To post or not to post: examining motivations of brand/product-related engagement types on social networking sites.

Abstract

At present, consumers use social networking sites to engage with brands and brand related content, this study examines consumers’ motivations for brand/product- related engagement on social networking sites. This thesis develops three motivation frameworks to explain each brand/product-related engagement type: consuming, contributing and creating. The main objectives are: 1) to understand what motivates consumers to engage with different brand/product-related posts on social networking sites, and 2) to understand the relationship between brand/product-related engagement types and social networking sites usage. A mixed-methods approach is employed through establishing exploratory sequential research design. First, consumers’ motivations drawn from psychology and brand/product-related engagement literature are defined through using semi- structured interviews (N=12) in order to define the factors behind each brand/product-related engagement type on social networking sites. Then, the findings of semi-structured interview analysis lead to the development of web-based questionnaires. Web-based online questionnaires (N= 225) were conducted in order to examine motivations of each brand/product-related engagement type on social networking sites and the relationship between brand/product-related post engagement and social networking site usage. A survey of 225 respondents was conducted and analysed using quantitative method. The findings shed light on the reasons behind consumers’ brand/product-related engagement types (e.g. consuming contributing, creating) on social networking sites, and the relationship between consumers’ social media site usage and brand/product- related engagement behaviour. A key contribution of this thesis is to construct five models: 1) a motivation framework for consuming brand/product-related posts from brands which aims to explain what motivates consumers to consume (e.g. read, view) brand/product-related posts from brands; 2) a motivation framework for consuming brand/product-related posts from other people; 3) a motivation framework for contributing brand/product-related posts from brands and other people that examines factors behind consumers’ contribution behaviour to brand/product- related posts through sharing, commenting, liking, favouriting, tagging, etc; 4) a motivation framework examining the motives of consumers for creating positive brand/product-related posts on social networking sites; and 5) a motivation framework defining the motives of consumers to create negative brand/product-related posts on social networking sites. The findings also define brand/product-related engagement types and social networking site usage. The relationship between social networking site usage and brand/product-related engagement is only found for two engagement types: consuming and contributing.