Brand Loyalty of Engaged Consumers:
How brand engagement and product involvement interact to influence brand loyalty
Master Thesis Author: Martina Karakoleva
11418583 Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Hüseyin Güngör University of Amsterdam
MSc in Business Administration- Marketing Track University of Amsterdam
Statement of originality
This document is written by Martina Karakoleva who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
Table of Contents
Abstract ... 4
Introduction ... 5
1. Literature Review ... 7
1.1. Online Brand Communities ... 7
1.2. Consumer Brand Engagement ... 9
1.3. Product involvement ... 12
1.4. Consumer Brand Loyalty ... 14
1.5. Online brand communities, brand engagement, product involvement and brand loyalty ... 16
2. Theoretical and managerial contribution ... 17
2.1. Theoretical contribution ... 17
2.2. Managerial contribution ... 17
3. Conceptual Model ... 19
3.1. Hypothesis 1: Brand engagement and Brand loyalty... 20
3.2. Hypothesis 2: Social media community and brand engagement... 21
3.3. Hypothesis 3 and 4: Online social media brand communities, brand loyalty and product involvement ... 22 4. Methodology ... 25 4.1. Design... 25 4.2. Sample ... 25 4.3. Pre-test ... 26 4.4. Main Survey... 29 4.5. Measurement of variables: ... 29 5. Results ... 32 5.1. Demographics ... 32 5.2. Reliability analysis ... 33 5.3. Hypothesis testing ... 35
5.4. Brand loyalty and NPS ... 40
6. Discussion ... 42
6.1. Theoretical contributions ... 42
6.2. Practical Implications ... 43
7. Limitations and suggestions for future research ... 45
8. Conclusions ... 46
Appendix ... 47
Appendix A ... 47
Appendix B ... 49
Table of Figures
Figure 1 Conceptual Model of this research ... 19
Figure 2 Bar Chart for High Product involvement ... 28
Figure 3 Bar Chart for Low Product involvement ... 28
Table 1 Brand Community definitions in Academic Literature ... 8
Table 2 Engagement Definitions and Dimensions in Marketing ... 10
Table 3 CE dimensions & sub-dimensions (Source: Dessart et al., 2015) ... 12
Table 4 Brand Loyalty Definitions ... 14
Table 5. Product Involvement Measurement ... 28
Table 6. Descriptive statistics ... 33
Table 7. Correlation Matrix High Product involvement ... 36
Table 8. Correlation Matrix Low Product involvement ... 37
Table 9 Correlation Matrix Social Media Membership ... 38
Table 10 Process Moderation for High Involvement ... 39
Table 11 Process Moderation for Low Involvement ... 40
Table 12 NPS ... 40
Abstract
In recent years, global brands have been competing to create their own social media brand communities as a common managerial belief that social media brand communities enhance brand engagement and brand loyalty of consumers for any type of products. Companies are seeing such communities as an innovation pool and as a driver of consumer relationship. This research paper investigates the direct relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty. The moderating role of product involvement in this relationship is introduced, suggesting that for high product involvement brand engagement and brand loyalty relationship strength differs compared to low product involvement. This research also explores the direct relationship of social media brand community on brand engagement and brand loyalty. An online based survey collected the responses of 183 participants and IBM SPSS software was used to analyze the results. The results showed that there is a strong relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty for both high and low product involvement. However, role of social media brand communities in enhancing brand engagement and brand loyalty was not supported. High product involvement was found to moderate the relation between brand engagement and brand loyalty. Finally, brand loyalty is higher for high product involvement than for low product involvement. The collective results of this study provide more insights into the role of product involvement in brand engagement and brand loyalty relationship, as well as the role of social media brand communities in this relationship.
Introduction
General Motors has dedicated a $30 million annual budget for online content generation on Facebook alone (Barkholz and Rechtin, 2012). Starbucks, P&G, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Dell and many others have followed this example to invest in building online communities aiming to strengthen their consumer relationship (Baldus, Voorhees and Calantone, 2015). At the same time, 91% of consumers worldwide are using word-of-mouth as a source for making purchasing decisions and forming brand attitude (Cheung & Thadani, 2012). Web 2.0 and digital media have been the game changer on how companies interact with consumers (Islam and Rahman, 2016). Social media has enabled consumers and companies to exchange real-time information with each other via community engagement (Chen, Kauffman, Liu & Song, 2010).
As the importance of social media has grown for consumers, companies are creating their own social media communities aiming to engage consumers. According to Muniz and O’Guinn (2001), consumers who are highly engaged into the brand community have three community characteristics “shared consciousness, shared rituals and traditions and a sense of moral responsibility”. More that 70% of large global brands and 80% of small brands are found to use social media brand communities to engage with consumers in order enhance brand engagement and brand loyalty (Social Media Today, 2015). However, some questions arise from this. Is social media brand community the only way to create brand engagement and brand loyalty? Are all consumers equally engaged with the brand or equally loyal? Is it an one size fits all approach?
Product involvement has been found to affect consumer engagement with brands and brand loyalty. More specifically, consumers in high product involvement pay more attention to the brand clues and consumers on low product involvement pay more attention to price discounts (Hollebeek, Jaeger, Brodie & Balemi, 2007).
Even though, brand engagement is a widely researched topic in the academic literature, the focus has been mainly in the antecedents and consequences of brand engagement (Islam, Rahman and Hollebeek, 2017). A less researched area has been the relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty linked
to concrete brands and the possible moderating role of product involvement. There is need for more empirical research on how brand engagement dimensions influence brand loyalty, the role of product involvement in this relationship and how social media influences brand engagement (Islam and Rahman, 2016).
To address these shortcomings, this research will examine the relationship between social media brand community, brand engagement, product involvement and brand loyalty. Product involvement is introduced as a moderator in the brand engagement and brand loyalty relationship. This research will bring more knowledge to the theoretical understanding of the effect of social media brand communities on brand engagement and brand loyalty. Furthermore, by researching product involvement, this research will provide the practical world with more information on the different customer brand engagement and brand loyalty behaviors for the two levels of product involvement. The results of the study will give more insights into how to enhance brand loyalty and promote brand engagement for high and low product involvement. The results obtained in this research will give an answer of the following question:
‘What is the effect of different customer brand engagement dimensions on brand loyalty in social media brand communities? Does product involvement moderate this relationship?’
The following chapters of this research paper will present the literature review discussion, followed by the academic and managerial contributions of this research. Later the conceptual framework, methodology, the results and limitations of this research are presented and reviewed.
1.
Literature Review
This section provides an overview of previous literature on online brand communities, brand engagement, product involvement and brand loyalty. First, the online brand community concept is defined. Second, brand engagement is explained with its main dimensions followed by product involvement and brand loyalty. This section ends with the link between online brand community, consumer brand engagement, product involvement and brand loyalty.
1.1. Online Brand Communities
Consumers are becoming more and more empowered by digitalization in having access to more product information online. This has led to the creation of online communities where consumers can share their opinions with each other without any limitations of place and time (Wu et al., 2015). Moreover, companies have realized the potential of online communities not only for gathering consumer opinions on products but also for enhancing brand image and companies have also started to build their own online communities (Abrahams et al., 2014; Algesheimer et al., 2004; Schau et al., 2009).
The academic definition of online communities is “specialized, non- geographically bound community based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand’’ (Muniz et al., 2001). Online communities can be split into two groups: consumer-initiated communities, which have been started by consumers and company-initiated communities, developed by the brand for building customer relationship and collecting consumers’ opinion on products and services (Henri & Pudelko, 2003; Kozinets, 1999; Porter (2006) in Jang et al., 2007).
Brand communities can be hosted by the brands on their own host place or on third party platforms, such as social media. Table 1 presents the academic definitions of brand communities and social media communities. Social media has enabled consumers to share a real-time information with each other (Chen et al., 2010). Without thinking twice consumers can join a community of a preferred brand, share their opinion, write a review, forward information to a friend or engage into a conversion directly with the brand. In comparison to the classical brand-owned communities, social media communities are bigger, including
the social network of consumers, but they are not exclusive for existing consumers only. Social media brand communities encompass numerous ways of interaction between brands and consumers, such as discussions, posts, responding to question, forwarding information, sharing videos among one’s own network (Jahn et al., 2014). Social media brand communities have one big advantage compared to own hosted brand communities, which is that the reach and effect of communication are much higher. Members can share or forward brand content among their own network.
Table 1 Brand Community definitions in Academic Literature
Unlike the classical brand communities defined by Muniz et al. (2001), social media communities allow interaction between members. Social media brand communities extend beyond the one-time transactional relationship between the brand and the consumer, meaning it is a place where beyond purchase relationships can be better developed, such as social and interactive expressions (Dessart et al., 2015). As more transparent platform, social media allows customers to comment, read, review, spread and create content freely in order to influence the decisions of other consumers (Harrigan et al., 2016).
Being part of online brand communities is twofold and it offers numerous benefits for both parties- the brand and the consumers. Companies are motivated to initiate online brand community due to the several benefits it offers, such as new sources of innovation and improvements coming directly from the
Jahn & Kunz (2014)
“The dedicated pages of a social media platform, operated by the company, which enable the interaction and integration of existing and potential customers with the organization and its brands”
Kaplan & Haenlein (2010)
“Group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of User-Generated Content”
Hur, Ahn & Kim (2011)
“A group of people who possess a particular brand or who have a strong interest in a brand, and who are active both online and offline”
Muniz & O’guinn (2001)
“Specialized, non- geographically bound community based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand’’
contribute to brand awareness (Barreda et al., 2015), increased brand trust (Nadeem et al., 2015), positive word of mouth (Chen et al., 2016), higher customer loyalty (Zheng et al., 2015), thus higher competitive advantage on the market place. Islam et al. (2017) studied the effect of brand communities on promoting customer engagement and thus creating brand loyalty.
In conclusion, social media brand communities are initiated by the brands to increase brand loyalty and strengthen customer relationships on own platforms or third-party platforms, such as social media.
1.2. Consumer Brand Engagement
Engagement has been a popular research topic in the past decade. The term engagement has been investigated in various academic fields and every field has developed its own definition to express it. The first academic researcher to apply the concept into marketing was Kahn (1990). Moreover, the term engagement has been refined to describe specific marketing groups such as brand engagement, customer engagement behavior, customer engagement and consumer engagement (Islam and Rahman ,2016; Hollebeek, 2011).
Since the term was applied into marketing, researchers have been discussing the right definition and the dimensionality of engagement. Hollebeek (2011) specifies it as customer-brand engagement while Sashi (2012) describe it as a process and Van Doorn et al. (2010) as a behavior. Different views have been explored in academic literature, table 2 presents the most research dimensions of brand engagement and the proposed definitions. Emotional and behavioral engagement dimensions stand out as most researched dimensions of engagement and will be the focus of this research.
Hollebeek, Glynn and Brodie (2014) developed the customer brand engagement (CBE) framework which encompass cognitive, emotion and behavioral dimensions resulting from brand-customer interactions. Cognitive processing refers to the thoughts and information processing of consumers for particular brand interactions (Hollebeek et al., 2014). Affection refers to the emotional attachment to the brand activities (Ibid). Lastly, activation refers to consumers’ willingness to invest their own resources,
such as time and efforts, on brand related interactions (Ibid). Given variety of definitions and characteristics included, Hollebeek et al. (2014) highlights the highly interactive nature of customer engagement. Table 2 Engagement Definitions and Dimensions in Marketing
Author(s) Dimensions Definitions Mollen and Wilson (2010) Cognitive processing, utility and relevance, emotional
“The cognitive and affective commitment to an active relationship with the brand as personified by the website or other computer-mediated entities designed to communicate brand value.”
Bowden (2009)
Cognitive, emotional
“While new customers' “calculative commitment” is predominantly cognitive in nature, “affective commitment” is relevant predominantly to repeat customers, and represents a more emotional basis for re-purchase” Hollebeek (2011) Cognitive, emotional, behavioral
“The level of an individual customer's motivational, brand-related and context-dependent state of mind characterized by specific levels of cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity in brand interactions.”
Hollebeek, Glynn & Brodie (2014) Cognitive, emotional, behavioral
“A consumer's positively valenced brand-related cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity during or related to focal consumer/brand interactions.” Patterson, Yu & De Ruyter (2006) Cognitive, Emotional, Behavioral, Vigor
“The level of a customer’s physical, cognitive, and emotional presence in their relationship with a service organization”
Brodie, Hollebeek, Juric & Illic (2011)
Cognitive, emotional, behavioral.
“[A] psychological state that occurs by virtue of interactive, co-creative customer experiences with a focal agent/object (e.g., a brand) in focal service relationships.” Brodie, Ilic, Juric & Hollebeek (2013) Cognitive, emotional and behavioral
“A multidimensional concept comprising cognitive, emotional, and/ or behavioral dimensions, [which] plays a central role in the process of relational exchange where other relational concepts are
Furthermore, Dessart et al. (2015) has confirmed the multi-dimensionality of the brand engagement into social media context and refined the CBE model of Hollebeek et al. (2014). Seven sub-dimensions were added and defined to further explain the cognitive, affection and activation dimensions of consumer engagement and are presented on Table 3. Affective engagement ranges from various content generation and interactions. Users generate own content and feel excited to see how others are engaging with it, such as responding, liking and when these users reply on other users’ posts. Affective dimensions encompass enthusiasm and enjoyment (Dessart et al., 2015). Cognitive engagement includes attention and absorption of the communities. Users tend to dedicate some time to the community, which stops them from doing something else, Dessart et al. (2015) call it “mind space” (Ibid). Behavioral, e.g. activation dimension, engagement is about liking, sharing and endorsing the brand and the community.
Brand engagement also has positive consequences for companies, such as brand loyalty enhancement. According to Dessart et al. (2015), happy customers engage with the brand online to generate content in order to protect the brand from angry consumers and in this way helping to sustain brand loyalty. Sustaining loyalty can be achieved easier in social media context, where the brand can also express a support or care to customers after unpleasant experiences with the brand (Kumar et al., 2010). Brand engagement encompasses value creation and co-creation, where the brand bears the ultimate benefits of brand loyalty and higher brand equity (Cova et al., 2007).
In conclusion, brand engagement can be split into: cognitive processing, affection and activation dimensions. Consumers can easily engage with the brands using social media brand communities.
Table 3 CE dimensions & sub-dimensions (Source: Dessart et al., 2015)
1.3. Product involvement
Research on product involvement has been lacking in the past years and often academic literature identifies it as an antecedent of brand engagement and a pre-condition for brand loyalty. Zaichkowsky (1985) defines product involvement as “a person’s perceived relevance of the [consumption] object based in inherent needs, values and interests”. This definition was further improved to “a motivational and goal directed emotional state that determines the personal relevance of a purchase decision to a buyer” (Brennan and Mavondo, 2000). Product involvement is considered as a more enduring involvement combining the experiential and symbolic importance (Higie et al., 1989).
Product involvement is conceptualized into two levels: high and low product involvement. High product involvement can be described as an enduring involvement which is consumer’s longer lasting interest representing personal interest into the particular product (Celsi et al., 1988; Zaichkowsky, 1985).
Affective “The summative and enduring levels of emotions experienced by a consumer with respect to his/her engagement focus”
Enthusiasm “A consumer’s intrinsic level of excitement and interest regarding the focus of engagement”
Enjoyment “Consumer’s feeling of pleasure and happiness derived from interaction with the focus of their engagement”
Cognitive “A set of enduring and active mental states that a consumer experiences with respect to the focal object of his/her engagement”
Attention “The cognitive availability and amount of time spent actively thinking about and being attentive to the focus of engagement”
Absorption “The level of consumer’s concentration and immersion with a focal engagement object”
Behavioral “The behavioral manifestations toward an engagement focus, beyond purchase,
which results from motivational drivers”
Sharing “The act of providing content, information, experience, ideas or other resources to the focus of engagement”
Learning “The act of actively or passively seeking content, information, experience, ideas or other resources to the focus of engagement”
Endorsing “The act of sanctioning, showing support, referring. In a community context, endorsement can have an internal or external focus”
Low product involvement is a situational involvement, which is more short-term interest usually lasting during the time of the purchase decision (Ibid).
The level of consumer interest in a product, i.e. product involvement, would define the level of information search, engagement with the brand and the loyalty towards the brand and the product (Mittal and Lee, 1989; Richins et al, 1989). Involvement is academically believed to be a crucial determinant during the purchasing decision-making process (Celsi et al., 1988). It also implies consumer level of interest into the product, product class and the brand (Hupfer & Gardner, 1971). Previous studies argued that product involvement has an effect on brand loyalty and purchasing intention (Suh et al., 2006). Consumers judge the product popularity and quality based on the reviews for high-product involvement, which might suggest that social media engagement will have an effect on the word-of-mouth intentions for high product involvement. High product involvement consumers devote less attention to price while low product involvement consumers consider price discounts as crucial for purchasing choice (Hollebeek et al., 2007). In low product involvement level, consumers base their purchasing decision on situational factors, such as price discount or availability on the shelf (Xue, 2008). For high product involvement, on the other hand, consumers are engaging into more elaborate thinking and brand information processing (Xue, 2008). Other empirical studies proved that for high product involvement, repurchasing behavior represents brand preference, while for low involvement level it is more of a habitual repurchasing (Leclerc and Little,1997). To conclude, product involvement has two levels: high and low product involvement. These two levels represent consumers’ level of interest and excitement into the products and brands. Product involvement is expected to affect brand engagement and brand loyalty.
1.4. Consumer Brand Loyalty
Consumer loyalty towards the brand is one of the key factors in relationship marketing and often the end-goal of the CBE strategy. Brand loyalty is often considered to be a result of online brand community engagement together with satisfaction, empowerment, connection and emotional bonding (Brodie et al., 2013). Even though brand loyalty is a well- researched area, there are still discussions over a united definition. Table 4 presents some of the definitions of brand loyalty in academic literature, in this research brand loyalty is defined as “a feeling of attachment to certain set of brands and companies” (Kotler et al., 1989).
Table 4 Brand Loyalty Definitions
Brand loyalty is looked from two perspectives, behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. Behavioral loyalty involves future purchases while attitudinal loyalty involves attachment to the brand and preference above other brands (Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001; Zheng et al., 2015). Behavioral loyalty is not just a situational repurchasing of the product but rather biased repurchasing of the product or the brand over time. It also involves rejecting alternatives and decision-making process (Jacoby et al., 1973). Attitudinal loyalty is best conceptualized by Reichheld (2003) as the willingness of consumers to encourage other consumers to try the product or the brand at no charges to the company or, in order words, the willingness to engage
Dick and Basu (1994)
“The relationship between relative attitude and repeat patronage”
Oliver (1999) “a deeply held commitment to rebuy or re-patronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand-set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behavior”
Kotler & Armstrong (1989)
“A feeling of attachment to certain set of brand and companies”
Jacoby and Kyner (1973)
“Brand loyalty is biase, behavioral response, expressed over time by some decision-making unit with respect ot one or more alternative brands out of a set such brands, and is a function of psychological processes.”
Reichheld (2003)
“Loyalty is the willingness of someone- a customer, an employee, a friend- to make an investment or a personal sacrifice in order to strengthen a relationship”
in positive word-of-mouth (WOM) without any personal gains. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer loyalty with one simple question “How likely is that you would recommend Brand X to a friend or a colleague?” but even though it helps companies to divide consumers into three groups which require different attention and marketing efforts (Ibid). “Promoters” are the loyal consumer group, the ones that rate the brand the highest. “Passively satisfied” are rating the brand as average possibility to recommend and “Detractors” are highly unsatisfied with the brand (Ibid).
Brand loyalty is considered to be at the heart of brand equity (Aaker, 1996). What does loyal consumers mean to the company and its business? It means a strong entry barrier, positive WOM, high switching costs and willingness to pay more (Aaker, 1996). Loyalty is able to enhance perceived product quality and brand associations. The rise of Web 2.0 and social media has changed the brand loyalty and how consumers exhibit loyalty behaviors, mainly attitudinal loyalty. This had led to a development of a new word-of-mouth: electronic WOM. E-WOM is defined as “any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet” by Henning- Thurau et al. (2004).
The importance of word-of-mouth (WOM) for the company has been recognized and studies have proved the WOM effect on sales and repurchasing intentions of other consumers (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006). Previous research has focused on the effect of negative and positive WOM on consumer attitude towards the brand. Park et al. (2009) found that consumers weight negative product information more heavily than positive information. Brown et al. (2005) found that satisfaction and commitment to significantly influence positive WOM intentions.
To conclude, brand loyalty is not only selecting, rejecting or recommending brand, but it is a psychological process of repurchasing and recommending the brand based on elaborate decision-making process.
1.5. Online brand communities, brand engagement, product involvement and brand loyalty The four topics, online brand communities, brand engagement, product involvement and brand loyalty have been widely defined and researched concepts over the years. However, most of the research focused on consumer engagement in online brand communities, while scarce research papers have been conducted on social media brand communities and consumer engagement with the brand itself (Islam & Rahman, 2017). Brand engagement antecedents and consequences, such brand loyalty, are widely research (Dessart et al., 2015). However, there is lack of research on the possible moderators between brand engagement and its consequences, i.e. brand loyalty.
There has been limited research on brand engagement in social media communities as predictors of actual behavior, such as repurchasing and WOM intentions (Zheng et al., 2015, Park et al., 2009). Previous research has addressed the rationale of how customer experience leads to WOM and ultimately using it as a promotional tool (Sotiriadis and Van Zyl, 2013 in Zhang et al., 2017). However, Zhang et al. (2017) calls for more comprehensive explanation of the relationship between brand loyalty of customers engaged in social media brand communities.
This research paper investigates the relationship between brand engagement in social media brand community and brand loyalty, in forms of repurchasing and word-of-mouth intentions. The moderating role of product involvement is introduced and how it would affect brand engagement in social media context (Hollebeek et al., 2014). A clear distinction between high and low product involvement and its moderating effect on brand engagement and brand loyalty relationship is examined. Finally, the difference between brand loyalty and NPS of high and low product involvement is explained.
Therefore, the following research question has been derived for investigation:
‘What is the effect of different customer brand engagement dimensions on brand loyalty in social media brand communities? Does product involvement moderate this relationship?’
2.
Theoretical and managerial contribution
2.1. Theoretical contributionThis research paper will contribute to the academic literature by addressing the research gap within brand engagement and its consequence: brand loyalty. Literature calls for more empirical studies on brand engagement in online brand communities (Islam and Rahman, 2016b). Brand engagement in social media brand communities and brand loyalty as an effect will be empirically tested in this study. Furthermore, the strength of the brand engagement and its consequences need further validation (Hollebeek et al., 2016). This study extends Hollebeek et al. (2014) research on brand engagement, by testing the direct relation of brand engagement with brand loyalty, linked to concrete brands. The direct effect of social media brand communities on the brand loyalty is examined as social media has been identified as a critical place for building long term consumer relationships (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2010).
Previous research focused only on the direct relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty or the direct relationship between product involvement and brand engagement or brand loyalty (Hollebeek et al., 2014; Islam et al., 2017; Ferreira et al., 2015). This study introduces the moderating role of product involvement in brand engagement and brand loyalty relationship.
2.2. Managerial contribution
This study provides marketing managers with more insights into how to develop marketing strategies for the right consumer segment. Global brands such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Starbucks are dedicating significant budgets for starting their own social media brand communities to build long-term consumers relationships (Baldus et al., 2015). Nevertheless, still many companies still fail to see beneficial results from these investments and fail to build effective communication to engage consumers (Sklar, 2013). This research addresses the effectiveness of social media brand communities and its effect on brand engagement and brand loyalty. It also proposes that consumers’ product involvement might explain why consumers react differently on brand engagement stimulus. Having this information, managers will be able to develop the right campaign to enhance brand engagement and brand loyalty per product involvement. Product
involvement is believed to shape brand engagement, more specifically consumers in high product involvement engage more with the brand (Hollebeek et al., 2007).
Finally, brand loyalty is investigated from two angles, repurchasing and word-of-mouth intentions. This in combination with product involvement insights will give marketing managers more knowledge on how product involvement level affects repurchasing and word-of-mouth intensions.
3.
Conceptual Model
This chapter will focus on the conceptual framework of the study and provides more details on the relationships between the variables of this study (Figure 1). The model predicts that there is a direct positive relationship between brand engagement dimensions, affection and activation, and brand loyalty (H1). Furthermore, it is expected that social media brand communities will have a positive direct effect on brand engagement, which will confirm the second relationship (H2a and H2b). For the third relationship, a direct positive effect is expected, between social media brand community and word-of-mouth intentions (H3). This relationship is expected to be moderated by product involvement (H4a and H4b).
Age and genders are included into this framework as control variables, but these variables are expected to have none to very little effect on the relationships between the independent and dependent variables.
3.1. Hypothesis 1: Brand engagement and Brand loyalty
Over the past years, brand engagement has been a popular topic for research, mainly focusing on brand engagement effect on relationship marketing. The majority of research focuses on investigating brand engagement concept and what drives consumers to engage with the brand (Nambisan and Baron, 2007). Even though existing literature explores the relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty, less studies have investigated the relationship between brand engagement dimensions and their effect on repurchasing intentions and WOM in one study.
Brodie et al. (2013) tested the relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty by observing the communication between community members and mainly focusing on six members who generated 50% of the content in that community. The study provided support for the positive relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty, in form of referrals and repurchasing intentions. However, this positive relationship was found by observing the behavior of members, rather than measuring real behavior on a more elaborate level such as cognitive, emotional and behavioral engagement. A strong effect of behavioral brand engagement on brand loyalty mainly repurchasing intentions for book sales was found by Chevalier and Mayzlin (2006). Specifically, that negative reviews have a larger effect on repurchasing intentions than positive reviews.
Nevertheless, the research of Casalo et al. (2007) found a weak relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty in free software development industry. In this research, the availability of data and the participation level were main research domains, while the actual behavior was not investigated. Assessing the past studies examining brand engagement and brand loyalty relationship, it can be concluded that it is industry specific which ties the results to a specific industry context and does not allow wide validity of the findings.
Hence, to investigate and further confirm if brand engagement and brand loyalty relationship is valid for low and high product involvement, the Hollebeek et al. (2014) CBE framework has been adopted. The CBE concept measures brand and consumers’ interactive relationship from two dimensions: affection and
dimensions respectively. The context of this study is social media and therefore, the CBE concept will be tested on such platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Weibo, LinkedIn). In this study, only the activation (i.e. behavioral) and affection (i.e. emotional) dimension of CBE will be tested. It is expected that high product involvement consumers are already emotionally bonded with the brands, while low product involvement consumer are expected to have a low emotional engagement but high in activation. For high product involvement consumers are expected to have a high repeated usage and be highly attached to the brand. Thus, they are expected to be more emotionally engagement with the brand than with the product. For low product involvement, on the other hand, consumers are expected to have frequent usage, but low interest in the product without any though processing when buying it. They buy the products when it is available and frequently and if not available, they will buy another brand of the same product category. They are expected to know the brand and repurchase it when available, but the brand is not a driving force for purchasing decision. Therefore, low product involvement consumers are expected to have more activation, i.e. behavioral engagement.
Building on past research, this study will test if the activation and brand loyalty as well as the affection and brand loyalty relationships are supported for high and low product involvement. To test this, the following hypothesis were derived:
H1a: There is a positive relationship between activation and word of mouth intentions
H1b: There is a positive relationship between activation and repurchase intentions of the brand. H1c: There is a positive relationship between affection and word of mouth intentions.
H1d: There is a positive relationship between affection and repurchase intentions of the brand.
3.2. Hypothesis 2: Social media community and brand engagement
The Power of a “Like” should not be underestimated by academics nor by companies. Lipsman et al. (2012) argues that social media brand communities are enabling consumers to start engaging with their preferred brands. The research on social media has been growing recently. Islam et al. (2016) found a strong
positive relationship between social media engagement and consumers’ trust in the context of Facebook brand community.
Moreover, consumers join online brand communities to engage with the brands for which they have a higher value-fit and a self-image fit (Islam et al., 2017). Becoming a member of a brand community, with which consumers identify their self-image and values with, is in-line with the CBE dimensions: affection and activation. Their willingness to share their values with the community and openly share their identification with the brand, aligns with the emotional and behavior dimensions of the framework. Based on past research, it is expected that social media brand community participation will have a positive effect on affection and activation engagement.
Research has focused on brand communities and brand engagement, mainly on what motivates consumers to join brand communities (Zhang et al., 2014). Academics claim that social media promotes customer-brand engagement and the Harrigan et al. (2016) study on social media community and brand engagement in tourism confirmed the relationship. However, social media communities have been set as a context in studies and the enabling power of these communities have not been tested yet.
This relationship has not been empirically tested for product involvement and it is expected that consumers, who are part of social media community, will exhibit higher brand engagement than non- social media consumers. To address the gap in the literature, the following hypothesis were developed:
H2a: There is a positive relationship between social media brand community and activation. H2b: There is a positive relationship between social media brand community and affection.
3.3. Hypothesis 3 and 4: Online social media brand communities, brand loyalty and product involvement
Despite numerous studies on online brand communities and how it fosters loyalty, there have been few empirical studies testing this relationship. Previous studies have emphasized on the description of online communities, definitions and advices on how to achieve brand loyalty through brand communities
who found a positive relationship between social media brand communities and brand loyalty. The study investigated more in details on how social media communities influences brand loyalty. The main outcomes were that it has a major effect on brand trust, through improving the customer- brand, customer- product, customer-company and customer-other customer relationships.
When it comes to word-of-mouth, as a measurement for brand loyalty, Kumar et al. (2010) found that WOM intentions are largely affected by the customers’ online behavior, such as complaining, blogging or writing a review because this is their place to influence other consumers. Consumers share opinions and reviews with other members of the community, when engaged and if their experiences are positive they are more likely to engage in WOM behavior (Islam et al., 2016).
With this in mind, less studies have focused on whether the relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty is the same for all product categories. In other words, whether different products exhibit different brand engagement behaviors and brand loyalty outcomes. Hollebeek et al. (2014) examined product involvement and found a positive relationship between involvement and the CBE framework. Affection and activation had a higher impact on individual usage intend, i.e. repurchasing the brand, while cognitive processing did not show any statistically significant effect. Other studies have investigated the effect of product involvement on brand loyalty. For example, Knox et al. (2003) found a positive effect of higher product involvement on brand loyalty, i.e. repurchasing intentions, in groceries markets industry while Islam et al. (2016) found a positive relationship between high product involvement and WOM intentions in social media, Facebook, brand communities settings.
Product involvement has been considered as an antecedent of engagement rather than a moderator in the relationship of brand engagement and brand loyalty. An explanation for that could be that the high and low involvement brands have not been studied together, nor has their brand loyalty has been investigated so far. The comparison between the involvement groups as well as their effect on WOM and repurchasing intentions has also not been empirically tested yet in one study.
social media and loyalty is higher than for low involvement. To address the gap in the literature, the following hypothesis were developed:
H3a: There is a positive relationship between social media brand community and WOM intentions. H3b: There is a positive relationship between social media brand community and repurchasing intentions
of the brand.
H4a: The relationship between affection and brand loyalty is moderated by product involvement, so that
the relationship is stronger for high product involvement
H4b: The relationship between activation and brand loyalty is moderated by product involvement, so that
4.
Methodology
This chapter is dedicated to the empirical part of this research. The chapter starts with the explanation of the research design, research sample and research procedure. Finally, the measurement scales for all variables are presented.
4.1. Design
This study is explanatory in nature and an online experiment was conducted to answer the main research question: “What is the effect of different customer brand engagement types (affection and
activation) on brand loyalty in social media brand communities and what is moderating of product involvement?”. Furthermore, to test the relationship between the variables, an online self-reported
survey-based experiment was designed to collect cross-sectional data.
The explanatory research design is used in order to test the variables and the casual relationship between them (Saunders et al, 2009). The method has been widely used among the brand engagement researchers to test and investigate brand engagement and brand loyalty. Similarly, the online survey allows the collection of wide amount of data at shorter period of time, as well as reaching diverse group of respondents, which is suiting the nature of this research. Furthermore, the data collected from the survey was further tested statistically using the IBM SPPS software, in order to answer the main research question and to derive conclusions from it.
4.2. Sample
The population sample of this study can be best described as follows: all customers who have previous shopping experience for themselves and are present on social media. The population was expected to be quite large and non- probability, convenience and voluntary, sampling techniques were in this study. The survey, along with information about the purpose of the study was published across several social media networks and participants could click on the link to take part of the survey voluntarily. Convenience sampling was the main sampling strategy in this study and it is believed that this strategy allowed to reach
more respondents. The respondents were invited to take part of the survey directly via Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and e-mail. The target group of this study is millennials because they are representing largest user group of social media network (Hutchinson, 2017). However, in order to collect diverse results and generate widely applicable results, the target group consists of people with international background.
Taking into account the number of variables which are tested, the required minimum amount of 200 respondents is required and to assurances respondents would complete the survey, the length of the survey was designed to take no more than 10 minutes to complete.
4.3. Pre-test
A pre-test was conducted before designing the main survey (Appendix A). The purpose of the pre-test was to identify and classify high and low product involvement based on the perceptions of consumers. The pre-test will assure that the manipulated variable, product involvement, conveys the desired information.
The brands which were included into the pre-test were carefully selected by investigating the most purchased brands by the target group of this study, millennials, and the size of their social media communities. The pre-test selection of brands included five brands per category of which two brands per category were selected for the final survey. The reason for selecting two brands per product involvement level instead of one, was to select brands with wide brand knowledge, likability and favorability for a diverse group of consumers.
Participants were shown a list of brands, such as cosmetics, electronics, clothing and food and needed to rate them on a seven-point Likert scale, from 1=” strongly agree” to 7= “strongly disagree” (Appendix A). Participants then evaluated the products based on the following characteristics: important-unimportant, boring- interesting, relevant- irrelevant, unexciting-exciting, means nothing- means a lot to me, unappealing- appealing, mundane-fascinating, worthless-valuable, uninvolving-involving, not needed- needed (Zaichkowsky, 1994).
Thirty-six respondents completed the pre-test survey measuring the product involvement of eight brands per product involvement level. The selection of final brands was done based on the brand selection
scale. The bar-chart on Figure 2 revealed that Apple, Zara, Nike and Netflix were the most selected brands in high product involvement category while Coca-Cola, Red-Bull and Dove were in low product involvement category shown on Figure 3. Furthermore, from the descriptive statistics for high involvement, the brands with lowest mean were selected and brands with highest mean for low involvement based on the bipolar scale measurement presented on Table 5. The social media brand communities of the selected brand were checked to finally select four brands: Apple, Netflix, Coca-Cola and Red-Bull.
To conclude, a pre-test was conducted to select brands which represent consumers’ product involvement. Using Zaichkowsky (1994) bipolar scale product involvement was measured and together with social media size of the brands. Apple and Netflix were selected as the two brands for high product involvement and Coca-Cola and Red-Bull for low product involvement.
Figure 2 Bar Chart for High Product involvement
Figure 3 Bar Chart for Low Product involvement
Table 5. Product Involvement Measurement
Involvement Measurement Mean SD Netflix 2.55 1.06 Zara 3.16 0.95 Nike 2.58 0.86 Apple 1.96 0.85 Dove 3.16 0.95 Coca-Cola 2.58 0.86 Red-Bull 1.96 0.85 39 33 36 47 22 6 11 0 6 0 10 20 30 40 50
Chart Title
28 32 32 50 25 17 28 33 0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60Chart Title
4.4. Main Survey
After the pre-test was finalized and the results were analyzed, four brands were selected to test brand engagement and brand loyalty. One main survey was developed for both high and low involvement brands (Appendix B). The Qualtrics platform was used to design and record responses. Respondents were provided with an anonymous link created by Qualtrics. The survey focuses on the brands representing involvement level rather than the product themselves because of the high familiarity with the brand and consumer engagement. In this case, the brands are representing the products.
In order to collect a wide variety of data and to be able to compare brand engagement and brand loyalty correctly, the same questions were used for both product involvement levels and each involvement level included two brands. Participants’ brand engagement and brand loyalty were measured for high and low involvement brands in one survey. The survey was designed to last maximum of 10 minutes to make sure that participants are willing to take part of it and finalize it.
4.5. Measurement of variables:
4.5.1. Social media brand community
The effect of social media brand community is measured by participants’ membership of the social media brand community. This was achieved by adding a control question (i.e. “Are you a member of the any of [Brand] Social Media Community?”). The control question is asked for all four brands selected during the pre-test.
4.5.2. Brand engagement
The independent variable, brand engagement is measured using the Consumer Brand Engagement (CBE) validated scale by Hollebeek, Glynn and Brodie (2014). Affection and activation are measured in 7-item CBE framework (Ibid). Furthermore, the scale reliability of the overall CBE concept is Cronbach’s alpha α =0.933, on a single level α =0.907 for affection and α =0.894 for activation. The CBE framework was measured on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1- strongly disagree to 7- strongly agree for each of the 7-items. One of the measurement items is” I feel very positive when I use [brand]”.
In this study, only two of the CBE dimensions are investigated: activation (i.e. behavioral) and affection (i.e. emotional) dimensions because it is expected that high product involvement include high emotional engagement of consumers with the brand. On the other hand, low product involvement are characterized as low-thought processing products meaning that consumers are having more repeated purchases (i.e. behavioral engagement). The cognitive dimension is excluded because previously no relationship was found between cognitive dimension and future brand usage intent (i.e. repurchasing intentions) (Hollebeek et al., 2014).
4.5.3. Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is measured by repurchasing intentions. To measure the repurchasing behavior of the selected brands, the validated scale of Hur, Ahn and Kim (2011) is used. The scale has a Cronbach’s alpha α =0.75 and the three items scale are tested using 7-point Likert scale from 1- “strongly disagree” to 7- “strongly agree”. However, following the Hur et al., (2011) findings only two items will be used for drawing conclusions in the final results. The main item that which be measured is: “I will repurchase [brand] in within one year”.
In order to measure the attitudinal brand loyalty in form of word-of-mouth intentions, the NPS by Reichheld (2003) is included into the survey. The NPS has only one question: “How likely is that you would recommend the [brand] to your family or friends?” (Ibid). The participants are asked to rank the brand on a scale from 0 (not likely at all) to 10 (very likely). Later, the answers are group into “Detractors”, ranked from 0 to 6, and “Promoters”, ranked the brand 9-10. The NPS percentage is the difference left after subtracting the “Detractors” group from the “Promoters” group (Ibid). The NPS score of high product involvement and low product involvement is compared.
4.5.4. Product involvement
Product involvement represents the moderating variable in this conceptual model this study. Product involvement is measured during the pre-test using the validated bipolar adjective scale of Zaichkowsky (1994). The 10-items are measured on a 7-point Likert scale to match the other measurement variables in
based on the following items from the scale: important-unimportant, boring- interesting, etc. (Zaichkowsky, 1994).
4.5.5. Control Variables
Two control variables are included at the end of the survey, regarding gender and age. Gaining demographic insights into social media community membership and brand engagement is conducted by incorporating two questions: age and gender.
There are four age groups: under 21, from 21 to 40, from 41 to 60 and 60+. However, it is expected that the larger age group to be 21-40 because they are representing the largest user group of social media which where the survey was distributed (Hutchinson, 2017).
Overall, the control variables are not expected to have any effect on the relationship presented in the conceptual model of this study: social media brand community, brand engagement and brand loyalty.
5.
Results
The following chapter presents the results generated from the collected data. The data was analyzed using IBM SPSS software. This part is structured as followed: the demographics characteristics of the sample group are presented, followed by the reliability analysis of brand engagement and its dimensions, the finishes with hypotheses testing results and brand loyalty comparison between product involvement levels.
Correlation analysis has been applied to test the hypotheses and the moderating role of product involvement was analyzed using the Process add-in macro in SPSS by A. Hayes. Moreover, paired sample T-test has been used to identify the difference in brand loyalty between high and low product involvement. This test has been used because repeated brand loyalty measurement was used for both product involvement levels for every participant.
Even though, repeated measures were used in this study, the data has been divided into two groups: one for high involvement brands and one for low involvement brands. The hypotheses were tested for both groups and the results are compared and discussed to assess the moderating role of product involvement.
5.1. Demographics
The descriptive statistics of the entire data set are presented on Table 6 for both high and
low involvement brands. As within subject design was used in this study, the participants answered questions for both the high and low product involvement with total participant rate of the study was 222 of which only 183 completed the full survey. The average age of the respondents was between 21 and 34 (76,5%), which is as predicted and contributes to generalizing the results for millennials. Moreover, the females are forming the majority of the respondents.
Looking at the high involvement brands, Apple was the most selected brand with 55.2 % over Netflix (44.8%). On the other hand, 56.3% of the respondents are not part of any social media community. Moving to the low involvement brands, Red-Bull was the least important brand with 60.1% compared to
Coca-Cola with 39.9%. For the low involvement dataset, 89.6% were not members of a social media community.
Table 6. Descriptive statistics
Variable Frequency Percent
Age Total 183 100% ≤20 13 7.1% 21-24 68 37.2% 25-34 72 39.3% 35-44 17 9.3% 45≤ 13 7.1% Gender Total 183 100.0% Male 78 42.6% Female 102 55.7%
I don't want to disclose 3 1.6%
High Product Involvement Brands
Total 183 100.0%
Apple 101 55.2%
Netflix 82 44.8%
Social Media Membership (HI)
Total 183 100.0%
Yes 80 43.7%
No 103 56.3%
Low Product Involvement Brands
Total 183 100.0%
Coca-Cola 73 39.9%
Red-Bull 110 60.1%
Social Media Membership (LI) Frequency Percent
Total 183 100.0
Yes 19 10.4
No 164 89.6
5.2. Reliability analysis
Reliability analysis was performed for the entire dataset, for both brand engagement and brand loyalty. The reliability analyses were used to confirm the findings of Hollebeek et al. (2014) and Hur et al. (2011) for brand engagement and brand loyalty respectively. The brand engagement has been calculated as the
sum of all items of activation and affection, which represent the two brand engagement dimensions of interest in this study.
5.2.1. Brand engagement
The scale reliability of brand engagement and its dimensions, affection and activation, has been calculated for the complete dataset. First, affection scale reliability has been calculated with a Cronbach’s alpha α= 0.818, followed by activation with a Cronbach’s alpha α= 0.802. The scale reliability of the brand engagement for the entire dataset is Cronbach’s alpha α= 0.851. All items have a Cronbach’s alpha above the minimum of α= 0.70 which makes all scales reliable (Saunders et al., 2009).
Furthermore, the obtained scales of affection and activation led to validating again the CBE scale of Hollebeek et al. (2014). It can be concluded that the brand engagement scale is reliable as well, even though it included only two of the dimensions. Good corrected item-total correlation score (>0.30 for all) indicated a good correlation with the scale and the total scale reliability would not be significantly affected if any item is deleted.
5.2.2. Brand loyalty
The scale reliability for the two items is a Cronbach’s alpha α= 0.55 for brand loyalty (i.e. repurchasing intentions). Cronbach’s alpha is below the minimum of 0.70 which makes the scale unreliable (Saunders et al., 2009). Therefore, the Hur et al. (2011) scale was not validated in this study. However, if item 3 is included into the scale, the Cronbach’s alpha rises to α=0.640 which could be a reliable scale if the threshold is adjusted to α=0.60.
5.2.3. High product involvement and low product involvement brands
In order to derive conclusions on the moderating role of product involvement and its effect on brand engagement and brand loyalty, separate reliability analyses were calculated to measure scale reliability for
both product groups. Brand engagement is calculated per product involvement, by all affection and activation items in the product involvement category.
Starting with high product involvement, the affection scale reliability shows a high a Cronbach’s alpha α= 0.852, activation’s Cronbach’s alpha α= 0.881 and brand loyalty’s Cronbach’s alpha α= 0.719. The brand engagement of the high involvement brands dataset is a Cronbach’s alpha α= 0.859. All items have a Cronbach’s alpha above the minimum of α= 0.70 which makes all scales reliable (Saunders et al., 2009).
For low product involvement, the reliability analyses are overall higher compared to high involvement ones. For affection the scale reliability is with a Cronbach’s alpha α= 0.943, activation has a Cronbach’s alpha α=0.937 and brand loyalty with a scale reliability of Cronbach’s alpha α= 0.780. The brand engagement scale reliability for low product involvement is with a Cronbach’s alpha α=0.910. Similar to high involvement, the scale reliability analyses of all items are above the threshold of α=0.70 which makes all scale reliable (Saunders et al., 2009). For brand loyalty (i.e. repurchasing intentions), there is a significant increase in the Cronbach’s alpha in the separate data sets and it is significantly higher compared to the whole data set.
Finally, the measurement scales for both high and low product involvement are reliable and the measurement scales of Hollebeek et al. (2014) and Hur et al. (2011) were validated again. All measured items have Cronbach’s alpha α above the minimum of α=0.70.
5.3. Hypothesis testing
5.3.1. Hypothesis 1: Brand engagement and Loyalty
In order to test the first hypothesis, a Pearson correlation analysis was performed to test whether the relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty. The analysis was performed for both high and low product involvement.
First, the descriptive statistics and correlations for high product involvement are presented on Table 7. To calculate brand engagement for this data set, a new mean was created from all items of affection and
intentions. To begin with the significant positive relationship between affection and activation (r= 0.479, p<0.01). Continuing with the affection correlations, there is a strong positive relationship between affection and repurchasing intentions (r= 0.595, p<0.01) and significant positive relationship between affection and word-of-mouth intentions (r= 0.600, p<0.01). Moreover, activation has a significant positive relationship as well with repurchasing intentions (r= 0.582, p<0.01) and word-of-mouth (r= 0.453, p<0.01). Furthermore, hypothesis 1a, 1b, 1c and 1d are supported. The hypotheses are supported for low product involvement as well (Table 8).
Table 7 presents that brand engagement has a significant positive relationship with repurchasing intentions (r= 0. 684, p<0.01) and word-of-mouth (r= 0.608, p<0.01) for high product involvement. Age and gender show a negative relationship with all variables.
Finally, the results confirm the findings of Brodie et al. (2013) and Chevalier & Mayzlin (2006) studies on the relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty.
Table 7. Correlation Matrix High Product involvement
Variables HI M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. Age 2.72 0.980 1 -.209** -0.081 -0.076 -0.091 -0.027 11 2. Gender 0.5667 0.49692 -.209** 1 0.141 0.053 0.111 0.134 0.127 3.Affection 5.3770 0.99142 -0.081 0.141 1 .479** .847** .595** .600** 4.Activation 5.2723 1.43991 -0.076 0.053 .479** 1 .873** .582** .453** 5. Brand Engagement 5.3322 1.01805 -0.091 0.111 .847** .873** 1 .684** .608** 6. Repurchasing 4.6485 1.39015 -0.027 0.134 .595** .582** .684** 1 .529** 7. WOM 7.9670 1.628 -0.037 0.127 .600** .453** .608** .529** 1
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Table 8. Correlation Matrix Low Product involvement Variables LI M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. Age 2.72 0.98 1 -.209** -0.125 -.158* -.163* -0.088 -0.115 2. Gender 0.57 0.50 -.209** 1 -0.014 0.135 0.067 0.108 0.133 3. Affection 3.04 1.55 -0.125 -0.014 1 .509** .879** .734** .701** 4. Activation 3.71 1.92 -.158* 0.135 .509** 1 .858** .634** .613** 5. Brand Engagement 3.33 1.49 -.163* 0.067 .879** .858** 1 .789** .758** 6. Repurchasing 2.97 1.47 -0.088 0.108 .734** .634** .789** 1 .716** 7. WOM 4.23 2.70 -0.115 0.133 .701** .613** .758** .716** 1
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
5.3.2. Hypothesis 2: Social media community and brand engagement
In order to test the second hypothesis, new correlation analysis was performed and social media membership was added as a variable. The positive relationships between social media brand community and affection and social media brand community and activation were tested.
The results are presented on table 9 with descriptive statistics and correlation analysis for high product involvement. The obtained results do not show support for hypothesis 2a and 2b which suggests that there is not a positive relationship between social media brand community and brand engagement dimensions. The results do not confirm earlier research of Islam & Hollebeek (2017) on social media community and brand engagement.
Table 9 Correlation Matrix Social Media Membership Variable (HI) M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. Age 2.7 1.0 1 -.209** -0.081 -0.076 -0.091 -0.027 -0.037 0.087 2. Gender 0.6 0.5 -.209** 1 0.141 0.053 0.111 0.134 0.127 -.163* 3. Affection 5.4 1.0 -0.081 0.141 1 .479** .847** .595** .600** -.154* 4. Activation 5.3 1.4 -0.076 0.053 .479** 1 .873** .582** .453** -0.117 5. Brand Engagement 5.3 1.0 -0.091 0.111 .847** .873** 1 .684** .608** -.157* 6. Repurchasing 4.6 1.4 -0.027 0.134 .595** .582** .684** 1 .529** -.163* 7. WOM 8.0 1.6 -0.037 0.127 .600** .453** .608** .529** 1 -0.107 8. Social Media Membership 1.6 0.5 0.087 -.163* -.154* -0.117 -.157* -.163* -0.107 1
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
5.3.3. Hypothesis 3: Social media community and brand loyalty
Table 9 presents the descriptive statics and the correlation analysis for social media brand community membership and repurchasing intentions as well as social media brand community membership and WOM intentions. Hypothesis 3a and 3b suggest a positive relationship between social media brand community and brand loyalty dimensions, repurchasing and WOM intentions.
Social media membership shows a negative relationship with both repurchasing intentions (r= -0.163, p<0.01) and word-of-mouth intentions (r= -0.107, p< 0.01). Therefore, there is no support for hypothesis 3a and 3b and the results of Laroche et al. (2012) study are not confirmed for high product involvement.
Finally, there is no positive relationship between the social media brand community and brand engagement, nor between the social media brand community and brand loyalty for high product involvement nor low product involvement. It can be concluded that social media is not ultimate tool for
