Faculty of Economy and Business Msc. in Business Administration
Track Digital Business
Customer brand engagement on Snapchat
A conceptual model and empirical analysis
Master Thesis Author: Pien Uittenbogaard
11152435
Supervisor: Nick van der Meulen June 22th, 2017
Final version
University of Amsterdam Academic year 2016-2017
2
Statement of originality
This document is written by Pien Uittenbogaard 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 the completion of the work, not for the contents.
3
Abstract
This research has the purpose to shed more light onto the field of customer engagement through social media platform Snapchat. It focuses on exploring the relationship between customer engagement and different types of digital marketing content, on Snapchat. The research question states: “What is the effect of different brand related content types on customer engagement for beauty brands on Snapchat?”
A survey with an experimental design was conducted for three conditions, representing three different types of digital marketing content. Snapchat stories were shown to the participants were after their customer engagement level was measured.
The results show that digital marketing content including remuneration on Snapchat scored the highest on two of three customer engagement dimensions, namely on cognitive processing and intention to buy. This insight is not supported by existing academic literature which states that entertainment and information based content should yield higher customer engagement. Content including entertainment scored the highest on affection, while content including information scored the lowest on all three customer engagement measurements.
This study contributes to current literature on digital marketing content and customer engagement because there has been done little research on the effect of digital marketing content in relation to customer engagement on social media platform Snapchat. This research presents additional insights to the existing literature, providing understanding of how different content types effect customer engagement on Snapchat. It sheds light on the need for
expansion of theories focused on the topic of digital marketing content on new, rising social media platforms in relation to customer engagement.
4
Table of content
Abstract ... 3
Acknowledgements ... 7
Chapter 1- Introduction ... 8
Chapter 2- Literature review ... 11
2.1 Digital content marketing ... 11
2.2 Social Media and customer engagement ... 12
2.3 Shifting perspective from sales to engagement ... 13
2.4 Customer brand engagement ... 16
2.4.1 Definitions of customer engagement ... 18
2.4.2 The ‘Uses and Gratifications Theory’ ... 20
2.5 Snapchat ... 21
2.5.1 The seven functional building blocks to unpack Snapchat ... 22
2.6 Research on Snapchat ... 23
2.7 Problem statement ... 26
2.8 Conceptual model ... 27
Chapter 3- Methodology ... 28
3.1 Research design and strategy ... 28
3.2 Participants ... 29
3.3 Manipulated content ... 30
3.4 The brand related content ... 32
3.5 Measurements ... 33
3.6 The tools applied ... 34
Chapter 4 Results... 36
4.1 Sample characteristics and Between Group Homogeneity Analysis ... 36
4.2 Reliability analysis ... 37
4.3 Normality test ... 38
4.4 Descriptive statistics and correlation matrix ... 40
4.6 Hypothesis testing ... 42
4.6.1 Cognitive processing ... 43
4.6.2 Affection ... 44
4.6.3 Intention to buy ... 45
4.6.4 Conclusion of hypotheses test results ... 46
Chapter 5 Discussion ... 48
5
5.2 Contributions to theory ... 51
5.3 Practical implications ... 52
5.4 Limitations... 53
5.5 Recommendations for further research ... 54
Chapter 6 Conclusion ... 55
Chapter 7 References ... 57
Appendices ... 64
Appendix A: The seven building blocks of Snapchat ... 64
Appendix B: Examples of Snapchat stories created ... 69
Appendix C: Experimental survey ... 71
Appendix D: Snapchat stories Jolie Paris ... 76
6
List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1.The functionalities of different social media platforms ... 23
Figure 2. Conceptual model for customer engagement on Snapchat content types ... 27
Figure 3. Example of content edited from original Snapchat content of Essence Cosmetics ... 31
Table 1. Overview of link between beauty brands Snapchat activities and digital marketing content conditions ... 32
Table 2. Construct customer engagement measurement items, sources and scale reliabilities ... 34
Table 3. Sample characteristics ... 37
Table 4. Normality test for customer engagement ... 39
Table 5. Normality test for measurements of customer engagement ... 40
Table 6. Correlation matrix ... 42
Table 7. Kruskall-Wallis test cognitive processing ... 44
Table 8. Kruskall-Wallis test affection ... 45
Table 9. Kruskall-Wallis test intention to buy ... 46
7
Acknowledgements
I want to give my gratitude to those who have enabled me and helped me to carry out this research. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Nick van der Meulen for his guidance throughout the writing process of this thesis. I want to thank him for his patience,
understanding and the way he helped me through the most challenging moments of my research. Without the help and guidance of my supervisor I would not have been able to write this research as I did.
Furthermore, I want to thank my father for his support and advice on my thesis. He has always encouraged me to be confident in my actions and to believe in myself.
Finally, I want to thank all the participants who completed my survey. Without their participation this research would not have been achievable.
8
Chapter 1- Introduction
Snapchat started in 2011 in a world where Facebook and Twitter were the kings of social media. A lot of new applications arise and fight to win users. Unfortunately, a lot of
application don’t succeed and need to be shut down (Sashittal, DeMar, & Jassawalla, 2016). This is not the case for Snapchat; Snapchat began the year 2016 with 100 million daily active users and ended the year with 50 million extra daily active users, and the majority of the users are millennials. Furthermore, Snapchat even passed Twitter to become the third most popular social media platform among 18- to 34-year-olds (Tornoe, 2015).
The kings and queens of social media land feel threatened by the increasing popularity of Snapchat; Facebook did a three billion dollar offer to buy Snapchat, which Snapchat refused (Bercovici, 2013). And in November 2016 Instagram introduced a new feature called
Instastories, thanking Snapchat for the idea (Constine, 2016). These two facts show that Snapchat earns a crown as well. Nevertheless, there is no to little academic research on Snapchat for marketing purposes in the existing literature (Bayer, Ellison, Schoenebeck, & Falk, 2016).
Snapchat is an communication application whereby friends can share pictures and videos for as long as 10 seconds before it will be deleted. Data from ComScore shows that 70% of young adults in the VS have Snapchat on their phone and Snapchat has 235 million daily active users. In the beginning of February 2017 Snapchat was headlines in the newspapers due to the fact it’s going public on the stock market and Snapchat is estimated being worth
approximately 25 billion dollar (Volkskrant, 2017).
Companies these days cannot just sell a product anymore, they have to build a personal relationship with the customer, feel connected with them, listen to what the customers have to say and the company needs to show the added value of the brand (Woodstock, Green, & Starkey, 2011). Snapchat can offer this real-time, personal relationship companies need and no other social media platform can offer. One of the few studies that focused on the social media platform found out that Snapchat users share content only with close ties and the content is personal and intimate (Sashittal et al., 2016).
“There is a massive opportunity for marketers to reach college students through the app. Nearly 7 out of 10 college social networkers in the US said they would add a brand on Snapchat simply because they follow it on another social network” (eMarketer, 2017).
9 Companies are using social media to connect on a more personal level with their customers. One of many reasons for the use of social media of companies is to increase customer engagement. “Social media activities for a brand can foster the consumer base of the brand” (Xie & Lee, 2015, p. 204). Many studies have researched the topic of customer engagement in the social media environment (Hollebeek, Glynn, & Brodie, 2014; Sashi, 2012; Baird & Parasnis, 2011). However, Snapchat is still verily new and therefore has not been given a lot of attention on the relation between the social media platform and customer engagement. Pulizzi (2012) explains that content marketing has the opportunity to deliver the right content to fulfil the needs of the target audience by creating relevant content that engages customers and increases brand loyalty. A focus on the beauty branch was made because beauty brands are currently active on Snapchat, sharing different types of content but no research has been done on the effect of these activities (Shen & Bissell, 2013). Additionally, the Digital IQ Index stated in their yearly report of 2015 that Snapchat is a rising social media platform for the beauty industry (Digital IQ index, 2015). Therefore the following research question will be answered: “What is the effect of different brand related content types on customer
engagement for beauty brands on Snapchat?”
The scope of this study consists of millennials, the biggest user group on Snapchat according to Sashittal et al., (2016), who are interested in beauty and that are located in the Netherlands. By conducting a survey on the university campus of Amsterdam the right audience will be reached. Examining the reaction of millennials on different types of content and measuring the level of customer engagement will provide the proper insights for this study.
First will be elaborated on existing literature on the topics digital brand related content and customer engagement. After which, more in depth into the Snapchat application will be provided to get a broader understanding of the platform, the features and the strengths and weaknesses that need to be considered. Next, the type of research methodology used for this study will be explained and the most important results will be presented. Further, the author will provide a discussion and limitation part and the study ends with a conclusion and suggestions for further research.
This study contributes to existing literature first of all due to the fact that there is little to no academic research on the use of Snapchat for marketing purposes. This study will extent the existing literature with a framework that can be used to study the effects of different content types on customer engagement through the use of social media platforms.
10 It will provide understanding of the relation between different brand related content types and customer engagement dimensions.
In this study the focus will be made on content for beauty brands, nevertheless this study is expected to provide insights for brands in other industries who are interested in Snapchat as well. The results of this study will help companies better understand what kind of content generates different dimensions of customer engagement through the use of Snapchat.
11
Chapter 2- Literature review
This chapter provides an overview of different important academic literature on digital marketing content and customer engagement to understand the research gap, resulting in a conceptual framework. Firstly, digital content marketing will be discussed followed by the connection between social media and customer engagement. The shift from sales to
engagement will be explained to further go in to depth on the subject of customer brand engagement and the variety of definitions given to the term in the academic literature. The ‘Uses and Gratification Theory’ will end the literature review on customer engagement. After looking into the literature of digital content and customer engagement, a focus on Snapchat will be provided through the use of seven building blocks explaining the social media platform and the existing research on the subject is discussed. Eventually the problem statement, the hypotheses and the conceptual model are formulated.
2.1 Digital content marketing
“Digital content marketing is the management process responsible for identifying,
anticipating, and satisfying customer requirements profitably in the context of digital content, or bit-based objects distributed through electronic channels” (Rowley, 2008, p. 522).
Pulizzi (2012) defines content marketing as “creation of valuable, relevant and compelling content by the brand itself on a consistent basis, used to generate a positive behavior from a customer or prospect of the brand” (Pulizzi, 2012, p. 116). Furthermore, Pulizzi (2012) explains that content marketing has the opportunity to deliver the right content to fulfil the needs of the target audience by creating relevant content that engages customers and increases brand loyalty.
The results of Erdogmus & Muset Cicek (2012) study shows that music, funny contents, instructional videos and technological contents were the most popular by users on social media. Followed by product reviews, sports, extraordinary content and movies. However, advertisements and self-content material, gaming and horror are not favourable with social media users. The authors encourage companies who want to use social media in an effective way to firstly consider the benefits, values and advantages their target group want, resulting in being loyal to the brand.
The ‘Uses and Gratifications Theory’ (UGT) by Katz (1959) is generally used in the academic literature to understand the motivations of individuals to engage with different types of
12 Previous studies incorporating the UGT for brand communities and social media have shown that entertaining and informative content are the most important factors for customers to engage with brand related content. (Dholakia, Bagozzi, & Klein Pearo, 2004; Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008; Muntinga, Moorman, & Smit, 2011). A more in depth focus on this theory is provided further in the literature review.
2.2 Social Media and customer engagement
“Social media can be defined as “a 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” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61).
The Global Web Index reported in January 2016 that there are 3.419 billion internet users worldwide and 2.307 billion active social media users. In January 2009 Facebook measured 175 million active users and by 2016 this was increased to 1.590 million active users (Chaffey, 2016). New social media platforms and applications arise every day and social media evolved enormously related to a few years back. Traditionally, internet was used mainly for buying products and services, however, today consumers are utilizing platforms to create content, communicate, share their opinions and experiences on the web. To this day, companies are still not overly confident in how they should use social media for their
business. They see the potential of social media in interacting and connecting with customers but they don’t fully understand the opportunities and are hesitant to learn and become active on social media. (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). However, the 2015 industry report by Social Media Examiner found that over 96% of businesses use social network sites to market their brands and products, attempting to increase brand exposure, attracting website traffic, developing loyal fans, and gaining marketplace intelligence (Stelzner, 2015).
Social media puts pressure on organisations to engage with their customers when and where the customer wants to do so. Customers can engage at whatever level is suited to them; on a more loose level or a level with more interaction with the brand. Companies can personalize content, design it to either inform, educate or entertain in a way that fits their brand image and the way the brand wants customers to think about them. Through social media brands can connect with customers and communicate with those that are interested with the goal of increasing conversion and advocacy.
13 “Marketers are working in challenging times. Never before have we been able to get so close to our customers and engage with them in such a timely and relevant manner” (Woodstock et al., 2011, p. 50).
Kaplan & Haenlein (2010) present tips on how to use social media and they advise companies to make content that really interests the target audience. “If you would like your customers to engage with you, you need to give them a reason for doing so- one which extends beyond saying you are the best airline in town, or manufacture the most robust kitchen blender” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 66). The first step is listening to your customers, what they would like to talk about; what they might find interesting, enjoyable, and valuable. Then, you have to develop and post content that fits those expectations.
These days there is a wide variety of social media platforms with different scopes and functionalities. Many articles provide different standards to classify social media platforms. Regardless of these frameworks, each form of social media is equipped with certain strengths and functions. Facebook is used for the big, important events people want to share with their friends and blogs can be used to express creativity or it can be useful for education. For
businesses it remains unclear what opportunities Snapchat can provide, that other social media platforms are lacking.
Many studies have shown the power of social media for companies; “The social media domain presents businesses with new opportunities of improving their competitive position and creating new forms of customer value that will attract new customers and help building strong relationships with them” (Constantinides, 2014, p. 41). However, marketers are hesitant or unable to develop the right strategies and allocate the needed resources to employ social media as effective as they could. Consequently, firms regularly ignore or mismanage the opportunities and threats presented by creative consumers (Berthon, Pitt, McCarthy, & Kates, 2007; Kietzmann et al., 2011). One obvious reason for this inability is that the brand doesn’t have the right understanding what kind of social media are out there and how to use them.
2.3 Shifting perspective from sales to engagement
“Brand marketing is becoming less about pushing messages out to consumers within a static relationship, and more about the brand being part of the dynamic conversation, listening, serving relevant content /experiences to earn the trust of consumers” (Woodstock et al., 2011, p. 51).
14 A growing number of companies is realizing that social media gives them the opportunity to easily engage and interact with their consumers. “Social networking sites play an important role in building strong brands. 93% of business use social networking for marketing and branding” (Shen & Bissell, 2013, p. 632).
A study conducted by Shen & Bissel (2013) initiating a content analysis of beauty companies use of Facebook in marketing and branding found that despite the fact that the beauty industry has a long history in online commerce, the emphasis of beauty brands such as Clinique on their Facebook websites was not about promotions or sales as in traditional media advertising but focused more on engagement and community. The attention and expectations of
customers has been shifted from rationalizing product attributes and service qualities to emotional engagement.
The results of a study focusing on the impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty shows that brand loyalty of customers increases when the brand makes advantageous campaigns, relevant and popular content and is active on multiple social media platforms (Erdogmus & Muset Cicek, 2012). They state that brand loyalty can be seen as the final level of the ultimate relationship between the customer and the brand. Brands nowadays want to shift from selling to customers to connecting with consumers. Erdogmus & Muset Cicek (2012) advice companies to invest in smaller campaigns that can reach a lot of people without a huge amount of effort.
Baird & Parasnis (2011) from IBM Global Services claim that most customers don’t want to engage with companies through social media to feel more connected. Companies need to offer experiences that add significant value for the customer to connect effectively. The authors call it social customer relationship management (Social CRM); the role of businesses is to
facilitate collaborative experiences and dialogues that customers value. It’s important for a company to have a clear view on what customers value, why they would connect with a brand on social media and what would trigger the customer to interact? To answer these questions Baird & Parasnis (2011) surveyed more than 1.000 customers worldwide and 350 executives. They found that customers believe that brand loyalty is a prerequisite for social media
engagement and companies need to find creative ways to use the power of a trusted social media community.
Erdogmus & Muset Cicek (2012) state that the topic of brand loyalty has been one of the central themes of research for marketers for a long time.
15 “Brand loyalty can be conceptualized as the final dimension of consumer brand resonance symbolizing the customer’s ultimate relationship and level of identification with a brand. As brands gain exclusive, positive, and prominent meaning in the minds of consumers, they become irresistible and irreplaceable, and win the loyalty of the consumers” (Erdogmus & Muset Cicek, 2012, p. 1354).
Brand loyalty, in return, brings sales revenues, market share, profitability to the firms, and help them grow or at least maintain themselves in the marketplace (Erdogmus & Muset Cicek, 2012).
Woodstock et al. (2011) state that the benefits of social media as a tool for a brand to interact with their customers are centred around customer engagement and insights. They identify social media content as informational, entertainment or educational which can build the customer relationship with the brand as a result.
Research has been done on this topic but the research of Dessart, Cleapatra, & Morgan-Thomas (2015) explicitly looks into customer engagement in the context of an online brand community. They provide three main aspects of customer engagement: affective, cognitive and behavioural engagement. They state that customers that participate in brand communities not only get engaged with the brand but also with the individuals in the brand community. A lot of the academic literature on customer engagement focus on brand communities and what kind of customer engagement different types of brand communities can have. “Brand community is a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001, p. 412).
Phua, Jin, & Kim (2016) give attention to brand communities for social media platforms as well. They state that customers join brand communities to fulfil their social and identification needs. An online brand community includes groups that are centred around a specific brand or product which allow the people in the community to interact with each other, comment and share content.
Although this study also takes Snapchat into account, their descriptions on brand community does not match with Snapchat. On Snapchat you can’t like, comment or share content of other people or brands. You can “friend” people and then you can see their content.
16 The article thus state that even communities where there is a lack of social interaction among members, members establish shared connections and a collective identity through their common interest in particular brands. However, this actually depends on how the company or customers define a community. On Snapchat brands and users can interact with each other through a direct snap, snap story or the chat function but people that are friends with the brand on Snapchat can not interact with each other through the main friendship with a brand. Are people that are interested in the same brand automatically part of a community, also when maybe they are not active on any type of platform or part of an official brand community? We don’t know.
The results of Phua et al. (2016) show that on all four brand community outcomes, namely; brand community identification, engagement, commitment and membership intention,
Snapchat gets the lowest points. Because a brand community is described as a tool to develop and maintain a good relationship with the customers, the results show that trying to create a brand community on Snapchat to increase customer engagement might not be as effective as desired.
Laroche, Habibi, Richard, & Sankaranarayanan (2012) state that brand communities operating on social media can enhance brand trust and loyalty by improving customer relationship with the brand, other consumers, the company and the products. Other studies also show that participating in social media based brand communities positively influence brand loyalty. Furthermore, loyalty and trust increase when customers interact with each other.
2.4 Customer brand engagement
The term engagement has been used in the academic literature in various fields, including sociology, organizational behaviour, political science and psychology. This have led to a variety of different conceptual frameworks and definitions that explain the term (Hollebeek, 2011a; Brodie, Hollebeek, Juric, & Ilic, 2011). Furthermore, engagement has been studied through different forms of the concept, namely student engagement, employee engagement, stakeholder engagement and customer engagement, which puts engagement in different perspectives to the concept (Brodie et al., 2011; Hollebeek, 2011b).
17 The different overviews of engagement conceptualization across the various fields show that there is a favourable expression towards dividing engagement in dimensions. “The most comprehensive definitions acknowledge the existence of cognitive, emotional, and
behavioural dimensions comprising the customer engagement concept (Brodie et al., 2011, p. 255).
Although engagement has been popular amongst different academic disciplines for research, customer engagement in the marketing literature as only recently been given attention (Hollebeek et al., 2014; Leeflang, 2011). The conceptual foundations for customer
engagement in the marketing field come from the relationship marketing domain (Brodie et al., 2011; Hollebeek, 2011b). Relationship marketing can be explained as all the marketing activities with the purpose of developing and maintaining a good, sustainable relationship with the brands customers (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Brodie et al. (2011) point out that these activities are necessary for a brand to actually build and maintain that long-term relationship consisting of powerful values for both parties through interactive activities.
Bowden (2009) defines the concept of engagement from a marketing perspective as “an psychological process that models the underlying mechanisms by which customer loyalty forms for new customers of a service brand, as well as the mechanisms by which loyalty may be maintained for repeat purchase customers of a service brand” (Bowden, 2009, p. 65). Bowden (2009) also points out the difference between customer engagement and the common, traditional marketing forms such as commitment, loyalty and involvement. He states that the process of customer engagement helps explain the relationships between these traditional marketing forms and how they drive customer loyalty.
Building on Bowden (2009), different researches show a connection of customer engagement with marketing constructs such as loyalty, brand community, commitment, satisfaction and so on (Brodie et al., 2011). These constructs have different effects on customer engagement but can also lead to customer engagement, for example brand community can be used as a tool for improving customer engagement. Even more, Mollen & Wilson (2010) state that involvement is an important aspect of engagement. Involvement includes the behaviour of the customer in the purchase process of a brands product. Mollen & Wilson (2010) determine three
differences between engagement and involvement; involvement includes a consumption, it doesn’t involve an active relationship with the product and involvement is based on relevance and utility, although engagement has some degree of emotional bonding and connection which can created trough satisfying and engaging experiences.
18
2.4.1 Definitions of customer engagement
Most authors base their definition on the three most commonly used dimensions of
engagement, namely behavioural, cognitive and emotional engagement (Brodie et al., 2011; Hollebeek, 2011b).
Van Doorn et al., (2010) state that the behaviour of customer engagement goes beyond purchase and should be defined as “a customer’s behavioural manifestations that has a brand or firm focus, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers” (Van Doorn et al., 2010, p. 254).
Sheehan & Morrison (2009) describe consumer engagement as a relationship whereby people are social and not only want to create relationships with other people but also with brands. Ashley & Tuten (2014) state that marketers that want to increase customer engagement should focus more on creating strategies in an innovative way to improve the relationship between the brand and the consumers. In the social world of today the communication and relationship brands have with their consumers have shifted from a transaction perspective to an interactive perspective. Brands have become part of the day to day life of their customers, who identify themselves with the brands they are using. Likewise, Muntinga et al. (2011) state that consumers that have an interactive relationship with the brand has more impact on the behaviour of the consumer than the traditional forms of marketing.
Brodie et al. (2011) have studied different literature on the concept of customer engagement and developed a definition which provides a framework for the concept, based on the existing literature. “Customer engagement (CE) is 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. It occurs under a specific set of context-dependent conditions generating differing CE levels; and exists as a dynamic, iterative process within service relationships that co-create value. CE plays a central role in a nomological network governing service
relationships in which other relational concepts (e.g., involvement, loyalty) are antecedents and/or consequences in iterative CE processes. It is a multidimensional concept subject to a context- and/or stakeholder-specific expression of relevant cognitive, emotional and/or behavioural dimensions” (Brodie et al., 2011, p. 260). This is the definition that is used to define customer engagement in this study because of its ability to encompass a variety of contexts where customer engagement is expressed. It gives a clear understanding of all the different aspects of customer engagement without going too specific neither too vague.
19 The role of different social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in the day to day life of customers has resulted in unlimited opportunities for the internet users to interact, share, and create content about anything, anywhere, including their opinion and experiences with brands. Muntinga et al. (2011) label these activities “consumer online brand-related activities” (COBRAs). They state that these COBRAs have significant effect on brands and products, in the form of sales, efficient profitability, enhanced creative experiences and cost reduction. “To effectively anticipate and direct these consequences, understanding people’s motivations to engage in brand-related social media use is imperative” (Muntinga et al., 2011, p. 13).
Branded social media enables brands to have touch-points of interaction with the consumer throughout the day, which improves and deepens the brand-consumer relationship.
Furthermore, it provides marketers easier access to consumer feedback and the ability to reach out to the consumers through social media to engage with the online content. Branded social media can increase brand awareness, brand liking and loyalty, inspire the consumer to share content about the brand online and potentially drive traffic to the brand online and offline (Murdough, 2009; Ashley & Tuten, 2014).
Research show that when a customer engages with a brand online, the customer’s brand knowledge increases and with that also the emotional connection with the brand (Ashley & Tuten, 2014). Keller (2009) states that customers are defining the rules of brand engagement and decide how and when they want to engage. Understanding the factors that influence the level of customer engagement on social media will guide brands to the most effective strategies for increasing the attitude of customers towards the brand. It is critical to examine the COBRAs factors to be able to understand the motivation of customers to connect with online brand related activities, what drives the online behaviour of the customer (Muntinga et al., 2011).
The article of Hollebeek et al. (2014) measures customer brands engagement specifically in the social media environment through three different scales; cognitive processing, affection and activation. They state that consumer brand engagement is a cognitive, emotional and behavioural activity of the consumer in interaction with the brand.
The existing literature on engagement and especially customer engagement shows how important the relationship between a brand and their customers can be and how many opportunities are available and beneficial for the brand.
20 Through the use of social media it has become easier for companies to deepen the relationship with their customers and what kind of power such a relationship can have.
2.4.2 The ‘Uses and Gratifications Theory’
The ‘uses and gratifications theory’ (UGT) is a theoretical framework that explains the reasons why and how people are actively seeking out different (social) media to fulfil their specific needs. UGT states that the gratification people receive from various media satisfy informational, social, and leisure needs. (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974). This framework is frequently used in the academic literature for gaining understanding of what the motivations of consumers are for willing to engage with different types of brand content. Previous studies using the UGT show that the most important motivators for reaching out to brand related content are entertainment and information content (Raacke & Bonds- Raacke, 2008). Muntinga et al. (2011) also use the UGT as foundation for their research on motivations for consumers to connect with brand related content. They specifically research the motivations for consuming brand-related content and they state that it is driven by three motivations- information, entertainment and remuneration.
Entertainment includes the enjoyment, relaxation and pastime that people are looking for
when going online, also when looking at brand related content. Information is described as an important motivation for people who want to learn more about a brand or product and to stay up to date to their social environment. Going online and reading other people’s opinion, getting inspired and finding the right information before purchasing a product. Remuneration includes brand-related content that is, partly, driven by rewards of any kinds. It means that the content asks the customers to do something in return to earn a discount or a free sample. For example in the Snapchat context: screenshot this story and show it at the Maybelline counter for 50% off on your mascara.
According to different studies entertainment content has a positive affect towards the brand and it motivates the consumers to engage with the content and the brand (Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012). Muntinga et al. (2011) state that entertainment brand related content is among the most important motivations for consumers to engage online. And Park et al. (2009) also found that entertainment content has the strongest effect on consumers on social media platforms.
21 The first hypothesis for this study rises from these findings but focuses on millennials due to the fact that this is the biggest user group of Snapchat:
Hypothesis 1: Millennials experience a higher level of customer engagement when the content shared on Snapchat by beauty brands is entertainment based than when the content is
information based or remuneration based.
Furthermore, informative related brand content also results in high positive attitude towards the brand according to Vries et al. (2012) and Lin & Lu (2011). The results of the study of Muntinga et al. (2011) confirmed this. Next to entertainment related content information related content is one of the biggest reasons why people engage online.
Remuneration has been seen as the lowest motivator for customer engagement by Muntinga et al. (2011). This is interesting for Snapchat due to the fact that eMarketer (2014) stated that students that use Snapchat, mostly connect with brands on this social media platform because of promotion deals. The second hypothesis is formulated as:
Hypothesis 2: Millennials experience a higher level of customer engagement when the content shared on Snapchat by beauty brands is information based than when the content is
remuneration based.
2.5 Snapchat
The digital index for beauty brands of 2015, states that Snapchat is just behind other emerging social media platforms like Pinterest and Periscope, with a 34% adoption rate (Digital IQ Index, 2015). Snapchat is a social media application, only for mobile use, where users can send a photo or video to a recipient. Users can edit their content with texts or filters and can alter how many seconds the recipient can see the message before Snapchat deletes it. The app allows raw, low-consequence, real-time expressions (Bayer et al., 2016).
The five features on Snapchat:
1. Direct snap: A self-destructing picture or video with a length of 10 seconds maximum is sent to specific friends personally.
2. Story: A picture or video is displayed in a chronological order in your ‘friends’ list and is available to watch for 24 hours. The content can be watched multiple times within the 24 hours but also has a maximum display of ten seconds. All your friends will be able to see this.
22 3. Live story: It combines all incoming snaps from a particular location and broadcasts it
worldwide. A brand can pay Snapchat to have a live event and use the live story feature to interact with customers. They can share content on Snapchat trough the live story feature.
4. Discover: Brands pay Snapchat to have a place on the discover page of Snapchat. Brands can share content with not only their friends but with a big target group that don’t have to be friends with the brand to see the content.
5. Memories: Saving your content to memories provides you the ability to create a personalized album with all your favourite snaps, which you can access and share again with your friends (Nightingale, 2016).
Snapchat differs from other popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in that it’s more raw, real-time and personal. People need to put more effort into adding people on Snapchat. First they need to find out the name of the person they want to ‘friend’, then they have to go to a specific page where they have to insert the correct name and then they can add the person. On Instagram you can easily find people with no effort and Facebook also has potential new friends for you listed on the side of your screen. Snapchat is more personal in that way. The level customer engagement of a brands followers on Snapchat is therefore already higher than on other social platforms due to the effort that is needed to follow a brand on the platform.
In 2015 Snapchat reached 32.9% of all millennials compared to the 23,8% that Twitter
reached. The average age of Snapchat users is 18 as compared to 40 for Facebook (Silberman, 2015). Additionally, Snapchat attracted more than 150 million users every month by the end of 2016. It has overtaken Twitters third place in the ranking of the most widely used social media site among 18-34 year olds (Tornoe, 2015) and was called the single most popular social media among teens in 2014 (Miller, 2014). EMarketer (2017) states that by the end of 2017 Snapchat will reach 70.4 million US users, and 89.2 million by 2021.
2.5.1 The seven functional building blocks to unpack Snapchat
Kietzmann et al. (2011) present a framework that helps define a social media platform by using seven functional building blocks. With the framework they explain the implications that each block can have for how firms should engage on the social media platform. The seven blocks are filled out for Snapchat to get a good understanding of the social media platforms in what way it differs from other social media platforms and why it is important to study Snapchat for marketing purposes.
23 The explanation of the blocks for Snapchat is generally based on a blog that provides
guidelines on how Snapchat works (Landis, 2016) and the experience of the author with the social media platform. Additional resources are used to support the statements. (See Appendix A for a complete overview of the seven building blocks of Snapchat).
To summarize the building blocks, companies motivation for using Snapchat to connect with customers is the ability to have a one on one interaction. It provides the ability to share content that is honest, true and transparent. The core fans of companies are able to gain special access to content, interact on a one on one base with the brand and are assured that the content is real and not edited or not real time as on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for
example. People on Snapchat communicate through pictures of what is happening at that moment, it is not used for documenting life events or memories like on Facebook. Snapchat has no like button and doesn’t feature your friend lists and no ability to measure how popular you are.
Figure 1 illustrates the honeycomb of Snapchat and four other social media platforms
whereby the darker blocks show the greater the specific functionality within the social media platform.
Figure 1.The functionalities of different social media platforms
2.6 Research on Snapchat
There are only a few studies in the existing academic literature to the researcher’s knowledge that focus on Snapchat and specifically on the usage behaviour and content shared on the social media platform.
An industry observer asked: “Do we really understand young people's relationship with social media and the desires of this so-called ‘social-media generation’?
24 We know lots about their behaviour online, but, as we all know, this is not the same as what they think and feel about it. Are marketers engaging with young people in this social space as best they could?” (Maunder-Allan, 2013, p. 52). And in the case of Snapchat: How can brands use this platform and what will Snapchat add to the current use of social media platforms? Sashittal et al. (2016) conducted a research among college students on their Snapchat usage behaviour. The verbal protocols of these students suggest that Snapchat is an ideal social media platform for developing acquaintance brands: “brands that aim to make themselves part of an inclusive, feel-good experience or highly relatable acquaintances” (Sashittal et al., 2016, p.193). They state that frequent Snapchat usage is producing a distinct set of benefits for college students and creating new opportunities for brands. When the aim of the marketing strategy is about making their brand appear more effortless and relatable the firm will likely benefit from investing in Snapchat. Using Snapchat in the proper way and frequent usage led to increasing feelings of empowerment of the customers. Snapchat can be a powerful tool to transform stranger brands into acquaintances.
Another study on Snapchat examined the type of content users share on Snapchat” (Bayer et al., 2016). This research shows that the main content shared on Snapchat is little, funny, quotidian snips of the users everyday life. The content shared on Snapchat are not associated with the “big moments” in life or highly edited content that is usually shared on other
platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The authors state that Snapchat content can be more playful than content on other platforms. Together, the informal, raw nature of the content and the limited text space shapes the interactions on the platform. Users share content on Snapchat they don’t share with weaker ties for fear of misinterpretation.
The study conducted by Phua et al. (2016) examined consumer’s use of several top social media platforms, the motivations to follow brands, gratifications gained from using them, and the influence on brand community-related outcomes.
They studied Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat because they state that those platforms are the largest used social media platforms of the moment. The authors questioned if the platforms derived different gratifications from their use and thus that people use the four platforms for different reasons. Furthermore, the study showed the influences of the different platforms on the consumer’s perceptions of brands they follow.
25 Phua et al. (2016) think that there are different outcomes for those four platforms because they state that each platform has their own unique, interactive features and ways for consumers to engage with branded content. On the question why people use different platforms Snapchat scored the highest on three out of six gratifications. 1. Passing time; “Users indicate that they found Snapchat the most useful for entertainment and relaxation purposes, as well as being fun and a form of escapism from their everyday routines”. 2. Sharing problems: “Users found Snapchat to be the most helpful when they need someone online to listen to them in order to forget their problems”. 3. Improving social knowledge: “Individuals who used Snapchat most frequently to follow brands also felt that the site fulfilled their need the most for improving social knowledge, and making them feel more involved with what’s going on with other people” (Phua et al. 2016, p. 421). It is surprising that although the previously results on Snapchat, in 2014 only 1% of marketers actually used Snapchat (Goldin, 2014).
EMarketer (2014) also studied what kind of content people would like to see from brands on Snapchat. “A significant portion of college students just wants to be entertained on Snapchat. More than one-fifth said they would like to receive funny communications from a brand on Snapchat. However, the opportunity to receive discounts or promotions was the top reason college students would want to receive Snapchat communications from brands, cited by 67%” (eMarketer, 2014, para. 5 & 6).
The few studies on Snapchat are useful and relevant but none of these studies actually test different brand related content types in the form of images or videos and therefore also didn’t measure the level of engagement of people for the specific content showed. The studies do show that content should be funny and quotidian snips of everyday and that apparently this brings joy and results in a positive mood but the two variables content and customer
engagement have been tested separately. One of the studies does go into depth on the reasons why people use Snapchat and the customer engagement level but it doesn’t look at the
different types of content that are being shared on this social media platform.
According to two studies Snapchat users experience social enjoyment and see this platform as the closest thing to face-to-face conversations with close relationships. An article by Schaefer on Harvard Business Review (2016) states that in this new world, the goal of companies is to create engagement through private, meaningful, conversational moments with their
customers. In the future, content will still be important, but the individual will be the focus of the experience.
26 “Brand communications will have to be more immediate, expressive, and intimate” (Schaefer, 2016, para. 9). And Snapchat might be the key to the solution for brands who want to create this type of engagement.
2.7 Problem statement
Due to the previous studies on Snapchat it can be concluded that companies that want to use Snapchat to connect with customers are able to increase customer engagement where the brand is already loved by the customer. The level of engagement for only following a brand on the social media platform Snapchat is already higher than on Facebook or Twitter. Furthermore, the studies have shown that there are definitely opportunities and reasons why brands could increase customer engagement by using this unique platform.
Primarily research shows that Snapchat is an important, rising social media platform, used by a large group of potential customers, but hardly used by marketers. As mentioned before, there is a growing need for companies to connect, interact and engage with their customer to sustain a long-term relationship with customer and it seems that Snapchat can play an important role to fulfil this customer and branding strategy.
Furthermore, because beauty industry companies have already started to embrace Snapchat, this study will contribute and provide an academic view on Snapchat and branding to create customer engagement in the beauty industry.
In this study the focus will be on content for beauty brands, it will be helpful for brands in this industry, nevertheless this study also provides insights for brands in other industries who are interested in Snapchat. It contributes in the way that it provides further development on the relationship organizations can have with their customers and how this personal relationship should be sustained, by the use of Snapchat. Furthermore, this study enhances the
understanding of Snapchat to provides managers with the insights on how to allocate resources specifically for Snapchat.
This study also provides knowledge on the strengths of Snapchat for managers who are concerned with the co-creation on their brand in different types of social media platforms. And the results of this study will help marketers better understand what kind of content will generate different levels of customer engagement on Snapchat.
27 The research question that arises: What is the effect of different brand related content types on customer engagement for beauty brands on Snapchat?
Sub questions: What kind of content should beauty brands share on Snapchat? And what kind of customer engagement will be the effect of this content?
2.8 Conceptual model
Based on the findings from the literature review, a conceptual model for customer
engagement in the Snapchat environment was developed. The framework illustrates customer brand engagement on Snapchat based on different types of content beauty brands can share on the social media platform. The dimensions of customer engagement are based on the
conceptual model of Hollebeek et al. (2014). However, the third dimension activation is replaced by the intention to buy dimension from Sweeney & Soutar (2011) because the statements used in the activation dimension focus more on the use of a particular brand in a category which is not the focus of the current study. The intention to buy dimension is more applicable to this particular study. A customer-based perspective has been chosen for this study because based on the existing literature it has occurred that to improve customer
engagement a brand should first understand what the customers wants and needs and based on that it can create the right content.
Figure 2. Conceptual model for customer engagement on Snapchat
28
Chapter 3- Methodology
In this chapter the methodology of this study is discussed in detail. In the previous section the conceptual model and the hypotheses were developed and presented. This chapter builds further on this by introducing and explaining the research design and the sample of the study. Furthermore, the manipulated content and the brand related content are described. Followed up by explaining the customer engagement dimensions and the tools applied to realise the research. In the last section of this chapter the statistical procedure is discussed (See Appendix C for the survey and Appendix D for the Snapchat stories).
3.1 Research design and strategy
This research conducts an online experiment to answer the research question and to test the hypotheses. The definition of an experiment by Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill (2012) states that conducting an experiment is a research strategy whose purpose is to study the probability of a change in an independent variable causing a change in another, dependent variable. The experiment tests if the null hypothesis can be rejected and the alternative hypothesis can be defended. The independent variable is manipulated and the change in the depend variable is measured between the experimental groups.
Beauty brands are using Snapchat to connect with their customers but what kind of customer engagement does this actually led to? Customer engagement of a fictive beauty brand on Snapchat is being rated by millennials in The Netherlands. By manipulating the content the respondents are shown, the effect of customer engagement dimensions on different types of brand related content on Snapchat is measured.
An experimental design was used because it is the best method to study cause-and-effect relationships. Using an experimental design gives the ability to manipulate the independent variables, the digital marketing content of brands, and measure its effect on the dependent variable, in this case customer engagement.
The experiment is executed with the independent variable digital marketing content represented by three conditions whereby condition 1 includes information based content, condition 2 includes entertainment based content and condition 3 consists of remuneration based content. These three conditions emerged from existing academic literature as
29 Customer engagement is the dependent variable and three dimensions were used to present customer engagement namely cognitive processing, affection and intention to buy. In the experiment the participants were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions.
The internal validity of this study is guaranteed because the manipulation fits the variables being studied. The external validity is not as perfect as it could be due to the fact that the experiment was done online which means that possible external factors effected the participation.
The choice was made to allocate the participants randomly to one of the three conditions, followed up by showcasing them the other two conditions. Although the research is
concentrated on the results of the first condition the participants are allocated to, it would not affect the results when the participants would also be exposed to the other two conditions. So eventually the participants saw all three conditions but the first condition they were assigned to and the customer engagement dimensions were used as the core data in this research. The data from the second and third condition could be used in the data analysis and possibly provide extra insights if needed.
The main reasons for prioritizing the data from the first featured story is because of practice and boredom effects. It is possible that participants perform differently in a second condition because of the familiarity with first condition. Also, the participants might respond differently in the second and third condition because of boredom from having completed the questions of the first condition (Field, 2012).
3.2 Participants
The research focuses on millennials who use Snapchat and have some level of affection with beauty brands and make-up. Millennials were chosen because it’s the biggest user group on Snapchat (Tornoe, 2015). Furthermore, the participants had to know Snapchat and use make-up to be the right audience for beauty brands on Snapchat. The focus was on female users of Snapchat but data from male participants were also collected and usable. To this day men’s interest in make-up is increasing (Costa, 2011).
The participants were approached on the University of Amsterdam. The researcher
approached the target group with tablets and asked if they were Snapchat users and had some kind of affection with make-up.
30 The participants were able to fill out the survey on the tablet or the survey could be e-mailed to them so they could conduct the survey at a more convenient moment in their day. In the introduction of the survey the participants were asked to only proceed with the survey when they were users of Snapchat and had some level of affection with beauty brands and make-up and if not, they were thanked and asked not to fill out the survey.
The survey was launched on the 10th of April, and after a change in the user interface, the final survey was launched on April the 15th and closed on the 7th of May. The survey was pre-tested by the researches herself and close friends. However, three days after the launch and collecting approximately 40 responses the survey was altered by means of how the Snapchat stories were featured. In the first version the videos were uploaded through the use of the survey platform but this let to complications for some participants that were not able to see the Snapchat stories the correct way. The researcher stopped the survey and changed the Snapchat stories. By creating a website and uploading the Snapchat stories on the website, the researcher was able to provide a link in the survey to the website with the right Snapchat story (including information, entertainment or remuneration content) and the participants were asked to click the link for the video and after finishing the video to return back to the survey and continue to the questions. Because the questions were altered in the survey, this caused a default in the data for the first 40 responses collected. However, after all the data needed to test the hypothesis was collected, a successful revision of the survey was conducted and the right data from the first 40 responses was compiled.
3.3 Manipulated content
From the literature review three motivations of customers emerge for engaging with brand-related content. These three motivations include information, entertainment and remuneration content. For this study these three types of motivations are used for the conditions of digital marketing content to test customer engagement on Snapchat. The participants were shown the three conditions in the story feature of Snapchat.
The stories were built using the actual content that beauty brands have shared on Snapchat in 30th to mimic the experience of seeing a story on Snapchat. The content used in the survey is based on actual used Snapchat stories of a variety of brands plus the stories created by the researcher. The researcher observed the content beauty brands shared on Snapchat over a period of four months; January until April. Based on the observations and the recordings made from the Snapchat stories of the beauty brands the actual stories for the experiment were made (See Appendix B for screenshots of the three stories).
31 Not all three stories were completely based on actual content from beauty brands. The story containing product information was both made with content provided by the researcher and actual stories. The story containing entertainment was completely used from an actual story of make-up brand MAC cosmetics, but all signs of the brand were removed through Photoshop. The story involving remuneration was completely made by the researcher of this study because no beauty brand was sharing content including remuneration on Snapchat during the observation period. The researcher used a study that focused on the content beauty brands post on Facebook as an example to create the right content for the story containing
remuneration. The study observed the activities of several beauty brands whereby promotions and discounts were posted and shared.
A fictive brand called Jolie Paris was introduced to the participants as a brand they know and use in their day to day life. An actual brand was not used because of existing associations that could not be controlled for but could have possibly affected the level of customer engagement of the participants. By using a fictive brand and informing the participants to already have some of customer engagement with the brand the existing associations were controlled for as much as possible.
Figure 2 shows a part of condition 1. This story contained information based content. Step 1 shows part of a story Essence Cosmetics used in a recent Snapchat story. Step 2 shows that anything that shows the brand is covered with a black bar. The make-up pallets showed the name and logo of Essence Cosmetics and the Snapchat name was shown in the left corner. By adding a black bar, these details were disguised. Step 3 shows that the fictive brand name Jolie Paris was added to the Snapchat content.
32
3.4 The brand related content
Observing the content of beauty brands on Snapchat resulted in a list of the most shared content. These content types were categorized before they were linked to one of the three brand related content types that would be build and used as conditions for the stories in the survey. Four categorizes were chosen based on a content-analysis of make-up brands on Facebook. This study focused on what kind of content beauty brands post on Facebook, the frequency of the posting and the engagement of followers (Shen & Bissell, 2013). The four categories that came out of this study were used to link the different types of content beauty brands have been posting on Snapchat. It is important to notice that no beauty brand shares any type of promotion content on Snapchat. However, brands from other industries are sharing promotion content on Snapchat and beauty brands do post promotions on Facebook thus the decision was made to include remuneration content in this study as well. Although these four categories of content are based on a research focused on Facebook and not on Snapchat, by observing the current activities of beauty brands on Snapchat the researcher concluded that these activities could be categorized under the four categories from the Facebook research.
Subsequently, after matching the Snapchat activities of beauty brands with the four brand related content categories, the categories were linked with the three brand-related content types found in the literature. Table 1 shows the four categories of content, listed underneath the current Snapchat content of beauty brands and to which condition these activities belong. The observing, categorizing and linking of Snapchat activities of beauty brands to the three types of conditions was necessary to link theory and practise and to get an overview of how the three conditions in the survey should look like to represent beauty brands on Snapchat.
Table 1. Overview of link between beauty brands Snapchat activities and digital marketing content
conditions
1. Event content 2. Product content 3. Promotion content 4. Entertainment content
Red carpet Swatches Coupons Q&A
Shoots Announcements Discounts Look into the office
Behind the scenes Sneak peeks Giveaways Make-up tutorials
Party Tips Promotional codes Chats
Fashion week New product launches
33 The event and entertainment brand related content can be matched to the entertainment
condition. Event stands for content showing red carpet events, photoshoots, behind the scene footage, parties and fashion week events. Entertainment includes Q&A’s, make-up tutorials, chats and what’s going on at the office of the brand. Both types of content are used for enjoyment and for people who are interested to see what kind of things happen at a beauty brand.
The product category of beauty brands Snapchat content can be match to the information condition. The product category includes swatches of products, new product launches, sneak peeks, tips and announcements. This type of content gives information about the products of the brands, for example showing new releases or show how the consistency and pigmentation is of a certain product.
The promotion content of beauty brands on Snapchat can be linked to the remuneration condition. It is important to mention that while observing the beauty brands current activities on Snapchat, no brand actually shares content with promotions, although brands for other industries do use Snapchat for promotion content.
3.5 Measurements
The survey started with an introduction, explaining the research and introducing the fictive brand. As mentioned previously, the introduction explicitly asked the participants to only participate when they are users of Snapchat and have some kind of affection with make-up. After the introduction three demographic questions were asked; gender, age and highest level of education.
Thereafter the stories were featured in a random order. The participant were asked to click the link to a website were the story was published and after watching the story the participant had to go back to the survey to continue to the questions. Ten statements about customer
engagement were presented and the participant had to rate their level of customer engagement on a seven-point Likert type scale. Three of the ten statements were based on cognitive
processing, four on affection and three on intention to buy. All three dimensions were drawn from previously used scales that have been validated in the academic literature. Table 2 shows the dimensions, items and Cronbach alphas.
The measurements of Hollebeek et al. (2014) were used for this study as dimensions of customer engagement because of its important roll and effect in the academic world on this
34 subject. It also takes social media as the environment of the customer engagement which fits this study perfectly. The measurements for this study are based on an article that included a third measure for consumer brand engagement namely activation but this scale doesn’t fit this specific research that well as discussed in the literature review. Instead of the activation scale of Hollebeek et al. (2014) the scale of intention to buy from Sweeney & Soutar (2001) is used. This scale fitted the research and the hypotheses better.
Table 2. Construct customer engagement dimensions, sources and scale reliabilities
Dimension/ Measure Items (altered to this specific thesis) Reliability Cognitive processing
(Hollebeek, et al., 2014)
1. Looking at the stories of (fictive beauty brand) on Snapchat gets me to think about (fictive beauty brand). 2. I think about (fictive beauty brand) a lot when I’m
looking at the stories on Snapchat.
3. Seeing the stories of (fictive beauty brand) on Snapchat stimulates my interest to learn more about (fictive beauty brand).
0,825
Affection Hollebeek, et al., 2014)
1. I feel very positive when I look at the stories of (fictive beauty brand) on Snapchat.
2. Looking at the stories of (fictive beauty brand) on Snapchat makes me happy.
3. I feel good when I look at the stories of (fictive beauty brand) on Snapchat.
4. I’m proud when I look at the stories of (fictive beauty brand) on Snapchat.
0,907
Intention to buy (Sweeney, & Soutar, 2001)
1. After seeing this kind of stories on Snapchat I would be willing to buy items from this beauty brand at the store. 2. After seeing this kind of stories I would recommend
this beauty brand to friends or relatives.
3. After seeing this kind of stories I would not expect any problems with items from this beauty brand.
0,96
3.6 The tools applied
Qualtrics was used to build and conduct the survey and to collect the data. Qualtrics is a web-based survey tool were various types of surveys can be conducted and it provides the ability to evaluate the data collection.
35 Qualtrics was used because the tool has an clear user interface and the results are easy to access. It provides multiple tools to build a professional survey and has the ability to export the data directly to SPSS, PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
APowersoft was used to collect the content and to build the stories. APowersoft is a software program that allows the ability to record an iPhone screen with an computer. The author used her own Snapchat account and followed several beauty brands to collect their Snapchat
stories. The collected stories were linked to the three brand related content conditions and new stories were built. The video converter program from APowersoft was used to build and edit the stories for this survey.
The website featuring the stories was built with a service called Wix Editor. This is a free online service that gives the ability to make a website. This way the author was able to feature the stories to the participants. A website was used to showcase the videos because the only other option was YouTube which is a social media platform as well. Due to the fact that this study researches social media platform Snapchat and its effect on customer engagement, using YouTube as the source for the videos would have potentially affect the results.
