THE ONLINE BRAND AMBASSADOR: THE EFFECTS OF EMPLOYEES’ PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL MEDIA USE ON RELATIONAL OUTCOMES
Boukje Smit (5789060) Supervised by dr. J.W.M. Verhoeven
July 2014
Master’s Thesis
Master’s programme Communication Science
2 Abstract
Although there is much research available on brand ambassadorship and relations, there is still little known about (a) how employee social media use affects the relation between the general public and organizations and (b) what role conversational human voice plays in that respect. Four hypotheses (1a-d) were posed to analyse the effect between two types of employee social media use (mixed/professional) and relational outcomes (trust, commitment, satisfaction and control mutuality). In addition, a second hypothesis was posed that tested whether mixed social media use lead to a more positive evaluated relationship between public and organization. Because conversational human voice plays an important role in relationships, four additional hypothesis (3a-d) were posed to examine a potential moderation effect of conversational human voice on the four direct relation assumed in the first four hypothesis. In total 138 respondents participated in the experiment. No support was found for a direct relationship between social media use and relational outcomes and a moderation effect of conversational human voice. Participants exposed to solely professional and mixed shared content did not have a significantly different perceived level of trust, commitment, satisfaction and control mutuality. In contrary to the expectation posed in the second hypothesis, results show that solely professional social media use leads to a higher level of perceived conversational human voice than participants exposed to mixed employee social media use.
Keywords: brand ambassadorship, relational outcomes, trust, commitment, control mutuality,
conversational human voice, tone of voice, social media, employee social media use, exchange relationship, interpersonal relationship, organizational relationship
3 Introduction
Brand ambassadorship is no new phenomenon (Kent, 2010) as people always have talked (and will talk) about personal and professional matters at dinner parties. However, through the advent of social media it has become more important and apparent as these media have increased social reach. This has changed the ambassadorship role. Employees are in any case ambassadors for their organization. However, through the increased social reach, and simultaneously increased visibility, they are even more now than before.
The fast growth in popularity of social media has triggered people all over the world to express themselves through social media. In 2012, almost 58% of the global population used social networks (“Social Networking Statistics”, n.d). Even more impressive, of all people between the age eighteen and twenty-four, almost 98% makes use of social networks. With over a billion accounts and 100 million tweets send every day (Smith, 2014), Twitter is considered one of the biggest social media beside Facebook.
Social media have been explicitly been designed for relationship building purposes (Fournier & Avery, 2011) and have become more than an efficient exchange of information between people as they are becoming increasingly rich and will have greater depth (Miller, 1995). As a result, people will increasingly perceive social media as human communication instead of electronic communication (Miller, 1995). This is also reflected in the fact that social media are very highly integrated into our daily lives. Nowadays, when we are on the road, we check our Facebook or we post a snapshot of our take-away coffee on Instagram. Social media caused a great shift in communication patterns and changed our vehicles of social interactions (Naaman, Boase & Lai, 2010; Sánchez Abril, Levin & Del Riego, 2012). In particular, they have caused the boundaries between professional and personal lives to become porous and increasingly blurred the already intangible lines that existed between professional and personal life (Sánchez Abril, Levin & Del Riego, 2012). This
‘boundary-4 crossing’ phenomenon is an outcome of the technological revolution as peoples’ professional and personal lives become intertwined through these media (Sánchez Abril, Levin & Del Riego, 2012). Because social media use has shifted communication patterns, changed social interactions and lead to increasingly blurred boundaries between personal and professional life, it has created a great gap in scientific knowledge about the effects of this ‘boundary-crossing’ phenomenon on relations.
Most common uses for social media are personal oriented (Collins, n.d) because they are mainly used to satisfy socio-emotional needs (Kent, 2010). Although social media are mainly designed for interpersonal relationship building, it also allows organizations to engage with customers at low costs and high level of efficiency (Kaplan & Heanlein, 2010).
Nowadays, everything is about social media (Kaplan & Heanlein, 2010) as they are
increasingly used for brand promotion (Van Noort, 2012). In addition, brand ambassadorship is also becoming increasingly important within brand development (Hatch & Schultz, 2009). However, many organizations are considered unwelcome guests on social media (Fournier & Avery, 2011). Online brand ambassadorship could allow organizations to partially bypass this ‘hostility’ problem as employees have powerful impact on consumers’ perceptions of brands and organizations (Harris & De Chernatony, 2001).
The goal of this research is to study the effects of employee social media use on the relationship between the public and an organization. First of all, because still little is known about the effects of the ‘boundary-crossing’ on relations. Secondly, because employees have great impact on consumers’ perceptions and could therefore play an important role in
overcoming the ‘hostility problem’ organizations face online. Hence, the main research question in this study is as follows: does the type of employee social media use (professional vs. mixed) affect the level of trust in an organization, the level of perceived satisfaction, commitment and control mutuality? In addition, as conversational human voice is one of the
5 most important features of online communication (Kelleher, 2009), the mediating influence of conversational human voice will be analysed as well.
As research concerning strictly professional or mixed social media use by employees is still relatively new in scholarly literature, an experiment was carried out to examine
whether strictly professional or mixed (personal and professional) employee social media use has different effects on the relationship between public and organization. In addition, the concept of brand ambassadorship in the context of marketing and business is quite new within scholarly literature as well (Andersson & Ekman, 2009). By means of this study, an attempt was made to address the existing research gaps.
Social media have changed the media landscape as they have caused a shift in social interaction and blurred boundaries between personal and professional life (Sánchez Abril, Levin & Del Riego, 2012). At the same time, employees are becoming increasingly important tools for organizations (Van Noort, 2012). These developments simultaneously lead to
increased organizational social media policy. Social media policy enables organizations to preserve and look after the way employees engage with customers (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy, Silvestre, 2011). Although the importance of employees as marketing tools and social media use are frequently emphasized in scholarly literature, there is still little knowledge about the effects of professional and a mixed (professional and personal)
employee social media use on the relationship between the public and the organization. This makes it very important for organizations to know how employee social media use affects their relationship with the public. Therefore, this study hopes to provide useful implications for practice as well. In this matter, organizations can obtain more knowledge on how to improve employee social media use.
6 Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework is structured as follows: first, the meaning of brand ambassadorship is discussed. Subsequently, employees’ social media use is reviewed. Hereby, two particular uses by employees are pointed out, namely professional and personal social media use. Furthermore, relationships and relational outcomes will be discussed in the context of ambassadorship.
Brand ambassadorship
A brand ambassador is seen as “…the interface between a brand’s internal and
external environments and can therefore have a powerful impact on consumers’ perceptions of both the brand and the organization” (Harris & De Chernatony, 2001, p. 441). This
definition points out the important role employees play in relationship building between organizations and their public. In addition, scholars have emphasized the increasing importance of employees in brand development (Hatch & Schultz, 2009). In order to build relationships, employees often use their personal social media, such as Facebook and
LinkedIn (Skeels & Grudin, 2009). This indicates that employees are, through their personal social media accounts, important representatives of their organization.
Brand ambassadors have been around for decades (Kent, 2010) as many people talk about their profession at birthday and dinner parties. Therefore, with the advent of social media, the role of employees has not changed so much. This new technology offers nothing genuinely new than completing an old task in a new way (Kent, 2010). However, social media have made the role of an employee more visible and increased social reach, due to their global reach capabilities (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). Social media have turned
employees into activists of and for their organization through the use of their personal social media accounts.
7 Employees’ social media use
Social media have caused user generated content to exponentially grow into a mass phenomenon (Hennig‐Thurau et al., 2010). Media, like Facebook and Twitter, have
empowered the public to promote and distribute their own offers and content (Hennig‐Thurau et al., 2010; Fournier & Avery, 2011). As a result, the public and employees have
increasingly gained power over organizational content (Fournier & Avery, 2011; Mangold & Faulds, 2009). Simultaneously, organizations increasingly lose control of content, reach, frequency and message timing (Mangold & Faulds, 2009).
Social media are initially not meant for marketing or branding, but for personal relationship building purposes (Fournier & Avery, 2011; Kent, 2010). As organizational branding has increasingly shifted towards online activities, organizations are more often confronted with a certain degree of hostility on social media as most brands seem inauthentic and their presence is often seen as intrusive and out of place (Fournier & Avery, 2011). Although a relationship between an employee and the public is referred to as organizational, because employees make use of their own personal social media accounts, chances are great that the public will perceive this relationship more as interpersonal instead of organizational. Employees can therefore act as an important (marketing) tool for building organizational relationships as they could help organizations to bypass the hostility problem they face on social media.
Social media have become much more than just an efficient way of exchanging information between people and integration of these media in our lives have caused them to have gained a human character (Miller, 1995). What is meant by this, is that social media is becoming increasingly rich and will gain greater depth over time (Miller, 1995). As Miller (1995) rightly pointed out, communication through social media was yet not rich enough and did not have enough depth to be considered equal to interpersonal relationships. However,
8 social media and their use have changed since 1995 as they have now been fully integrated in daily life. Therefore, it is interesting to know whether relationships, that are built through social media, are being seen as more interpersonal than almost ten years ago.
Boundaries between personal and professional life have become porous and intertwined (Sánchez Abril, Levin & Del Riego, 2012) as employees use their personal accounts for personal as well as professional purposes. For example, retweeting an
organizational tweet, making comments on Facebook about new exciting projects or simply sharing a vacancy on LinkedIn. The reason why ‘boundary-crossing’ has emerged, is because someone’s’ professional life is just as much a part of their identity as their personal life (Lam, Ahearne, Hu & Schillewaert, 2010). Therefore, people tend to both share professional and personal content on social media. This ‘boundary-crossing’ phenomenon can best be
explained by the use of social identity theory (SIT). This theory describes social identification as “…a perception of oneness with a group of persons” (Ashforth & Mael, 1989, p.20). It can also be described in the context of belongingness with or to an organization (Dainton & Zelley, 2010). This indicates it is actually very natural for people to also define themselves in terms of that organization (Mael & Ashforth, 1992). Because offline and online relationships are complementary and thus not very different from each other (Reich, Subrahmanyam & Espinoza, 2012; Valkenburg & Peter, 2009b), SIT can be applied to explain why employees post both professional and personal content on social media.
Because employees use their own personal social media accounts, organizations do not have direct control over shared content. Regarding employee social media use, the source of the message is a person instead of an organization. As there is a certain degree of hostility towards organizational activities on social media (Fournier & Avery, 2011), it is assumable that employee content could come across as more authentic, sincere and appropriate than content with a clear organizational source.
9 Social media have caused boundaries to fade between personal and professional life (Sánchez Abril, Levin & Del Riego, 2012) and indicates that employees use social media for both personal and/or professional purposes. Some employees will probably prefer to use social media solely for professional purposes, for example through LinkedIn, whilst others might prefer to share both professional and personal content through Facebook. Therefore, two types of employee social media usage can be distinguished, namely; professional or mixed (professional and personal). Employees have great impact on public perception (Harris & De Chernatony, 2001). This gives enough reason to believe that this also applies to
employee social media use.
It is assumable that the level of trust or commitment is higher in case of exposure to content shared by employees than in case of an organizational source. Reason for this assumption is that an ambassador is seen as a trustworthy source as the public has more confident in the views of people than in views that come from an organization (Andersson & Ekman, 2009). Ambassadors are an effective tool to build a positive image and to influence the public (Andersson & Ekman, 2009). Furthermore, research has shown that trust affects the level of commitment in a positive way (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Therefore it is assumable that employee social media use is positively related to organizational commitment by the public.
Ambassadors are an effective tool to create a positive image. In addition, corporate image is often seen as “a function of the cumulative effect of customer (dis)satisfaction” (Andreassen & Lindestad, 1998, p. 8). This indicates that image is positively related to satisfaction, which means that a positive image should increase the level of satisfaction. As employee social media content has a higher source credibility than organizational messages (Andersson & Ekman, 2009), employee social media use will assumedly affect corporate image, which will effect satisfaction. This gives reason to believe that employee social media
10 use is indeed positively related to satisfaction. In addition, the public could have greater feeling control mutuality as well. This assumption can be made, because an employee-customer relationship is probably seen as more interpersonal instead of organizational as employees make use of their own personal social media accounts. This interpersonal character of the employee-public relationship will cause the public to have a greater feeling of control mutuality.
The four outcomes (trust, commitment, satisfaction, control mutuality) that were mentioned are also known as relational outcomes (Hon & Grunig, 1999). Relational outcomes will be further discussed in the next sub-section.
Relationships and relational outcomes
Relationships between publics and organization defined
Relationships have been defined as “routinized, sustained patterns of behaviour by
individuals related to their involvement with an organization…” (Kelleher & Miller, 2006,
p.396). People have relationships to satisfy socio-emotional needs (Kent, 2010) and come in different forms and can have different functions, for example a relationship between you and your mom or between a customer and an organization. Within scholarly literature, the
importance of relationship building and -maintenance have long been underpinned (Henning-Thurau, Gwinner & Gremler, 2002).
As people are very social beings and have the need to be included and acknowledged (Kent, 2010), it is also very natural to have relationships with organizations (Dainton & Zelley, 2010). Especially because organizations also shape our identity. This clearly shows that relationships with organizations play an important role in the lives of people. Therefore, organizational relationships are central to this study.
Visibility of relationships
11 (Sánchez Abril, Levin & Del Riego, 2012) as many people are friends with their boss,
colleagues, (close) friends and families on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. For example, we retweet a message from our boss with a link to an interesting article concerning market developments, or we complain publicly on Twitter when organizations do not meet our expectations. Such social media behaviours can affect the relationship between organizations and their public as employees have great influence on consumers’ perceptions of brands and organizations (Harris & De Chernatony, 2001). Due to the transparent nature of social media it has become easier to observe and track what people do online and with who they interact (Bingham & Conner, 2010). In addition, social media made relationships more visible, because of their increasing social reach.
Dimensions of relational outcomes
There are four dimensions that can be distinguished regarding relational outcomes: trust, commitment, satisfaction and mutual control (Hon & Grunig, 1999). These four
dimensions are proven to be good indicators of successful interpersonal relationships, such as organizational (organization-public) relationships.
Trust
What is meant by trust according to Hon and Grunig (1999) is “One party’s level of
confidence in and willingness to open oneself to the other party” (p. 19). In relationships,
whether it is personal or professional, trust plays an important role. It is also considered as a crucial aspect in creating conversations that have great impact on people (Van Belleghem, 2012) as trust is “perhaps the single most powerful relationship marketing tool available to a
company” (Berry, 1995, p. 242). Reputation is very important for organizations and
reputation is in fact “a matter of trust” (Kietz et al., 2011, p. 247). This points out the critical role trust plays in organizational relationships. In addition, trust positively affects public satisfaction and loyalty (Cho, 2006; Sirdeshmukh, Singh & Sabol, 2002). Furthermore,
12 research has shown that clear and open communication creates high level of trust (Van
Belleghem, 2012) and that trust is “a matter of reputation” (Kietz et al., 2011, p. 247).
Commitment
The second dimension of relational outcomes is commitment and is highly related to the previous relational outcome trust (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Commitment is “The extent to
which each party believes and feels that the relationship is worth spending energy to maintain and promote” (Hon & Grunig, 1999, p.20). Commitment develops through
involvement that the public has with an organization and increases the level of trust and commitment (Garbarino & Johson, 1999; Morgan & Hunt, 1994). This indicates that commitment also plays an important role in organizational relationships.
Satisfaction
Satisfaction is described as “the extent to which each party feels favourably toward
the other because positive expectations about the relationship are reinforced. A satisfying relationship is one in which the benefits outweigh the costs” (Hon & Grunig, 1999, p.20).
Satisfaction is considered to have great impact on loyalty and word-of-mouth communication (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2002).
The definition by Hon and Grunig (1999) describes a satisfying relationship in the context of benefits and costs. This definition implies that one party gives benefits to the other only because ‘the other has provided benefits in the past or is expected to do so in the future’ (Hon & Grunig, 1999). This indicates that a satisfying relationship can only exists when people have the feeling that they get something in return for entering into the relationship.
Mutual control
The last dimension of relational outcomes, described by Hon and Grunig (1999), is mutual control. This construct is defined as “the degree to which parties agree on who has
13 is natural, they argue that in order to have a stable relationship, it is required that
organizations and publics each have a certain degree of control over the other. This implicates that a sense of symmetry within the relationship is important.
Employees’ social media use and relations outcomes
Because the online presence of organizations is often perceived as inauthentic, intrusive and out of place (Fournier & Avery, 2011), it is assumable that a relationship with an employee is perceived differently. A relationship with an employee could be merely seen as a regular interpersonal relationship as employees often make use of their own personal social media accounts while interacting with publics. Brand ambassadorship should therefore allow organizations to partially bypass the publics’ hostile attitude towards online presence of organizations.
As employees make use of their own personal social media accounts on which their personal and professional life boundaries are becoming porous, it is therefore assumable perceived persuasive intent level is lower when publics are involved in a relationship with an employee than in case of an organizational relationship. Persuasion is defined as
“communication with the intent to change behaviour or influence it in a specified manner”
(Bettinghaus, 1973, pp. 8-10 in; Sherblom & Reinsch Jr, 1981, p. 621). According to Sherblom and Reinsch Jr. (1981) “this definition implies the presence of a directed
intentionality on the part of a source in a persuasive situation that is not likely to be present for a source in a conversational one” (p. 621).
Based on prior assumptions, employees who share mixed (professional/personal) content on social media should cause the public to have a lower level of perceived persuasive intent. Simultaneously, an employee who uses their social media for solely professional purposes should lead to a higher level of perceived persuasive intent. This gives reason to believe that mixed shared content by employees should have a greater positive effect on the
14 level of trust, commitment, satisfaction and feeling of mutual control than solely professional content that is shared by an employee.
Therefore, the four following hypotheses were advanced:
Hypotheses 1a-d. Mixed social media use by employees (professional/personal) leads to a higher level of perceived (H1a) trust, (H1b) satisfaction, (H1c) commitment, and (H1d) control mutuality by the public, than in case of exposure to solely professional employee social media use
Conversational human voice
One of the most important features of online communication is the conversational human voice of the people who form the organization (Searls & Weinberger, 2000; Kelleher, 2009). Therefore, in addition to the type of employee social media use, it is also very
important to consider the influence of conversational human voice. Conversational human voice is considered “…an engaging and natural style of organizational communication as
perceived by an organization’s publics based on interactions between individuals in the organization and individuals in publics” (Kelleher, 2009, p. 177).
A good example of conversational human voice is a conversation between a customer and the online customer service of an American mobile company, Tesco Mobile. Tesco Mobile responded to one of their customer tweets in a memorable way (Bryan, 2013). The customer wrote the following message: “@tescomobile this bitch is mugging you off!
@CloeBowd”. The customer service responded by sending the following message: “she is clearly going through a rough time in life”. The conversation went on for a while and soon
went viral on the web. The blog that reviewed the entire conversation referred to, as ‘This is the best Twitter Conversation You Will read Today’. This example clearly illustrates an organization that uses a human voice in their external communication. The fact that the Twitter conversation went viral and was called ‘the best Twitter conversation you will read
15 today’ indicates a positive public attitude towards this kind of communication with publics. As conversational human voice is positively related to trust, commitment, satisfaction and control mutuality (Kelleher, 2009), it is therefore assumable that conversational human voice creates positive attitudes towards an organization. Moreover, relational benefits achieved by a human voice, or authentic voice, is ought to have a positive effect on both internal and external publics (Kelleher, 2009).
Employees who use their personal social media account only for professional purposes are probably likely to use a formal tone of voice in order to obtain a professional image or identity. On the contrary, mixed use (personal/professional) will likely be shared with a more informal tone of voice as this is consistent with the personal part of someone’s’ identity. Mixed information will for instance show that you are a consultant and that you are very serious about your job. Moreover, it will also show that you are, for example, a
mom/dad, pet owner or a sports lover. Contrary to solely professional content, mixed content will most likely come across as a more natural way of communication. Because our personal and professional lives shape our identities (Lam et al., 2010), it is therefore most natural for us to express ourselves to the outside world through mixed content with a high level of conversational human voice. These assumptions indicate that conversational human voice is of great influence how the employee is perceived. Therefore, employees who use their social media in a mixed way are assumed to cause a higher level of perceived conversational human voice by the public.
This study tests the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2. Among those who have been exposed to mixed employees social media use, the level of perception of the conversational human voice is higher than in case of exposure to solely professional employee social media use.
16 As conversational human voice is positively related to all the relational outcomes analysed in this study (Kelleher, 2009), it is considered to have great influence on how an organization will be perceived. This means that the presence (or absence) of a conversational human voice could have an influence on the relationship between employee social media use and perceived level of trust, commitment, satisfaction and control mutuality. To test whether conversational human voice indeed moderates the relationship between employee social media use and relational outcomes, the following hypotheses are posed:
Hypotheses 3a-d. Conversational human voice mediates the relation between employee social media use and (H2a) trust, (H2b) satisfaction, (H2c) commitment, and (H2d) control
This theoretical framework forms the base for the relations as proposed in the conceptual model shown in figure 1.
Figure 1 Conceptual model
Method
Research design
The method used in this research is an experiment since this is the only research method that can demonstrate causal relationships. The experimental design that is used was a pre-experiment design. In particular, there has been made use of an one-shot case study as subjects were presented with one out of two Twitter accounts, and then the outcome measure
17 was applied. The independent variable in this study is employee social media use and is categorized in two types of use; mixed (professional/personal) and solely professional use. The dependent variables, on which social media use by employees is expected to have an effect, are the four relational outcomes trust, commitment, satisfaction and control mutuality.
Task & Procedure
Participants were invited to take part in this experiment through Facebook. Furthermore, an e-mail invite was send to obtain more respondents and a message was send out on Twitter. All three invites contained a direct link to the questionnaire. At the start of the questionnaire
respondents were informed that they were taking part in an experiment concerning employee social media behaviour. This informed consent highlighted that this research was conducted under the supervision of the University of Amsterdam and guaranteed the respondents’ confidentiality. In order to continue, participants were obligated to check the ‘I agree’ box that was situated at the bottom of the consent form. Subsequently, respondents were asked to complete a short demographic questionnaire and were then randomly assigned to the one out of two conditions of the online experiment. On this page, a cover story was shown with a link that directed them to one of the Twitter-accounts created for this study. The cover story contained instruction to analyse the employees’ Twitter-account well enough that they could give a good evaluation of the employees’ social media behaviour. The cover story presented to the participants was as follows:
My goal is to analyse the behaviour of several employees on Twitter. Therefore, I ask you kindly to give your evaluation on this employee. I would like to ask you to carefully analyse the Twitter account of this employee. You can click on this link1 that will redirect you to the Twitter page. Do not forget to look at links and photos that were shared as well. After you analysed the twitter page you can click on the [next>>] button to continue with the questionnaire.
1 Participants were randomly assigned to analyze one out of these two following Twitter pages:
Condition 1: https://twitter.com/JuliaRdeGraaf (Professional use condition) Condition 2: https://twitter.com/JuliaRdeGraaf (Mixed use condition)
18 Following completion of the task, respondents completed the online questionnaire regarding their evaluation of the employee. The actual goal of the study was given
afterwards, since this could have had a negative impact on the validity of the study when this was given in advance. Subsequently, participants were given the option to exclude
themselves even after completing the entire questionnaire.
Stimulus material
For this specific research, two Twitter-accounts were created and used as stimulus response material in order to have complete control over two types of use (professional/mixed). A link to the stimuli material was incorporated in the cover story that was presented in the
questionnaire. Subsequently, participants were asked to answer questions regarding the perceived levels of relational outcomes and conversational human voice.
The two Twitter accounts both represented a fictional employee of Brecht&Co2. Although the employee is fictional, the organization is an actual existing company. An existing company was used as this raised the credibility of the perceived authenticity of the study as a whole. As Becht&Co is quite a small and unknown company, this reduced the chance that people were previously biased. Both employees were named Julia de Graaf. In addition, both mentioned they were employed as a project manager at Brecht&Co on their Twitter profiles. However, some aspects of the content on their profiles differed, depending on the condition. For example, their biography was different as well as their background photo (Figure 3). The tweets were released between May 31st and June 22nd 2014 on a regular basis of at least two tweets a day. The tweets were planned by the use of the Hoot suite. A program that allows you to plan tweets in advance.
19
Figure 3 Profile set-up for Twitter account 1 (professional) and 2 (mixed).
For the professional condition, solely professional content was shared. On the contrary, the Twitter account used for the second condition (mixed) contained both professional and private content. These two types of use were manipulated in two ways, namely; content and tone of voice. The professional condition had a formal tone of voice, whilst the mixed condition was informal. An overview of these different conditions is given in table 1. To have a good overview of the controlled messages, a complete planning was made for both Twitter-accounts (appendix 1). This planning contained the description of the content used in the tweets, the time and the date the tweets were released. Also the ratio between private and professional messages was controlled and it was subject to a minimum of two tweets per day per condition. Within the professional condition both tweets were professional oriented, whereas in the mixed condition fifty percent was personal and fifty percent was professional oriented. Messages were all sent at the same time and on the same date to make the two conditions as consistent as possible in almost all other, not intentionally manipulated, perspectives. Therefore, the content that was used in the professional condition was also used in the mixed condition. In addition, both conditions had released the same
20 amount of photos (N = 19), however the amount of tweeted links differed (Nprofessional = 20; Nmixed = 5). Moreover, the amount of hashtags (#) used in the tweets differed as well
(Nprofessional = 5; Nmixed = 24. The different amount of hashtags used in both conditions was
intentionally manipulated as hashtags have a more informal way of communication and were therefore used more often in the mixed condition.
Table 1: Condition overview (social media use and tone of voice) Tone of voice
Social media use type
Formal Informal
Professional Account 1
Mixed (professional/personal) Account 2
To create a difference in tone of voice the professional condition contained no terms like ‘us’ or ‘we’. These terms seem to come about more informal. This study was conducted in Dutch. Therefore, within the mixed condition, ‘u’ is used as the more polite term for you and ‘je’ is used as the more formal term. On the contrary to the mixed condition, within the professional condition solely the name of the organization was used. The professional condition did not contain informal terms as ‘je’, ‘jij’ and ‘we’ that were used in the mixed condition. An example of tweets send from the professional (account 1) and the mixed account (account 2) is shown in figure 2. This example shows a difference in tone of voice and content that were intentionally manipulated.
21
Figure 2 Example type of social media use (professional/mixed) and tone of voice
(formal/informal).
Sample and participants
For this study, a snowball sample and a convenience sample was used as there was no recruitment database available. In order to stimulate respondents to fill in the questionnaire, five gift certificates of twenty euros each were raffled among the participants who fully completed the questionnaire.
The online research software Qualtrics was used to distribute the questionnaire. Through this tool, participants were able to answer the questions in their natural surroundings. This reduced the likelihood of socially desirable answers and enhanced the reliability of the study. The downside however, was that the researcher did not have full control over the circumstances in which the participant filled in the questionnaire. Hereby, the researcher has had no knowledge about the extent to which a person has completed the questionnaire seriously. However, with the amount of energy participants had put into this study, it is assumed that all participants have participated with good and serious intentions.
Initially, 244 participants were redirected to the questionnaire. From the 244 people who clicked in the link, only 138 participants completed the questionnaire entirely (N = 138). The vast majority of the participants were recruited through the University of Amsterdam. Furthermore, the questionnaire was distributed on Facebook respondents’ sites and through personal invites send by
e-22 mail.
This distribution of gender was shown to be normal. From the 138 participants in total, 40.6% were male (N = 56) and 58.7% were female (N = 81). The average age was 30.04 (M = 30, SD = 1.74). An overview of these results is given in table 2.
Table 2
Respondent demographic profile (N = 138)
Mean (SD)
Average age 30.04
(10.07) Average amount of children 0.45
(.91) Average hours spent on social media
(per day)
1.85 (1.28)
The majority of the participants have completed either a university degree (28.3%) or a HBO education (26.8%). Almost all of the participants used social media (97.8%). Most participants used Facebook (96.4%), followed by LinkedIn (69.6%) and Instagram (45.7%). A complete overview of these results is shown in appendix 2.
Operationalization
Participants were asked to fill in question regarding the relational outcomes trust, satisfaction, commitment and mutual control. Scales that measured these four constructs were all created by Hon and Grunig (1999) and are all measured by a 7-point scale matrix table.
The scale regarding ‘trust’ consisted of eleven items in total. This scale was proven to be reliable (Cronbach’s α = .88). As reliability could be improved, the scale was moderated to strongly reliable (Cronbach’s α = .92) by removing one item (trust 10) from the scale. An example of an item measuring trust is: ‘this organization invites people to conversation’.
23 Commitment was measured by a five-item scale and also was proven to have a high reliability (Cronbach’s α = .85). Removing an item from this scale could not increase the overall reliability. An example of an item that measured commitment is: ‘There is a long-lasting bond between this organization and people like me’. The scale that measured
satisfaction consisted of eight items in total and was also reasonably reliable (Cronbach’s α = .72). An example of a question measuring ‘satisfaction’ is: ‘I am happy with this
organization’. However, the reliability of this scale could be moderated to strongly reliable (Cronbach’s α = .83). Therefore, the item ‘the organization fails to satisfy the needs of people like me’ (satisfaction 6) was removed. Finally, control mutuality was measured by the use of an eight-item scale. As with the scale of satisfaction, this scale was proven to be also
moderately reliable (Cronbach’s α = .78). However, by removing one item (control mutuality 3), the scale was altered into a strongly reliable scale (Cronbach’s α = .80). An example of one item measuring control mutuality is; ‘This organization and people like me are attentive to what each other say’.
Beside the relational outcomes, also demographic characteristics such as; age, gender and educational level were obtained. In addition, the level of perceived conversational human voice was measured by the use of a scale created by Kelleher and Miller (2006). This scale consisted of eleven items in total and was also proven to be strongly reliable (Cronbach’s α = .88). Furthermore, a bipolar matrix table measured the overall attitude towards the employee. Hereby, participants were asked, on a 7-point scale, to what extend the employee came across as, for example: ‘friendly or unfriendly’, ‘open or closed’ and ‘honest or dishonest’. This scale was also highly reliable (Cronbach’s α = .94). A complete overview of the factor analysis outcomes and scales is given in appendix 3. A complete overview of index items is summarized in appendix 4.
24 Results
The result section is organized as follows: first the results regarding the control variables are discussed. Subsequently, the manipulation check and main effects will be outlined.
Control variables
A correlation analysis was carried out to test whether there had to be controlled for demographic variables, like age, social media use, gender, and interest in products related to children, in forthcoming analysis. A significant correlation was found between gender and trust. However, this correlation was very weak (table 3). Women had an overall higher level of trust than man (Women: M = 4.46, SD = .71; Men: M = 4.20, SD = .76). There were also weak negative correlations between interest in products related to children and: commitment, satisfaction and control mutuality (table 3). Participants who indicated to be interested in products related to children had an overall higher perceived level of trust than those who indicated to be not interested (Interested: M = 4.50, SD = .77; Not interested: M = 4.29, SD = .72). Participants that indicated to be interested in products related to children (by answering yes or no) scored higher on the satisfaction scale than those who indicated to be not interested (Interested: M = 4.36, SD = .74; Not interested: M = 3.97, SD = .75). In addition, they also scored higher on the scale of control mutuality (Interested: M = 4.33, SD = .67; Not
interested: M = 4.12, SD = .68). Thirdly, there was a positive correlation found between age and the amount of hours someone spends on social media. This means that older participants spend significant more hours on social media than younger participants. However, this correlation was also proven to be weak (table 3). No other significant correlations were found. Therefore, I controlled for gender, age, interest in products related to children.
25 Table 3
Correlation among relational outcomes, CHV and control variables
Trust (11 items) Commitment (8 items) Satisfaction (7 items) Control Mutuality (7 items) Conversational Human Voice (9 items)
Social media use .076 -.027 .030 .923 -.179*
Familiarity with organization .291** .375** .288** .265** .156 Interest in products related to children -.125 -.255** -.233** -.140** .424 Age -.059 .154 -.055 -.005 .013 Gender .173* .071 .108 -.023 .190* Conversational Human Voice .513** .376** .370** .288** 1
Significant at the .05 level (2 tailed). ** Significant at the .01 level (2 tailed).
Manipulation check
In order to test whether the manipulation check of the variable conversational human voice succeeded, an independent samples t-test was carried out. Respondents who were exposed to the professional condition had a higher level of perceived conversational human voice (Mprofessional = 4.75, SD = .70) than participants assigned to the mixed condition (Mmixed
= 4.40, SD = 1.13). Therefore, it can be concluded that the manipulation of conversational human voice did not succeeded. Therefore, hypothesis 2 is automatically rejected as this hypothesis posed that the mixed use lead to a higher level of perceived conversational human voice than professional use.
Main effects
Independent samples tests were carried out to test expectations as proposed in hypothesis 1a-d. These T-tests included the independent factor social media use by an employee (professional vs. mixed) and the independent variables; trust, commitment,
26 satisfaction, control mutuality. Mixed social media use did not have a different level of perceived trust, satisfaction, commitment and control mutuality, as the t-tests revealed no significant results (table 4). Therefore, hypothesis 1a, 1b, 1c and 1d are rejected.
As the results show, no direct effect of employee social media use on trust,
commitment, satisfaction was found. This simultaneously means that a mediation effect of conversational human voice on the relationship between employee social media use and trust, commitment, satisfaction and control mutuality could not be tested by a two-way ANOVA analysis. Therefore, hypotheses 3a, 3b, 3c, 3d are rejected as well.
In addition to the analyses described above, another independent samples t-test concerning the attitude towards the employee was conducted. Hereby, the effect of type of social media use on attitude towards the employee was tested. The independent samples t-test Table 4
Group statistics and independent samples t-tests
N Mean Std. Dev.
Std. Error Mean
t-test for Equality of Means t df Sig. (2tailed) Mean Diff Trust professional 61 4.75 .67 .09 -.900 136 .374 -.11 mixed 77 4.41 .79 .09 Commitment professional 61 3.96 .86 .11 .313 136 .748 .05 mixed 77 3.91 1.10 .13 Satisfaction Professional 61 4.05 .60 .08 -.351 136 .714 -.05 mixed 77 4.10 .88 .10 Control Mutuality professional 61 4.17 .60 .08 -.10 136 .923 -.01 mixed 77 4.18 .74 .08
Conversational Human Voice
Professional 61 4.75 .70 .09 2.238 136 .027* .351
Mixed 77 4.40 1.13 .13
Attitude towards employee
Professional 61 5.04 .97 .12 1.045 136 .298 -.90
27 showed no significant difference in attitude towards the employee between the two
conditions. This result is also shown in table 4.
Conclusion
Three main conclusions can be drawn from this study. Firstly, the results of this study show that solely professional or mixed employee social media use does not directly affect the perceived level of trust, commitment, satisfaction or control mutuality. Because no direct effects of social media use on the relations with the employee were found, the mediation effect of conversational human voice could not be tested either. This means that
conversational human voice is not an underlying mechanism of the relationship between employee social media use and relational outcomes. Secondly, and contrary to the
expectation that was posed in the second hypothesis, it was proven that solely professional employee social media use lead to a higher level of perceived conversational human voice than participants exposed to mixed employee social media use. The last conclusion that can be drawn from this research is that regarding the publics’ attitude towards the employee, no significant difference was found between exposure to professional and mixed employee social media use. Overall, these results show that professional or mixed use of social media by employees does not affect the relation between the public and the organization.
Discussion
Prior studies in PR focused on relational outcomes and emphasized and substantiated why trust, commitment, satisfaction and control mutuality is important for PR professionals. However, so far little research has focussed on the context of employee brand
ambassadorship. Therefore, it is important to understand what the effects are of employee social media use on organizational relationships. It is especially important, because employees are very visible ambassadors for their organization through their social media.
28 This study aimed to fill in the gaps in scholarly literature.
Firstly, this study showed no direct effects of different types of employee social media use (professional/mixed) on the four dimensions of relations mentioned by Hon and Grunig (1999). An explanation for this outcome could be that a relationship with an employee, regardless how they use their social media, is not seen as an exchange relationship. Exchange relationships are described as relationships between people who associate with each other for business purposes (Aggarwal, 2004). The use of a personal social media account by
employees could have reduced the publics’ feeling that the employee communicated for business purposes, which could have caused the public to have a lower level of perceived persuasive intent. This assumption could, among others, explain why relational outcomes did not significantly differ between a personal social media account with solely professional content and one with mixed content.
Work boundary-theory (Ashforth, Kreiner & Fugate, 2000) or Work-family border theory (Clark, 2000) in combination with social identity theory (SIT), can also provide support for the absence of significant differences in relational outcomes between the two conditions (professional/mixed). Work-boundary theory (WBT) addresses the integration and blurring boundaries between work and family life (Ashforth et al., 2000; Clark, 2000), while SIT addresses the phenomenon that people have the need to belong to certain groups and tend to express themselves in terms of groups they belong to. According to SIT, it is natural for people to identify themselves with and express themselves in terms of their private and professional life on social media (Mael & Ashforth, 1992). Both WBT and SIT therefore give support for the ‘boundary-crossing’ phenomenon on social media. According to SIT, people identify themselves with the organization they work for. In addition, entanglement of personal and professional life (boundary-crossing) on social media is becoming more common. This indicates that, as people find it increasingly normal to have both professional
29 and personal content on their social media, the relationship with the employee is not
considered an exchange relationship but is merely perceived as an interpersonal relationship. Therefore, both WBT and SIT provide explanation why no direct effects of different types of employee social media use (professional/mixed) were found on the four dimensions of relational outcomes.
An important and interesting question regarding employee ambassadorship that can be posed here is; does the public enter into a relationship with the organization or the employee? Results of this study show that people feel as if they are in an interpersonal relationship with the employee instead of an exchange relationship. Based on these results, the public enters into a relationship with the employee and not with the organization. However, the tweets that were send in this experiment were fictitious and the organization was very unknown. This could explain why people had greater feeling of being in a relationship with the employee instead of the organization. According to previous studies, people automatically enter in a relationship with an organization through employees as they function as an interface between a brands internal and external environment (Harris & De Chernatony, 2001). The results of this study and prior research indicate that a clear answer to the question cannot yet be given and points out that future research is still needed on this topic.
The manipulation check showed that the manipulation in this study did not succeed. However, during the experiment, five @tweets were send to the mixed condition Twitter account, while the professional account had none. An explanation for the failed manipulation could be that people are more likely to interact with employees that use their accounts for mixed purposes instead of professional uses only.
Despite the fact that this specific study failed to demonstrate significant differences in the perceived relationship with an organization as a result of different types of social media
30 use by employees, it did show that people do not perceive employee accounts who share solely professional content as hostile. Perhaps the public automatically accepts the choice that employees make to share professional content on their personal accounts. This data is
important as it indicates that the public does not have a hostile attitude towards professional content that is shared by employees. In this manner, organizations are able to participate on social media without being an unwelcome guest who crashes anyone’s party. How
organizations must stimulate their employees in the best possible way to become an excellent ambassador is however (and unfortunately) not central to this study.
Practical implications
Despite the absence of significant results, this study does provide important practical implications. In any case, employees appear to be a welcome guests on social media. But what does this mean for organizations and human resource management in particular? In order to build a strong(er) brand, managers need to define brand values and make sure employees behave consistent with these values (Harris & De Chernatony, 2001). The results of the study that was conducted here shows that, with the emergence of ‘boundary-crossing’ on social media and the knowledge that organizations are able to bypass the ‘hostility problem’ through employee social media use, employees have become an even more important tool for constructive brand building. The results indicate that human resource managers are able built even stronger brand when they stimulate their employees to share professional content through personal social media accounts as well. This study therefore complements existing literature that focuses solely on offline employee behaviour.
Limitations and future research
As this was the first time research was done on effects regarding type of employee social media use (professional/mixed) and relations, based on the absence of significant results, it has become evident that more research is much needed on this topic.
31 Relatively new was the design of the experiment that was used. Prior research mostly made use of a full-induced stimuli response model, where participants were shown a picture of a social media site that was fictitious. In this particular study, participants were asked to analyse a (fake) Twitter account of an (fake) employee who worked for a (existing) company. However, the Twitter accounts could be accessed online through a link, which gave the impression that the Twitter account was real. The fact that participants were redirected to an existing account on Twitter, caused this study to have some shared characteristics with a full field experiment. However, participants did not had to be in possession of a Twitter account themselves for analysis as both accounts were publicly accessible. In addition, participants did not interact with the employee and did not follow the employee for a long period of time. Participants had a minimum amount of experience with the organization as they only analysed the assigned Twitter account for several minutes. This made it highly unlikely that participants built a relationship with the organization through employee social media use, which could also explain the lack of significant results. Therefore, it is strongly
recommended to execute more research on this topic in the future. However, some
adjustments must be made on the execution of the experiment in order increase the chance of significant results. First of all, future research should be carried out over a longer period of time. Secondly, interaction between employee and participants should take place to increase the level engagement with the employee and the organization the employee works for. Finally, an extensive code book must be made in order to decrease the chance that the manipulation might fail.
Despite the points of critique, this study shows that employee social media use is very important for organizations, as employees are an effective tool for building a strong(er) brand, whereby employee social media use will cause organizations not to be perceived as an unwelcome guest on social media.
32 Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank dr. J.W.M. Verhoeven for his theoretical input during the thesis appointments any other week. Furthermore, the author would like to thank him for his supervision during the course of this study.
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38 Appendix 1 – Planning Tweets
Date Professional Time schedule Mixed Times
schedule Thu 5-6 Biaisbandbericht Artikel webshop 1 Missie en visie 12:15 13:00 16:00 Biaisbandbericht Winnie de P. Open Air 1 12:15 13:00 16:00 Fri 6-6 Feedback klanten 1
Portfolio 1 12:15 15:00 Feedback klanten 1 Vakantie 1 12:15 15:00 Sat 7-6 Portfolio 2 Artikel webshop 2 13:00 15:00 Vakantie 2 XX - XX 13:00 15:00
Sun 8-6 Portfolio 3 10:00 Vakantie 3 10:00
Mon 9-6 Portfolio 4 Feedback klanten 2 Nieuwe website 10:00 13:00 15:00 boarding Feedback klanten 2 Vakantie 3 06:45 13:00 15:00 Tue 10-6 Portfolio 5 Link FB B&C 12:00 15:00 Portfolio 5 Cultureel uitje 1 12:00 15:00 Wed 11-6 Feedback klanten 3
Atelier Brecht Blauwe kap geruit
10:00 13:00 15:15 Feedback klanten 3 Verjaardag Ferry Portugal uitzicht 1 10:00 13:00 15:15 Thu 12-6 Portfolio 6
Roze kap snijden
13:30 17:00 Portfolio 6 Vakantie 4 13:30 17:00 Fri 13-6 Check website
Kussen bestellen WK kussen 10:15 14:50 18:00 Link FB B&C Inktvis Eerste wedstrijd WK NL 10:15 14:50 18:00 Sat 14-6 Goed weekend
Check website
13:30 19:00
Roze kap snijden Maandag huiswaarts
13:30 19:00 Sun 15-6 Inspiratie – portfolio
4
14:20 Vakantie 4 14:20
Mon 16-6 Bekijk portfolio Werkwijze B&Co 9:00 13:00 inpakken Boarding 9:33 13:00 Tue 17-6 Missie en Visie
Artikel webshop 1 10:00 13:30 naaimachine Zenuwachtig 9:30 13:30 Wed 18-6 Feedback(no foto)
Dames die niet van..
10:25 17:45
Feedback (no foto) WK wedstrijd 2 10:25 17:45 Thu 19-6 Cape Facebook 9:15 15:30 Ontbijt Facebook B&C 9:15 15:30 Fri 20-6 Blauwe ruit 3 kap
Eigen atelier/wens XX - XX 11:30 13:30 XX -XX Bekijk website Kim kardashian link @tweets
11:30 13:30 15:00
39 Appendix 2 – Overview of demographic results
Children 22% No children 78%
Children
33% 11% 24% 6% 6% 2% 16% 1% 1%Social Media
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Google+ Tmblr Instagram Flickr Other 1% 1% 6% 5% 7% 27% 29% 24%Educational level
basisschool Mavo/mulo Havo VWO MBO HBO Universiteit Anders40 Appendix 3 – Factor Analysis for CHV and four dimensions of relational outcomes
Variances explained and factor matrix
Trust Commitment Satisfaction Control mutuality Conversational human voice Attitude towards employee Trust 1 .79 Trust 2 .80 Trust 3 .80 Trust 4 .73 Trust 5 .77 Trust 6 .83 Trust 7 .79 Trust 8 .83 Trust 9 .63 Trust 10 -0.20 Trust 11 .64 Commitment 1 .12 Commitment 2 .28 Commitment 3 .64 Commitment 4 .83 Commitment 5 .81 Commitment 6 .85 Commitment 7 .50 Satisfaction 1 .58 Satisfaction 2 .78 Satisfaction 3 .69 Satisfaction 4 .68 Satisfaction 5 .40 Satisfaction 6 .06 Satisfaction 7 .81 Satisfaction 8 .33 Control mutuality 1 .69 Control mutuality 2 .68 Control mutuality 3 .25 Control mutuality 4 .81 Control mutuality 5 .77 Control mutuality 6 .66 Control mutuality 7 .55 Control mutuality 8 .65 CHV 1 .82 CHV 2 .74 CHV 2 .73 CHV 3 .34 CHV 4 .34 CHV 5 .73 CHV 6 .62 CHV 7 .10 CHV 8 .28 CHV 9 .27 Attitude 1 .83 Attitude 2 .81 Attitude 3 .74 Attitude 4 .85 Attitude 5 .79 Attitude 6 .81 Attitude 7 .80 Attitude 8 .73 Attitude 9 .85 Attitude 10 .83 Eigenvalue Total 5.84 3.83 3.67 3.36 4.61 6.50 % of Variance 53.10 54.75 52.30 48.06 51.22 64.57 Cronbach’s Αlpha .92 .85 .83 .80 .88 .94
41 Appendix 4 - Relational Outcomes, CHV and attitude towards employee Index Items Trust (11 items)
This organization treats people like me fairly and justly. (Trust 1)
Whenever this organization makes an important decision, I know it will be concerned about people like me. (Trust 2)
This organization can be relied on to keep its promises. (Trust 3)
I believe that this organization takes the opinions of people like me into account when making decisions. (Trust 4)
I feel very confident about this organization’s skills. (Trust 5)
This organization has the ability to accomplish what it says it will do. (Trust 6)
Sound principles seem to guide this organization’s behavior. (Trust 7)
This organization does not mislead people like me. (Trust 8)
I am very willing to let this organization make decisions for people like me. (Trust 9)
I think it is important to watch this organization closely so that it does not take advantage of people like me. (Reversed) (Trust 10)
This organization is known to be successful at the things it tries to do. (Trust 11) Commitment (8 items)
I feel that this organization is trying to maintain a long-term commitment to people like me. (Commitment 1)
I can see that this organization wants to maintain a relationship with people like me. (Commitment 2)
There is a long-lasting bond between this organization and people like me. (Commitment 3)
Compared to other organizations, I value my relationship with this organization more. (Commitment 4)
I would rather work together with this organization than not. (Commitment 5)
I have no desire to have a relationship with this organization. (Reversed) (Commitment 6)
I feel a sense of loyalty to this organization. (Commitment 7)
I could not care less about this organization. (Reversed) (Commitment 8) Satisfaction (8 items)
I am happy with this organization. (Satisfaction 1)
Both the organization and people like me benefit from the relationship. (Satisfaction 2)
Most people like me are happy in their interactions with this organization. (Satisfaction 3)
Generally speaking, I am pleased with the relationship this organization has established with people like me. (Satisfaction 4)
Most people enjoy dealing with this organization. (Satisfaction 5)
The organization fails to satisfy the needs of people like me. (Reversed) (Satisfaction 6)
I feel people like me are important to this organization. (Satisfaction 7)
In general, I believe that nothing of value has been accomplished between this organization and people like me. (Reversed) (Satisfaction 8)
