2.1 Use and Gratification Theory
Use and gratification (U&G) theory is one of most frequently applied theories on SNS research because it explains how people can have different media use patterns as a result of different gratification needs and goals (Katz, 1959; Austria, 2010). Most consumer needs can be divided into three categories: content gratification focused completely on content provided by media, relationship gratification based on social interactions with others, and self-presentation gratification based on individuals’ need to express themselves.
Shao (2008) used U&G theory to examine why people use SNS to understand how behavior relates to content. The author defined three behaviors: consuming, participating, and producing. Producing is an act of self-expression and self-actualization, both of which can satisfy self-presentation gratification. This type of user would publish their own content to construct their personal identity.
Another type of user would participate by interacting with the content to achieve social relationship gratification. The remaining users do not produce content or participate, but they consume content to attain content gratification. The author asserts that SNS are so popular because they enable users to easily achieve their purposes. Therefore, we can understand the significance of content on SNS because, regardless of the different purposes for using the sites, the uses are closely related to the contents.
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Furthermore, interactive behavior on SNS can include commenting on published content, “liking”
content to support its perspective, and sharing content with friends. According to the studies, interacting with the contents is participating behavior; this behavior can help people seek
information and entertainment through SNS. For instance, “posting a comment” can help people understand the content; “rating” can help people find the most popular video, content, or product;
and “sharing with others” can directly spread the content. Thus, participating not only enriches the content and attracts other people but also helps facilitate brand fan pages (Shao, 2008; Sashi, 2012).
Therefore, successful content is adapted by customers and stimulates the previously mentioned behaviors.
Content gratification includes functional value and hedonic value (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982).
Customers can attain functional value because they can access helpful, functional, practical, and useful content. Customers may also obtain hedonic value by accessing fun, entertaining, and exciting content (Carlson, 2014). Jahn and Kunz (2012) indicated that valuable content, which includes hedonic and functional characteristics, is one of the most important drivers for attracting users to brand fan pages. Focusing on content gratification, this study examines specific characteristics of content development that may affect customer engagement.
2.2 Resonance
Social media such as Facebook, Titter, Instagram, and Youtube provide free platform to enable users interacting with others, discussing with hot topics, and getting favorable information. There are many different using pattern on social media; however, most of people would like to discuss and share message with others when they are interested in a topic. These behavior can be consider as the phenomenon of resonance (Gruhl et al., 2004). In social media, the easiest way to evaluate intensity of resonance are liking, commenting, and sharing the content. Companies should figure out what is the best strategy to stimulate resonance for exposing their product or brand.
2.3 Customer Engagement
Customers who use SNS engage in many different behaviors, such as participating in online discussions, commenting, searching for information, and contributing to opinion polls. These behaviors can be considered customer engagement if they are related to a firm (van Doorn et al., 2010). Verhoef et al. (2010) defined customer engagement as a behavior that is expressed toward a brand or firm that goes beyond transactions, including all customer-to-firm interaction and
customer-to-customer communication about the brand.
The behavior may have both positive and negative consequences, including trust, satisfaction, commitment and loyalty (Brodie et al., 2011; van Doorn et al., 2010). Thus, customer engagement
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is occasionally used to represent the highest form of loyalty (Bowden, 2009). Several studies (Jahn
& Kunz 2012; Johanna & Veronica, 2012) have verified that customer engagement positively affects loyalty and purchases.
Customer engagement includes all types of communication through brand fan pages, blogging and other social media (van Doorn et al., 2010). Consequently, various factors are used to measure customer engagement, such as the frequency of visits to brand fan pages, liking content, commenting, and news reading (Johanna & Veronica 2012).
In general, most studies analyze content liking and commenting behavior to evaluate the popularity of particular content (Lisette de Vries et al. 2012; Ferran & Jasmina, 2014). In addition to these two dependent variables, we consider the number of shares to be another dependent variable because sharing is defined as highly intense agreement. Each of these actions potentially promotes content (Ferran & Jasmina, 2014).
2.3 Influence of content features on customer engagement
Vividness
Visual aesthetics are considered to be a factor that strongly affects user’s satisfaction with a product or system (Green & Jordan, 2001). Moreover, numerous studies have indicated that visual aesthetics can influence perceptions of usability, trust, fun, and enjoyment and the intention of a revisit
(Phillips & Chaparro, 2009; Mahlke, 2002; Mathwick et al., 2001).
Eysenck (1941) asserted that aesthetics of an object depend on two factors: simplicity and complexity. Numerous studies have defined visual complexity as the perceptual dimension of quantity of objects, clutter, openness symmetry, organization, and variety of colors (Michailidou et al., 2008; Nadkarni & Gupta, 2007). However, Birkhoff (1933) indicated that complexity deters the effect of the aesthetics of an object. Similarly, many studies have found that visual complexity negatively influences aesthetic perceptions; lower complexity is perceived to be more aesthetic than higher complexity (Michailidou et al., 2008; Pandir & Knight, 2006).
Moshagen and Thielsch (2013) suggested that vividness is related to dynamics, variety, visual richness, creativity, interest, and novelty and that it is closely related to visual complexity
(Moshagen & Thielsch, 2010; Hekkert et al., 2003). Berlyne (1971) asserted that complexity and novelty are the factors that determine the arousal potential of a stimulus. If a stimulus is simple, it results in a low arousal and a negative aesthetic perception. Therefore, vividness can counteract low arousal by provoking interest and tension (Hekkert & van Wieringen, 1990; Hekkert et al., 2003).
Thus we hypothesize that
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H1. The greater the vividness is, the higher the resonance will be:
H1A: The greater the vividness is, the higher the likes will be.
H1B: The greater the vividness is, the higher the comments will be:
H1C: The greater the vividness is, the higher the shares will be:
Interactivity
The method used to enhance the salience of content is interactivity (
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isette de Vries et al., 2012).Blattberg and Deighton (1991) explained that interactivity enables an individual to directly communicate with a company regardless of time and distance. Moreover, Steuer (1992) defined interactivity as “the degree to which users can join in modifying the form and content of a mediated environment in real time.”
Each type of content contains different degrees of interactivity. For instance, content using only text has a low degree of interactivity. Conversely, content with links enabled for users is more
interactive (Fortin & Dholakia, 2005). Moreover, using questions is considered a high degree of interactivity because it solicits user responses to the content (
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isette de Vries et al., 2012).L
isette de Vries et al. (2012) indicated that content with a high level of interactivity is significant and positively related to the number of likes and comments. Cvijikj (2013) also supported these results by finding that interactivity has strong effects on customer engagement.Thus, we hypothesize that
H2. The more the interactivity exists, the higher the resonance will be:
H2A: The more interactivity exists, the higher likes will be H2B: The more interactivity exists, the higher comments will be H2C: The more interactivity exists, the higher shares will be
Richness
The degree of richness is considered to be the vividness of online content (
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isette de Vries et al., 2012; Ferran & Jasmina, 2014). Buraj and Lee (2013) indicated that rich information on business websites can enable companies to effectively communicate with customers about their products and services. Balasubramanian et al. (2003) also found that those companies with high-qualityinformation on their websites helped their customer achieve greater satisfaction.
Indeed, Jahn and Kunz (2012) asserted that the content with higher functional value plays an important role in encouraging people to spend their time on the brand fan pages because people would search for utilitarian information to satisfy their functional gratification. A previous study verified that richness information would enhance positive attitudes toward a website (Ferran &
Jasmina, 2014).
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Thus, we hypothesize that
H3. The more richness there is, the higher the resonance will be:
H3A: The more richness there is, the higher the likes will be:
H3B: The more richness there is, the higher the comments will be:
H3C: The more richness there is, the higher the shares will be:
Emotiveness
Emotion plays an important role in the success of mobile communication, which enriches both inter-personal and inter-group relationships (Iyer & Leach, 2008). Collins Dictionary (2011) defines an emotion as a feeling such as happiness, love, fear, anger, or hatred. Emotive expression can be used as a stimulus to strengthen the understanding of communication between message senders and receivers (Kwon et al., 2011). Emotion not only enriches communication but also helps build trust in the negotiation process through content, sentence structure, and style (Scissors et al., 2009).
Emotive expression can pour emotive experience into a linguistic structure, which can help people understand an event (Pennebaker et al., 1997). Emotion can be expressed in text in many ways, such as signs, capital letters, exclamation marks, and wording. These tactics can convey different
meanings to different individuals (Moriarty, 1994).
Jiang (2004) used different intensities of emotive expression to examine customers’ advertising recall rate, attitude toward advertising, attitude toward products, and intention to purchase. The results show that declarative expression led to greater advertising recall, whereas interrogative expression led to better attitude toward advertisements. Other researchers have found that emotional expression results in more positive reactions (Page et al., 1990) and higher recall levels (Choi &
Thorson, 1983).
Thus, we hypothesize that
H4. The greater the emotiveness in communications, the higher resonance will be:
H4A: The greater the emotiveness in communications, the higher likes will be H4B: The greater the emotiveness in communications, the higher comments will be H4C: The greater the emotiveness in communications, the higher shares will be
Customer Engagement
Customer engagement is defined as “an intimate long-term relationship with customer”. This is very beneficial if companies have intensity of customer engagement. Companies want to exchange the relation with customer from short to long-term and cursory to intimate, because customer
engagement may effectively affect brand commitment, word of mouth, and purchase; hence, companies spend much time to develop strategy and tool for increasing customer engagement
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(Sashi, 2012). Since social media is easy to spread product information and gather people, companies would like to know if the content with high resonance would stimulate customer engagement.
Thus, we hypothesize that
The more resonance there is, the higher the customer engagement will be:
H5A: The more likes there are, the higher the customer engagement will be.
H5B: The more comments there are, the higher the customer engagement will be.
H5C: The more shares there are, the higher the customer engagement will be.
Contents in social media have diversity style and features, which may attract user to engage on brand fans page, but not actually increase customer engagement; hence, this study also try to figure out if the content’s factors would directly affect customer engagement.
Thus, we hypothesize that