Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.4 Brand Experience on Instagram
brand and build familiarity with consumers (Naylor, Lamberton, & Patricia, 2012).
Consumer’s brand experience would increase when they are more acquainted with the brand (Naylor, Lamberton, & Patricia, 2012). Brands that are committed in building relationships with consumers on social media will be perceived as more attractive, and develop a more positive brand experience (Edosomwan, Prakasan, Kouame, Watson, & Seymour, 2011).
Brand experiences in different settings are also increasing, for example, in mobile environment. More people are now accessing media through mobiles instead of desktop (Perez, 2014). It is important to understand how brand experiences manifest on mobile settings. Consumers’ brand experience will impact their decision making process (Maghnati, Ling, & Nasermoadeli, 2012). By examining the brand experience in a popular social app, Instagram, this study seeks to explore how to prime the right brand experience in mobile settings to help promoting brands.
2.4 Brand Experience on Instagram
The evolution of mobile devices transformed mobile marketing. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are now having various functions that can be utilized for marketing.
However, the small screen size of smartphones also changes consumer behaviors (Barmada, 2014). Consumers often don’t have time to read long articles on the small screen. Therefore, visual communication now has greater importance in mobile marketing (Barmada, 2014).
Applications now replace descriptive content with visual cues to engage with consumers (Barmada, 2014). According to James Chandler, the Global Mobile Director at Mindshare (Barmada, 2014), imagery is used to create deeper connections with consumers on mobile devices. Consumers respond better to visual cues compared to texts, he said (Barmada, 2014).
Consumers are also expecting to interact with imagery and videos.
Mobile devices changes the way consumers interact with brands. With mobile devices, consumers can physically touch the brand on their screen. Brands can also create gestural interaction with consumers through mobile devices (Barmada, 2014). Mobile marketing is using sensory marketing to create immersive user experience and engage with consumers’
emotions. Multi-sensory experiences such as sight, sound, and touch encouraged positive feelings and thoughts about brands (Brandt, 2015). Consumers are pre-conditioned to respond to sight, sound and touch (Brandt, 2015). For example, when a phone vibrates, people would check their phones. Brands can leverage consumers’ preconditioned behavior as well as
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smartphone’s native device features such as tapping, swiping, or shaking to engage with users (Candela, 2014).
These sensory features can increase the fun of viewing ads, and also stimulate consumers’ emotions (Brandt, 2015). A well-implemented ad can also encourage users to take action, such as liking a page or enter a competition, or to think differently by intriguing new perception about brands (Barmada, 2014). On Instagram, users can “like” the photo by quick tapping the image twice. After tapping, there will be a heart popping up in the middle of the image telling users that they’ve given a “heart” to the image. The act of tapping the images to give hearts enable users to physically “touch” and interact with the brand.
The brand images on Instagram also differ from brand images in other advertising channels. Instagram limits every uploaded image to be a size of 640px X 640px square photograph. The theme of the images have to be precise and to the point, in order to deliver the right marketing message in a small square photograph. McNely (2012) analyzed brand’s Instagram posts and distinguished six major themes. They are orienting, humanizing, interacting, placemaking, showcasing, and crowdsourcing. By looking into these brand’s Instagram posting themes, it showed that brands on Instagram are trying to deliver brand experiences through these posting themes. Orienting is the post that “provides audiences with a recognizable landmark or artifact that acts as a pivot related to organizational image”
(McNely, 2012). For examples, Heifer International is a nonprofit organization that aims at ending poverty and hunger through self-sustainable community development. They distribute animals and agricultural trainings to those families in need. And require them to pass on these practices to others in need in their community. In their Instagram account, they would post pictures of the animal to “orient” and signify their organization’s central mission.
Humanizing is the post that “explicitly humanizes organizational identity by featuring a member of the org, or performs the organizational identity at human- scale” (McNely, 2012), it is the content that use images of food, pets, or the “inside” scenes of the organization.
Brands tried to humanize their organization through these images. Interacting is the post that
“displays explicit interaction with audiences, through an image itself, or in the comments thread” (McNely, 2012). Placemaking is the post that “involves an organization “placing”
their identity within specific material locations as a way of reinforcing the organization's core image” (McNely, 2012). The posts signify the places and spaces where the organizations work is being carried out. For example, nonprofit organization would present the photos of a poverty stricken area to signify the need for attention. Showcasing is the post that “involves the direct display of consumer products or goods for sale” (McNely, 2012), posts with
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showcasing. Crowdsourcing is post that “includes the broad solicitation of feedback, participation, or other engagement with the organization through Instagram or another organization property” (McNely, 2012), this is an act of inviting consumers to participate and interact with the brand. Brands would use tagging games, competition, or other interactive activities to engage with consumers.Among the three brands McNely (2012) analyzed, he discovered “orienting” and
“humanizing” as the most used themes in all 3 brands. In addition, the third popular theme in non-profit and news media brand is “placemaking” theme, whereas in for-profit clothing brand, “showcasing” theme that displays the product is more prevalent. From these brands’
Instagram posting themes, it can be inferred that brands on Instagram are trying to enhance brand experiences through different themes of visual communication. They used Instagram images to show their unique brand identity and approach consumers. These Instagram images are not only visually attractive, but it adds another layer of humanized traits of brands that attract consumers with proximity and friendliness. Therefore, these Instagram images are expecting to increase proximity with consumers and enhance their brand experience. The sensory features of sight, sound, and touch on Instagram also help brands to engage with consumers. According to research, ad experiences would directly or indirectly influence brand experience (Wu, 2008). People who had watched the ads would rate subsequent product trial with higher evaluation. They would also form more confidently held beliefs, higher expectancy value, brand attitude, and purchase intention (Kempt & Laczniak, 2001).
Memories of past experience can be altered as well (Braun-LaTour, LaTour, Pickrell, &
Loftus, 2004). Moreover, Braun-LaTour & LaTour (2005) discovered that advertising received right before a product trial would exert the most influence, and result in more positive evaluation. Therefore, this study is aiming at exploring how consumers respond to these Instagram contents, what experience will be evoked by these brand-related stimuli on Instagram? And how do these brand-generated contents on Instagram affect advertisement effectiveness? Thus, this study hypothesized that with Instagram stimulation, consumers would have a more positive overall brand experience. Therefore, the hypotheses of this research are:
Hypothesis 1: With Instagram stimulation, participants will have a more positive overall brand experience.
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Hypothesis 1a: With Instagram stimulation, participants will have a more positive sensory experience.
Hypothesis 1b: With Instagram stimulation, participants will have a more positive affective experience.
Hypothesis 1c: With Instagram stimulation, participants will have a more positive intellectual experience.
Hypothesis 1d: With Instagram stimulation, participants will have a more positive behavioral experience.