosure and motive inference processing. Furthermore, affective motive inference impacted the attitude for the brand whereas calculative motive inference exerted no significant effect. These findings suggest that when the product promoted in influencer advertising is congruent with the influencer, consumers form positive attitude toward the brand through affective inference processing. To successfully implement influencer advertising, marketers should design a content congruent with the influencer’s original postings and encourage audience to engage in affective motive processing.

The study of online brand communities is inseparable from the concept of customer engagement. The purpose of this study is to conjoin these two emerging research streams in tourism. Past studies relevant to customer engagement in online communities consider it from only brand perspective, whereas this study considers engagement with brand and engagement with community separately. Social identity and user gratification perspective are used to develop framework in building brand relationship quality. The context of the study is to throw light on benefit of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) on tourism industry in Pakistan. The CPEC is a mega-project between Pakistan and China, worth more than 54 billion US dollars. The Framework was verified using the data collected from several Facebook pages (official and unofficial). This study contributes in understanding the way to enhance brand relationship quality of tourism brand via social media based online communities. This study also validates the customer brand engagement scale consisted of seven dimensions within tourism brand proposed by Dessart, Laurence (2016). The results of this study indicated that community identification has a significant role in engaging customer with community as brand community engagement and with brand as customer brand engagement. Customer brand engagement further enhances brand relationship quality whereas brand community engagement has an insignificant effect on brand relationship quality. This study also provides insight to practical and further research implication.

Given the relevance of social media platforms into everyday life, User-Generated- Contents (UGC) have come to represent one of the richest and used source of online information (Koltringer and Dickinger, 2015). UGC include online information sources that are developed, and used by consumers who intend to communicate each other and share information about products, brands and services (Culotta and Cutler, 2016) influencing other customers’ perception and decision-making process. In this perspective, for marketers who need to manage their brands, UGC on social media provide new opportunities and new dangers. One particular kind of contents created by consumers are parodies of advertisement (parodic ads), humorous messages that parody extant advertising (Roehm and Roehm, 2014). This kind of UGC can damage or be beneficial for brands image and reputation. After the development of an overview about parody literature in management discipline, this research aims at investigating the effect of parodic ads video - created and shared by users on social media - on the image and the reputation of the parodied advertising's brand. With this aim, authors will developed a content analysis on ads videos and parodic ads videos and related comments on You Tube.

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of backstage storytelling in luxury brands’ social media communication and examine a psychological mechanism that elucidates how luxury brands’ backstage storytelling influences consumers’ attitudinal and relational outcomes. The theory of narrative transportation (Escalas, 2004) was employed as a theoretical lens. Focusing on the effects of visual storytelling in a social media platform, this study proposed that photos of a luxury brand’s backstage images offer a greater level of narrativity than staged images of products and models. Additionally, this study proposed VIP emotions and perceived intimacy as mediators between transportation to photo narrative and attitudes toward the brand, brand evaluation and self-brand connection. In addition, the effectiveness of social media for luxury brands’ visual storytelling was tested by testing the role of telepresence in viewers’ information processing. This study selects Instagram, a visual-oriented social media platform, as the study context; Chanel, a luxury fashion brand, was selected to develop the study stimuli. Two Instagram accounts for Chanel were created as study stimuli through a pre-test: one account with frontstage brand photos and one account with backstage brand photos. Students from two universities in the Southeast and Midwest were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions, frontstage (n=118) or backstage (n=134) Chanel Instagram account. Manipulation checks confirmed that respondents perceived the experimental conditions as intended. Our results revealed that viewers in the backstage condition experienced higher levels of transportation than those in the frontstage condition; VIP emotions and perceived intimacy mediate the relationship between transportation and attitudes towards a brand’s Instagram, brand evaluations, and self-brand connection. Additionally, ANCOVA results confirmed the interaction effects of telepresence on transportation is significant only in the backstage condition. Findings from this study shed light on the effectiveness of luxury fashion brands’ visual storytelling in social media communication.

Social media have altered the communication landscape and significantly impacted brand communications in the luxury fashion industry. Research suggests that with the rise of social media, brand communication has been democratised, and the power has shifted from those in marketing to the individuals and communities that create and consume content, redistributing it across a variety of channels (Kozinets, Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010; Kumar & Sundaram, 2012). Yet the implications of social media are still largely unknown among practitioners and managers. Moreover, there is a lack of effective frameworks for developing, analysing and comparing social-media strategies (Effing & Spil, 2016). Scholars have just started giving their attention to the subject of ‘social-media strategy’ as such, highlighting a gap in our knowledge, which this study seeks to address. The aim of this research is to understand the role of social media as a strategic brand-communications tool in the luxury fashion industry. Firstly, the main theoretical contribution is the development of a conceptual framework that enables an understanding, explanation and description of the process of building a social-media strategy. There has been a call for this type of research from a managerial perspective, across multiple platforms and objectives, and this work provides much-needed insights. Secondly, the findings provide valuable managerial insights. The conceptual framework emerging from this research is a managerial tool that can be used to tackle the process of building a social-media strategy and to identify its key elements. In particular, the framework can be deployed to guide and evaluate the process of creating a social-media strategy. With the help of the framework, managers can harness their resources successfully and identify the factors that need to be considered. Moreover, the framework aims to guide managerial action towards a sustainable social-media approach that helps to build competitive advantage for global luxury fashion brands in the longer term.

This study aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of social media marketing as a tool in communicating a “populist” (Scott, 2015) luxury fashion brand’s good intentions toward ordinary people; it also seeks to identify whether luxury fashion brands frequently perceived as exclusive and “envied” could become approachable and “admired” brands, simply by expressing “warm” intentions on their social media sites. Ultimately, we aim to investigate whether positive relational outcomes can be derived from the brand repositioning process, from envy to admiration. This study builds on the brands as intentional agents framework (Kervyn, Fiske, & Malone, 2012), which categorizes brands in terms of their “intentions” and “ability”: “able/ill-intentioned” luxury brands are categorized as “envied brands,” while “able/well-intentioned” brands elicit the general public’s admiration. Our pre-test results confirmed that consumers can sense a brand’s good intentions and ability via its social media site. We then conducted an online selfreported survey among 488 US women aged 18–49 years who were following or “liking” at least one luxury fashion brand’s official social media site. Using structural equation modeling, we found that intentions have a negative impact on consumer envy, and that they have a positive impact on consumer admiration. Ability was found to have a positive impact on consumer admiration of the brands, while it has a negative impact on consumer envy. Although we confirmed negative directions, consumer envy of the brands had nonsignificant impacts on both emotional brand attachment and brand forgiveness. However, consumer admiration of the brands had a positive impact on both kinds of brand responses. In conclusion, while most luxury fashion brands have stuck to exclusivity, the findings of this study imply that by continually showing good intentions towards ordinary people, luxury fashion brands could reposition themselves as admired brands, which would in turn enhance emotional brand attachment. In this way, these brands could cultivate affectionate and passionate consumer–brand relationships making consumers feel more connected to them. In doing so, luxury fashion brands can acquire through social media powerful consumer allies (Phan, Thomas, & Heine, 2011), who are willing to forgive their failures.

In recent years, compulsive social media use has become an increasingly serious issue in the society. On the one hand, such compulsive behavior could even be viewed as a psychiatric disorder, as it may cause negative psychosocial and professional consequences (Aladwani and Almarzouqand, 2016). On the other hand, excessive involvement in social media may have a positive side—customer engagement which refers to “a customer’s behavioral manifestations that have a brand or firm focus, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers” (van Doorn et al., 2010, p. 254). Of particular interest, a behavioral dimension of engagement consists of vigor or “a customer’s level of energy and mental resilience in interacting with a focal engagement object”, and interaction or “the two-way communications between a focal engagement subject and object. The latter two dimensions” (Brodie et al., 2011, p. 257). In a computer-mediated context, this behavioral dimension of customer engagement implies continuous and repeated contact via social media. However, to our knowledge, little research has addressed the relationship between compulsive social media use and customer engagement. Against this background, this study first tests an explanatory model focusing on customer engagement, compulsive social media usage, and compulsive buying. Then, the study examines the moderating role of narcissism and vanity on the model. The data is collected from an online survey with general consumer sample in the UK. On this basis, we validate the model via structural equation model. In closing, we offer a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications.

Introduction Social media communication has become a popular way for firms to engage with customers. Research shows that firms/brands engagement with fans or customers on social media is effective to improve brand equity (Kim & Ko, 2012), drive sales (eMarketer, 2015), and enhance both transactional and relational customer behaviour (Kumar, Bezawada, Rishika, Janakiraman, & Kannan, 2016). Given the influences of social media communication, how brands effectively engage with fans or followers on social media is an important question for marketers. Most research on this topic is from the applied psychology and consumer behaviour literature, whose theories and content are dominantly tested in laboratory setting. Very few research (e.g., Lee, Hosanagar, & Nair, 2017) applied real behaviour data of field settings to study this issue. Additionally, existent research primarily focuses on social media like Facebook and Twitter in developed counties. To our knowledge, no research examines global brands social media communications in developing country, like China. Due to the policy constraints, people in mainland China have no access to foreign social media platforms. There is a local social media platform in China, named Weibo. Weibo is a NASDAQ-listed company and has nearly 100 million active users monthly. Many brands, both global and local ones, have created Weibo accounts and keep engaging with their fans. For example, there are 1,452 luxury brands and 3,707 beverage brands or firms on Weibo (Weibo Data Centre, 2017). This paper focuses on global brands’ communication practices on Weibo. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how brand posts that global brands put on their social media page are correlated with fan engagement. By using real data form Weibo, we answer the following questions: (1) what attributes of brand posts on Weibo do affect fan engagement with global brands? (2) how do these attributes affect fans engagement behaviour (i.e. liking, sharing, and commenting) differently? Conceptual Framework We decompose the attributes of global brand social media posts into five aspects, which are proposed to affect fans engagement. The first two aspects, interactivity and vividness, are derived from computer-mediated-communication research (Frotin & Dholakia, 2005; Hoffman & Novak, 1996). The next two, informative and emotional attributes, are developed from the literature of advertising (Hong, Muderrisoglu, & Zinkhan, 1987; Geuens, Pelsmacker, & Faseur, 2011). The last one is localization-related attributes, which is from global marketing communication literature (Kanso & Nelson, 2002) to capture the special characteristics of global brand posts on a local social media platform. We argue that all these five aspects of global brand posts affect fans engagement on brand page. Fans engagement is conceptualized as fans behavioural response to brand posts, which will influence attitude and behaviour of other fans. There are three kinds of fans responses on brands social media page, i.e., liking, sharing and commenting. We do control the time and date of post issued, the text length of post, whether having celebrity in post, whether related to a remarkable event, the number of followers of brand on Weibo, and product category. Interactivity Interactivity is defined as “the degree to which two or more communication parties can act on each other, on the communication medium, and on the messages and the degree to which such influences are synchronized” (Liu & Shrum 2002, p.54). Interactivity requires two-way interaction between not only customers and companies, but customers themselves (Hoffman & Novak, 1996). Brand posts on Weibo differ in the degree of interactivity. Some posts only have text, picture, or video to deliver messages of brands, which has no possibility to interact with fans. Some posts include a link that fans can click to get more information, which enhances the interactivity of communication. Other posts have questions, which stimulate interaction with fans and followers. There are posts inviting people to indicate their like or comment on social media, which are considered as high interactivity as well. Advertising research has found the positive correlation between interactivity of ads and consumers’ attitude (Coyle & Thorson, 2001). De Vries, Gensler and Leeflang (2012) found interactivity of brand post on brand fan pages partially positively related to brand popularity (measured by number of likes and comments). Empirical research (Lee et al., 2017) using Facebook data showed that having links negatively associated with customer engagement, and having questions increased comments but reduced likings. For the inconsistent findings in the literature, we re-examine this relationship by focusing on global brands on a not well-examined Chinese social media, Weibo. Vividness Vividness refers to the format richness of the message (Daft & Lengel, 1986; Fortin & Dholakia, 2005). As for brand posts, vividness is reflected by the number of sensory dimensions and senses presented (text, colours, pictures, and videos, etc.). The degree of vividness influences what and how multiple senses are stimulated (Coyle & Thorson, 2001). For example, a picture post will activate more senses than a text post because the former has colour that stimulates sight more vividly than the later. Vividness is related to but differs from interactivity. Interactivity focuses on the characteristic of two-way interaction of the communication, while vividness stands for the multiple senses stimulated by the communication. Some advertising research found that a vivid web advertisement results in higher attention and more clicks (Lohtia, Donthu, & Hershberger, 2003). As a result, we differentiate vividness of each post and predict that more vivid post associated with higher customer engagement. A vivid post attracts more likes, shares and comments. Localization-related attributes Localization-related attributes are symbols that posts have reflecting the characteristics of local culture and people. The debate of globalization (standardization) versus localization has lasted several decades. Even though a global standardized marketing strategy saves money and gains scale economy, the localization approach (Keegan, 1969) is supported by the reality that each market has unique tastes. In the international advertising literature, some scholars found that many multinational firms “plan globally and act locally” (Blackwell, Ajami, & Stephan, 1991). “Global-local dilemma” exists when global luxury brands internationalize into the Chinese market (Liu et al., 2016). The marketing communication research found that it is not advised for global brands to use the same appeals and symbols in advertising across different countries (Kanso & Nelson, 2002). In other words, the combination of global advertising theme and local communication expertise can result in enhanced effectiveness. We propose, on Weibo, people are more actively engaged to like, share, or comment global brand posts when Chinese elements, such as Chinse handwriting, Chinese festivals, and Chinese celebrity spokespeople, are present. Informative attributes Besides interactivity and vividness, which capture the format characteristics of global brand posts, content-related attributes are associated with customer engagement as well. Informative content is an important side of content attributes. One important function of brand posts is to deliver messages to customers. Research shows that on social networks people tend to have positive attitudes towards informative ads (Taylor, Lewin, & Strutton, 2011). Global brand posts with specific information should result in higher customer engagement than less informative posts. Additionally, global brand posts on social media may have different types of marketing information, such as product, price, promotion and placerelated ones respectively. The posts with varying degree of informative content may change customer engagement as well. Emotional attributes Emotional attributes are another side of the content characteristics of brand posts besides informative ones. Advertising research shows that using emotion appeal in ads is an effective way to gain people attention and generate actions (Holbrook & Batra, 1987). Emotional connections between customers and brands are considered more stable than cognitive association (Heath, Brandt, & Nairn, 2006). Some scholars find that emotional appeal on banner advertising result in positive effects on click-through rates in both B2B and B2C contexts (Lohtia et al., 2003). Empirical research (Lee et al., 2017) on Facebook shows that perceived emotion in brand posts strongly boost users’ likes and comments. Similarly, we propose that emotional attributes of global brand posts on Weibo are correlated with fans engagement. We conceptualize emotional attributes with three elements, emotional tone, emotional icon and emotional core. Emotional core reflects the type of emotions, such as humour, happiness, and love, etc. Emotional tone stands for the strength of emotion, i.e. the emotion is weak or strong. Emotional icon refers to whether the content of posts has emotional symbols, which can take form of icons or net slangs. Research Design Operationalization Dependent variables Customer engagement is operationalized as three variables, the number of likes, the number of shares, and the number of comments of each global brand post. Independent variables Vividness. Vividness is operationalized as four categories standing for different vividness degree, text only, (text and) static picture, (text, static and) animated picture, (text, picture and) video. Interactivity. Interactivity is operationalized as five 0-1 variables, having link, having question, having invitation/incentive to like, having invitation/incentive to share, having invitation/incentive to comment. Localization-related attributes. This part is operationalized as four 0-1 variables, having Chinese culture image, having Chinese culture colour, having Chinese festival, and having Chinese celebrity spokespeople (we include celebrity as a control variable). Informative attributes. This part is operationalized as seven 0-1 variables, whether a post having information of (1) brand name, (2) promotion/trial, (3) price, (4) segmentation, (5) product lunch time, (6) purchase distribution, and (7) public relation event. Emotional attributes. This part is operationalized as three variables, (1) emotional icon, a 0- 1 variable, having emotional symbols or not, (2) emotional core, a categorical variable, different type of emotions identified by surveyed respondents, and (3) emotion tone, a scalerating variable from 1 to 3, standing for none, weak and strong emotion. Control Variables. There are five control variables, (1) time of posts, including date and hour; (2) length of posts, i.e., the number of Chinese characters; (3) celebrity, whether there is a celebrity in a post; (4) event, whether a post is related to a remarkable event; (5) the number of fans of brand, and (6) product category (3 dummy variables to differentiate four categories). Data We chose 6 global brands across five product categories, specifically, beverage (Coca-cola and Starbucks), cosmetics (Olay and L’Oréal), and sports (Nike and Adidas). All these global brands created Weibo account before 2012 and have cumulated a large number of followers. We select the posts from Sept. 1, 2016 to Feb. 28, 2017, within 6 months. This time duration is long enough to get analytical data. This period covers main Chinese traditional festivals, such as Mid-Autumn Festival, National Day, and Chinse New Year, which results in more variances in localization-related variables. Data were collected through two stages. The first stage was to download raw data from Weibo’s brand pages with Internet worm program directly. Each brand has its page which contains all posts it issued and the number of people’s likes, shares, and comments for each post. The second stage is to code content and get the final dataset. Most of 0-1 variables, such as interactivity, localization-related attributes, and informative attributes were coded by two research assistants. Variables of vividness were also coded by them. Variables of emotional attributes were coded by a survey to ask 500 Weibo users. This survey-based coded method is well applied in published research (e.g., Kumar et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2017). Model The three dependent variables, the numbers of likes (y1), shares (y2), and comments (y3), are count data with a Poisson distribution. As a result, the basic model is as following: 𝑦ij = 𝛼 + 𝑒𝑥𝑝(Σ3p=1 𝛽1p 𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑑pj + Σ5q=1 𝛽2q 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟qj + Σ4r=1 𝛽lr 𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙rj + Σ7s=1 𝛽4s 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜sj + Σ3p=1 𝛽5t 𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑡tj + 𝛽6 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒j + 𝛽7 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟j + 𝛽8 𝑙𝑒𝑛j + 𝛽9 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒j + 𝛽10 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡j + 𝛽11 #𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤j + Σ4u=1 𝛽12u 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑡uj) + 𝜀ij (1) Expected Results This research is among the first initiative to examine social media communication in China. We are still working on the data analysis so far. We intend to identify the influence of global posts on fans engagement, which are from not only the content of posts (informative and emotional attributes), but also the design of posts (vividness and interactivity), and especially the localization considerations. We expect to find that the content foci differ fans engagement. Posts of sales promotion should be more effective to enhance fans engagement than those of product demonstration. We can identify what form of posts stimulates fans participation more effectively. We will know whether a video post is more effective than a picture post. Most interestingly, we will know how the posts combined with Chinese cultural elements on social media are responded. For example, we could compare the difference between posts having foreign and local celebrity people. We will know how different customer engagement behaviour influence by the same characteristic of posts. We can identify the most influential factors to each of three customer responses (liking, sharing, and commenting). Comparing with the research using data from Facebook or other social media outlets, we can obtain implications guiding global brands to implement social media strategy across countries.

This study explores the impact of social capital on private club members’ engagement of social media. Researchers selected private club members across the U.S. Participants (559 at a 20% response rate). Results indicate that social capital is a significant factor influencing the club members’ perceptions of engaging with social media.

Since the late 1980s, information communication and technology (ICT) have reshaped the landscape of the tourism industry (Buhalis & Law, 2008). Thanks to the Web 2.0 technology, tourism practitioners have never been this close to their customers over social media platforms. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social media refers to “a group of Internet-based applications which build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (p. 61). In line with this definition, electronic social networks, user-generated content aggregators, as well as location-based applications are all typical social media platforms, across which enable customers to create, edit, and share content. The increasingly growing social media platforms have greatly facilitated implementations of customer engagement strategies for organizations. As a psychological state, customer engagement is featured by interactive customer experiences with an organization, which encourage psychological, emotional, and physical investment a customer has in the organization (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017). In the tourism and hospitality context, customer engagement strategies are as critical in strengthening customer loyalty, trust, and brand evaluations (So, King, & Sparks, 2016). Useful insights have been gained relating to conceptualization and measurement scale of customer engagement, organizational and cultural obstacles to consumer engagement within hotel organizations (Chathoth et al., 2014), customer engagement in a social media context alongside the process of recognition (Cabiddu et al., 2014). Underlying the practical and theoretical significance of customer engagement lies the subjective nature of views on the social media platforms. Goh, Heng, and Lin (2014) recognized that engagement in social media brand communities positively lead to enhanced purchase expenditures through embedded information and persuasion. Quantitively, the persuasive effect of user generated information is at least 22 times more than that of marketer’s in terms of marginal effect. Although previous research has examined consequences of consumer engagement, there has been less attention paid to its causes. Meanwhile, as far as Brodie et al. (2011) were concerned, the persistency of consumer-brand engagement is contingent on an assessment of tangible and intangible costs against possible benefits such as product news and offers. Therefore, identification of these benefits can offer supplementary insights into current literature of consumer engagement. The current study utilizes the self-determination theory to uncover how engagement in social media activities is facilitated by consumers’ intrinsic motivators and what psychological benefits can consumer obtain from such engagement, as either psychological state or process (Brodie et al., 2011). Research subjects in this study are Chinese social media users. According to eMarketer’s (2017) estimated that more than 80 percent of Internet users in China (i.e., around 626 million people) accessed social networks regularly in 2017. The importance of tapping this massive market can never be overestimated.