The impact of hedonic and utilitarian social-media branded content on custormers' behaviors, and the moderating role of loyalty

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The Impact of Hedonic and Utilitarian Social-Media Branded

Content on Customers’ Behaviors, and the Moderating Role of

Loyalty

Master Thesis

MSc in Business Admnistration – Marketing 20Th_{of June 2018}

Author Pietro Frabasile Student Number 11632690 pietro.frabasile@student.uva.nl Supervisor dhr. Frank Slisser

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Acknowledgements

I would like to dedicate this master thesis to my grandfather, a man that inspired me throughout my life and that deeply shaped the person I have become. To my parents, who have always supported me and my studies, and without whom this journey would have never happened. A special thank you to my best-friends who have always believed in me and supported in the darkest moments.

I further want to express sincere gratitude to my supervisor, dhr. Frank Slisser, for his patience and guidance throughout the last six months. His coaching and pragmatism were fundamental in the realization of this thesis.

Statement of Originality

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due references are made.

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In the last decade, the spreading use of social media had a huge impact on how companies and brands communicate with their customers. Nowadays, social-medias are one of the most important means for online marketing given the huge audience that companies can reach with their content. Brands are incessantly looking for new promotional and entertaining content to maximize the exposure and effectiveness of their social-media pages, thus improving their brand image and increasing their offerings’ sales. This study examines how different types of social-media branded content affect customers’ brand attitude and purchase intention, and whether and how the role of brand loyalty may moderate those relationships. This is done by means of an online survey-based experiment in which respondents’ purchase intention and brand attitude are measured after assessing their loyalty towards the brand and being randomly shown either a utilitarian or hedonic social-media branded content under the form of Facebook newsfeed posts. The study focuses on high-involvement brands, specifically on the two major mobile-phone brands (Apple and Samsung). Results show that in general hedonic social-media content has stronger effect on brand attitude and purchase intention. More importantly, the study confirms the significant role that brand loyalty plays in moderating the relationships between the two different types of content and the dependent variables. More precisely, hedonic content has a stronger effect on both purchase intention and brand attitude than utilitarian content when customers are more loyal towards the brand; on the other hand, utilitarian content has stronger effect compared to hedonic content when customers are less loyal.

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1. Introduction

In the last decade, the spreading use of social media had a huge impact on how companies and brands communicate with their customers. By developing their own social media pages, companies are able to use them as a major marketing tool and thus creating stronger relationships with the individuals following them (Acker et Al., 2011). The main function of social media marketing is to provide followers and consumers with relevant information in order to reduce their information and search costs, and hopefully lead them to purchase products/services (Laroche et Al., 2013). Previous articles have found that social media-based brand communities have positive effects on the customer-product relationship and on the customer-brand/company relationship, and these translate into higher trust and brand loyalty (Laroche, Habibi & Richard, 2012). Moreover, individuals who follow brand pages on social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) tend to be loyal and committed to the brand (Bagozzi et Dholakia, 2006). By using social media, brands can reach a huge number of individuals by advertising their offerings or by creating their own content known as branded content. On the web, brands tend to offer and advertise mainly price promotions and other incentives to attract new customers and drive short-term sales, while to reinforce long-term brand loyalty they usually come up with more engaging and emotional campaigns (Keller, 2016). Therefore, a new customer may be attracted to interact with a brand because it is offering some kind of economic benefit or convenience, but after a first interaction may decide to cut the relationship with that brand (Pitta et Al., 2006). On the other hand, a recent and extensive report on customer experience (Forrester, 2017) reported that customers are almost five times more loyal when they feel an emotional connection with the brand, hence one might say that the message behind the brand social-media posts may have a different effect depending on whether it is a new customer or not. Thus, the type and strength of relationships that customers have with the brands definitely play a role in determining how

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they will perceive and react to different types of branded content, and this in turn will likely affect their purchase intention (PI) and attitude towards the brand (or brand attitude, BA) (Bruhn et Al., 2012; Kim et Ko, 2012). This research is particularly interested in investigating the moderating role of customer loyalty on the above cited behavioral variables. Previous marketing literature suggests that customers move along different phases of loyalty (Dick & Basu, 1994) and that certain variables influence loyalty development more than others (Oliver, 1999). Brand loyalty was found to be positively affected by brand content offering advantageous campaigns (price promotions), relevant content and content that is popular among Facebook friends (Erdogmus & Cicek, 2012). Since the majority of social media users trust information obtained through a brand’s official profile, brands’ SMC has a positive effect on both behavioral and attitudinal loyalty (Nisar and Whitehead, 2016). Establishing customer loyalty is a central marketing focus for brands (Watson et Al., 2015), but even more important is understanding what type of value messages contained in brands’ marketing content affect customers’ behaviors, and how this information is processed by individuals based on the relationship they have with the brands, whether weaker or stronger, since acquiring new customers is significantly more expensive than retaining existing ones (Gallo, 2014).

The advertising literature divides the advertising messages content into utilitarian/functional and hedonic/emotional content (Chitturi, Raghunathan and Mahajan, 2008; Zhang et Al., 2014; Kelley et Al., 2014), furthermore in an extensive economic model investigating advertising effectiveness, brand loyalty and pricing, Chioveanu finds that loyal customers are extremely responsive to engaging advertisement, regardless of the price of the product being advertised. The author defines engaging advertisement as advertising that does not focus on the price or the product and its features, but rather on the hedonic associations related to the brand (i.e. “Friends drinking happily Coca-Cola”). On the other hand,

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indifferent customers (or new customers) tend to be extremely price-sensitive and care more about the functionality of the ad, hence they are more affected by the utilitarian messages of advertisements (I. Chioveanu, 2008). A more recent research by Curran & Healy (2014) empirically demonstrated that value variables such as price, reward programs, meeting expectations, inertia, social bonding (functional, social, emotional) have a central role in loyalty development, but their effect varies according to whether customers have a low degree or a high degree of loyalty towards the brand. Their findings highlight the fact that when making a purchase decision, customers that are part of the lowest stage of loyalty take more into account price, convenience and reward programs, but in order for them to move towards higher stages of loyalty the brand needs to provide a clear signal of value. In other words, following their results, customers are attracted by price and convenience in their early experience with brand, but these functional variables “will only take a customer a short way toward true loyalty (Curran et Healy, 2014 p. 381). Previous papers focused either on which value variables are more important in different stages of loyalty (Curran et Healy, 2014) or on different type of advertising effectiveness (Chiovenau, 2008; Chitturi, Raghunathan and Mahajan, 2008; Zhang et Al., 2014), but there is little or no research specifically about how social media branded content(that can be either advertisements or simply engaging posts on the brand’s social media page) expressing a certain type of value message may influence customers’ purchase intention and brand attitude based on their degree of loyalty. Given the importance of social media in today’s marketing context (Acker et Al., 2011; Nisar and Whitehead, 2016), and that most companies do not comprehend what their customers really value on social media (Woodcock, Green, & Starkey, 2011), this research aims to shed light on what type of social media branded content is more effective in terms of brand attitude and purchase intention, and how this effectiveness is moderated by the degree of loyalty customers have towards the brand. As for managerial contributions, the research will shed

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light on how brands can improve and sharpen their social media marketing strategies based on different customers’ segments, thus to tailor the type of social media interaction they will have with each customer according to his/her personal relationship with the brand. Being able to understand how to create the best combinations of social media posts based on the value messages behind them, not only will improve brands’ ability to attract new customers, but more importantly it will help their capacity to retain and keep entertained the already loyal individuals, which are the most valuable in terms of profit to the brand.

Given the findings about customer values motivating continued user interaction on brands’ social media pages (Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal, & Hughes, 2013; Nisar and Whitehead, 2016; Shi, Chen et Chow, 2016; Potgieter et Naidoo, 2017), the calls for future research to dig more into the effects of different types of social media marketing campaigns on loyalty (Erdogmus et Cicek, 2012), and the fact that brand social media presence and advertising content were found to have a strong impact both on purchase intention and brand attitude (Bruhn et Al., 2012; Naylor et Al., 2012; Hutter et Al., 2013) and loyalty (Nisar et Whitehead, 2016), the question about what type of social media content is the most appropriate for customers with different degrees of loyalty, and its effect on brand attitude and purchase intention, remains unsolved. The present paper will fill in the gap by investigating an explicit link between the value messages entailed in brand social media content and their impact on customers’ purchase intention and brand attitude and whether and how customer’s loyalty moderates these effects. New customers may be more attracted by a certain type of social media content, while loyal customers by others. In other words, the aim of the present research is to show how content expressing a utilitarian message, such as price promotions and convenience, and hedonic content emphasizing entertainment, enjoyment and emotional connection with the brand, differently impact the purchase intention and brand

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attitude of individuals in lower phases of loyalty compared to more loyal individuals. Hence the question this paper wants to address is the following:

How do hedonic and utilitarian branded social-media content differently impact customers’ purchase intention (PI) and brand attitude (BA), given the moderating role of brand loyalty?

2. Literature Review

2.1 User Interaction & Value dimensions

Individuals follow brands’ social media pages for various reasons. They are either brand-conscious, meaning that they view brands as symbols of status and prestige, or value-conscious, meaning they engage with brands’ social media to check and compare different offerings and prices thus to get the best value for the money they spend (Ismail, 2017). Clearly then, the type of content that brands share and advertise on their social medias will affect customers in different ways, varying according to their personal values, needs and their history with the brand (Kucharska, 2017). Especially the underlying value messages behind the social media posts content is likely to affect the degree of interaction with the brand and whether customers will keep interacting or not. Research has demonstrated that the level of user continued interaction (UCI) with the brand’s page content is significantly affected by their personal perception of value (Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal, & Hughes, 2013). According to customer value theory (CVT) (Sweeney & Soutar, 2001) customers have three different dimensions of value, namely functional, social, and emotional value and they make choices based on the importance attached to each of these dimensions. Based on the integration of previous literature, a recent paper (Shi, Chen et Chow, 2016) identified the main factors influencing each value dimension in terms of brand social media pages interaction through a qualitative study. Specifically, for functional value were included economic benefits,

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product-related learning, and information quality factors, and for emotional value: entertainment and arousal factors. The study found that all the components (except for product-related learning) had a significantly positive effect on user continued interaction, with functional value components having the greater impact followed by emotional value components and social value components. However, an even more recent quantitative study investigating a very similar matter contradict these findings. When looking at factors explaining user loyalty in a social media branded page, again both service quality factors, such as trust and social influence, and utility factors, such as perceived usefulness/functionality of the page content affect user continuance intention, but this time the social value variables had a greater impact than the functional value one (Potgieter et Naidoo, 2017). As mentioned in the introduction, also the study by Curran and Healy (2014) recognizes functional, emotional and social value dimensions and finds that all these three play a role in determining customer’s choices and loyalty. For convenience, and based on these findings, the paper will focus just on the functional and emotional value dimensions since they seem to be most important and valued by customers.

2.2 Hedonic & Utilitarian Factors

As already mentioned the paper will focus on functional and emotional value dimensions of social media branded content, what distinguish these two dimensions are representing factors such as economic benefits, convenience and product attributes for the functional dimension, while entertainment and arousal factors for the emotional dimension. These characteristics are closely related the hedonic and utilitarian theory. According to a number of previous articles, customers’ attitudes towards brands, products and advertisements is based on two major components: hedonic and utilitarian motives (Batra et Ahtola, 1991; Chitturi, Raghunathan et Mahajan, 2008). Utilitarian values are identified as efficient and

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rational motives, and they are describing features of those consumers that seek convenience and functionality (Kwon et Jain, 2009). On the other hand, hedonic motives describe consumers who seek affective gratification, entertainment, enjoyment (Babin et Al., 1994; Batra et Ahtola, 1991; Chitturi, Raghunathan et Mahajan, 2008). Given the similarities in defining functional and utilitarian value (Batra et Ahtola, 1991; Sweeney & Soutar, 2001; Kwon et Jain, 2009; Shi, Chen et Chow, 2016) and in defining emotional and hedonic value (Babin et Al., 1994; Batra et Ahtola, 1991; Sweeney & Soutar, 2001; Chitturi, Raghunathan et Mahajan, 2008; Shi, Chen et Chow, 2016) to avoid confusion, the rest of the paper is going to use “hedonic” and “utilitarian” dimensions to describe the social media content displayed to participants and the impact they have on customers’ decisions. In a more recent study investigating the drivers of purchase intention in the context of online shopping, both utilitarian and hedonic factors such as perceived usefulness and enjoyment respectively were found to positively affect purchase intention, with the hedonic values having a stronger positive impact than the utilitarian ones (Wang et Al., 2013). In an even more recent study (le Roux et Maree, 2016) the authors found a positive significant relationship between hedonic motives and brand attitude in the context of social media brand communities, while a negative non-significant relationship was found between utilitarian motives and brand attitude.

2.3 Loyalty

A lot of research has been done on customer loyalty with the most important contributions made by Oliver (1999) and Dick & Basu (1994) which both propose that loyalty is not static but rather there are different phases ranging from little or no loyalty to true loyalty. According to Oliver (1999) there are four phases, namely cognitive loyalty, affective loyalty, conative loyalty and action loyalty, while Dick & Basu (1994) derive three stages, no loyalty, spurious loyalty and latent loyalty. Cognitive loyalty, the first phase, is based on costs

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and benefits provided by the brand to the customer; loyalty in this stage is created because of the brand attribute information available to the consumer indicating that one brand is preferable to another. The subsequent phase is Affect loyalty which is similar to the Dick & Basu’s notion of Spurious loyalty, it is based on cumulative satisfactory experiences and it is translated in liking or affect development toward the brand, at the same time it is easily influenced by familiarity and social influence. Conative loyalty (or Latent loyalty) is based on the affect developed towards the brand which motivates the intention to rebuy products from the brand, but the consumer is still not deeply attached to the brand. The highest stage of loyalty is Action loyalty (or true loyalty), which is translated into deep commitment to rebuy, positive word of mouth, patronage toward the brand and willingness to overcome possible instances that might cause switching behavior. The theoretical contribution made by the two studies is that customers start from a stage where loyalty is little or non-existing, to a point where loyalty toward the brand is very strong. Hence individuals that are less loyal will either not yet be a customer of the brand, or one of those subjects that would cut the interaction with the brand right after having received better offerings from another one. On the other hand, individuals in more loyal are the ones that keep interacting with the brand, trust it, are willing to pay a premium and recommend it to others (Pitta et Al, 2006; Forrester Research, 2016). What is important to notice here is that the individuals that are less loyal are mainly driven by a comparison of the benefits and convenience that they can get from one brand compared to another hence by utilitarian motives, while more loyal individuals are mainly driven by the affect and relationship that one has with the brand, and by his/her enjoyment and entertainment with the brand, hence hedonic motives. As mentioned the loyalty literature is very wide, but there is little or none empirical analysis trying to understand the moderating role that loyalty may play on the perception of different types of branded content and/or advertising and the consequential effects on customers’ actions. The research by Curran et

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Healy (2014) attempted to do this. By merging the theoretical findings by Oliver (1999) and Dick & Basu (1994) and by asking questions to the subjects about a specific brand they identified three different stages of loyalty, namely, high loyalty, intermediate loyalty and low loyalty, which are comparable to the continuums identified by Oliver and Dick & Basu (Curran et Healy, 2014). Previous studies identified antecedents and value-based variables that are critical to loyalty development, but what is particularly interesting and relevant from the study of Curran & Healy (2014) is that they studied whether the relationships between those variables and loyalty hold true across all the different stages of loyalty or whether it changes in terms of attitude and commitment. In their analysis, they included utility-based variables such as price, convenience, risk aversion, reward programs, as well as hedonic variables such as perceived value, perceived superiority, meeting expectations and social bonding. The findings show that all the variables cited above are significantly associated with loyalty in general, but part of them have an influence on brand loyalty at an early stage while becoming irrelevant at later stages (Curran et Healy, 2014). More precisely, on the one hand the effect of the emotional attachment variables is more significant in explaining the movement toward higher stages of loyalty, on the other hand the impact of functional/utility-based variables is stronger in the lower stage of loyalty while substantially decreasing moving toward higher stages. In other words, a utility-based factor such as price is found to be a primary driver for a low level of loyalty, while having lesser impact moving toward higher stages of loyalty. Thus, customers may be attracted by economic/utility benefits in the early phase of their experience with the brand, but to push them towards higher phases of loyalty brands need to provide clear cues of value, and social and emotional connection with the brand. Thus, the aim of this research is to investigate the moderating role that attitudinal loyalty may have in the relationship between hedonic/utilitarian branded content and purchase

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intention and brand attitude and given the importance of social networks in nowadays society, it will focus specifically on different types of branded social media content.

2.4 High Involvement Products & Loyalty

In this section describes which brands and product categories are included in the research. There are two main broad categories of products: high-involvement and low-involvement products. According to the Business Dictionary high-low-involvement goods are “High capital value goods, hence relatively expensive products, that are purchased only after long and careful consideration, such as cars”, while low-involvement products are defined as “Consumable items that entail minimal effort and consideration on the part of the consumer prior to purchase since they do not have a substantial effect on the buyer’s lifestyle and hence are not that significant investment. A low-involvement product can also be an item that is habitually purchased and so the decision to do so requires little effort.” In other words, low-involvement products are relatively inexpensive and pose a low risk to the buyer if he/she makes a mistake by purchasing them. Therefore, examples of low-involvement products are fast mover consumer goods, while examples of high-involvement products are more durable goods such as cars, and electronic devices like laptops and smartphones. As the present paper investigates the impact of branded social-media posts on customers’ purchase intention and brand attitude and the moderating role of loyalty we will focus on high-involvement products, since a significantly strong positive relationship between high-involvement products and loyalty has been found (Quester & Lim, 2003). Moreover, given the fact that mobile advertising spending worldwide tripled between 2014 and 2016, and that in 2016 more than half of the users of the major social-medias accessed the platforms solely on their mobile device (Nanigans, 2018), the research will focus only on high-involvement goods, specifically on smartphones brands (i.e. Apple and Samsung), given their relevancy in our day-to-day life

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and in today’s marketing advertising spending. We focus on the two most used mobile phone brands in an attempt to generalize the results to the mobile-phone industry.

2.5 Hypotheses Development & Theoretical Framework

Drawing on previous advertising and loyalty literature, this section focuses on highlighting the relevant findings for the present paper, while developing and formulating the hypotheses that are going to be tested. First, given the amount of literature relating utilitarian and hedonic advertising dimensions to brand attitude and purchase intention, and given that in general hedonic motives in advertising have been found to have a more impactful positive effect on both purchase intention and brand attitude compared to utilitarian motives (Wang et Al., 2013; le Roux et Maree, 2016) we hypothesize the following:

H1: Individuals in the hedonic condition will have a higher purchase intention compared to those in the utilitarian condition.

H2: Individuals in the hedonic condition will have a higher brand attitude compared to those in the utilitarian condition.

On the one hand, this paper expects hedonic social media content to have the opposite effect than utilitarian content. First of all, as found in the extensive report made by Forrester Research, customers become almost five times more loyal when they feel an emotional connection with the brand. Moreover, to nurture this loyalty companies should engage in a hedonic/emotional way throughout the whole customer experience (hence also on their media channels and the content within them), this in turn translates in a higher purchase intention and a more positive attitude towards the brand in general. This is in line with what stated above. Again, Chiovenau in her model finds that customer that are loyal to a brand are extremely responsive to engagement advertising regardless of the price of the product being

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advertised. She defines engaging advertisements as content emphasizing hedonic associations, such as entertainment, emotional value, enjoyment and arousal factors (Babin et Al., 1994; Batra et Ahtola, 1991; Sweeney & Soutar, 2001; Chitturi, Raghunathan et Mahajan, 2008; Shi, Chen et Chow, 2016). This finding again is supported by the empirical paper of Curran and Healy which finds that the effect of emotional attachment variables (like commitment, perceived value and social bonding) is more significant than utilitarian variables in explaining the movement toward higher degrees of loyalty. In other words, more loyal individuals’ purchase likelihood and attitude strength towards the brand is more affected by abstract (or hedonic) factors rather than utilitarian attributes like price and convenience (Curran et Healy, 2014).

H3a: The more loyal an individual is toward the brand the higher the impact of hedonic content on purchase intention while the lower the impact of utilitarian content.

H3b: The more loyal an individual is toward the brand, the higher the impact of hedonic content on brand attitude, while the lower the impact of utilitarian content.

On the other hand, it has been empirically proved that the impact of utility-based variables, such as price and convenience is stronger on individuals that are less loyal to the brand, while their impact decreases as the loyalty of individuals increases (Curran et Healy, 2014). Moreover, the type and strength of relationships that customers have with the brands definitely play a role in determining how they will perceive and react to different types of branded content, and this in turn will likely affect their purchase intention (PI) and attitude towards the brand (or brand attitude, BA) (Bruhn et Al., 2012; Kim et Ko, 2012). These notions are supported by the fact that brand social-media presence and advertising content

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were found to have a strong impact both on purchase intention and brand attitude (Bruhn et Al., 2012; Naylor et Al., 2012; Hutter et Al., 2013). Another important finding is made by Chiovenau in the advertising literature, discerning the effects of utilitarian and emotional contents. The author develops a model proving that new customers (hence individuals with a low degree of loyalty towards a specific brand) tend to be extremely price-sensitive and care more about the functionality of the ad, hence they are more affected by the utilitarian messages of advertisements rather than the hedonic ones (I. Chioveanu, 2008). Following previous literature, the present paper will address the following hypotheses:

H4a: The less loyal an individual is toward the brand, the lower the impact of social-media hedonic content on purchase intention, while the higher the impact of utilitarian content.

H4b: The less loyal an individual is toward the brand, the lower the impact of social-media hedonic content on brand attitude, while the higher the impact of utilitarian content.

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3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Design

An online survey-based experiment with a between subject 2 (utilitarian/hedonic social-media content) x 2 (Apple/Samsung) design was used to test the hypothesized relationships. The survey-experimental design is a way to examine causal relationships between variables (Lewis and Saunders, 2012). The following sections are dedicated to a further discussion of the methodology of the research. First an overview of the sample is provided, followed by a description of the variables employed in the examination and the scales used to measure them. Lastly, the statistical approach used for the analysis is presented.

3.2 Sample

Participants of the survey experiment were recruited with non-probability sampling techniques, such as convenience, volunteer and snowball sampling; a reward was used in order to motivate individuals to participate (i.e. 25eu Amazon gift card) which it has been randomly assigned at the end of the study. In total, 346 individuals answered the survey of which 15 did not complete in its entirety and 59 did not owned either a Apple or Samsung mobile phone and therefore were excluded from the analysis, leaving 272 valid responses. The participants came from 46 different nationalities, mainly from Italy (24%), Netherlands (21%), Germany (13%) and UK (9%), 96% were aged between 18 and 30 of which 90% students and 10% young professionals, 56 percent were female, and everyone had a Facebook account. Thus, the sample represents relatively young consumers that are all smart-phones and social-media users and it is interesting from a marketing perspective understanding how the individuals part of that generation perceives different types of branded social-media content. The survey comprehended 25 questions in total. After answering the demographic questions participants are asked which brand their mobile phone is, the choice was between Apple, Samsung and other. As already stated, who answered “other” was excluded from the

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study, since for convenience the research focuses only on Apple and Samsung. Of the 272 participants, 200 had an Apple phone, while 72 had Samsung. The first part of the questionnaire focused on assessing participants’ loyalty; then after having been randomly assigned to one of the two conditions (utilitarian or hedonic), one of the two types of branded social-media content was showed to the individuals, followed by a series of manipulation questions about how they perceived the content. Finally, in the last part of the survey brand attitude and purchase intention were assessed. The survey ended by giving the participants more information about the research, and who wanted to take part to the raffle for the Amazon gift card was invited to leave his/her email. The following section will discuss details of the variables employed in the study.

3.3 Measures

Loyalty. In the first part of the survey, after having been introduced to the study, asked for their consent to participate, and determining the brand they were most familiar with, the loyalty of the participants towards the brand is measured. The five-level Likert scale developed by Yu et. Al. (2001), which assess loyalty based on the following four factors: positive WOM, complaining behavior, switching behavior and willingness to pay a premium (WPP) was used in this study. The scale comprehends total of 17 items ranging from 1= “strongly disagree” to 5= “strongly agree”. The scale has been used in numerous researches attempting to quantify customer loyalty, it has been validated and it is reliable (Cronbach’s Alpha 0.77). Yu et Al. refined a loyalty scale that was firstly developed by Parasuraman et Al. (1994) called “Reconfigured behavioral-intentions battery” that originally included loyalty to company, external response to problem, propensity to switch, willingness to pay more, and internal response to problem. The authors themselves noted that their scale required refinement, and this was subsequently done by Zeithmal et Al., (1996); Ruyter et Al., (1998),

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Bloemer et Al., (1999), and finally by Yu et Al., (2001). After having measured loyalty, the participants are randomly assigned to one of the two types of branded social-media contents, either utilitarian or hedonic. The content describes the mobile phone brand they selected at the beginning of the survey and it is displayed as a mock-up branded post in a “made-up” Facebook newsfeed as posts either reporting a utilitarian/functional or a more hedonic message, the posts that were showed to participants can be found in the appendix of the paper. The following section describes how the study aims to manipulate the perception of these two dimensions, and which scales were adopted to do so.

Assessing Utilitarian & Hedonic Content. In the following part of the survey, the hedonic and utilitarian dimensions of the social-media branded posts are measured in order to see whether the individuals assigned to each condition, and to whom it has been showed either a utilitarian or a hedonic branded content, actually perceived the posts to be utilitarian or hedonic. As mentioned in the literature review, customers’ attitudes towards brands and products are largely based on utilitarian and hedonic factors (Batra et Ahtola, 1991; Chitturi, Raghunathan et Mahajan, 2008). Utilitarian values are described as rational motives, therefore characterized by features emphasizing economic convenience and benefits, as well as effectiveness, functionality and usefulness. On the other hand, hedonic motives are described by factors emphasizing emotionality, entertainment and gratification. To measure the attitudes towards the branded content the research adopts the scale developed by Voss, Spangenberg and Grohmann (2003), which has been tested and indicated as a generalizable, reliable and valid scale to measure consumer attitudes towards brands and products in terms of hedonic and utilitarian dimensions. Reliability and discriminant, predictive and nomological validity were demonstrated for each dimension (Cronbach’s Alpha 0.9368 and 0.9375 respectively for utilitarian and hedonic). After conducting exploratory factor analysis initially the authors

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found 12 adjective pairs for each dimension. After additional studies the list was reduced to ten adjective pairs for the utilitarian dimension consisting of effective/ineffective, helpful/unhelpful, functional/not functional, necessary/unnecessary, and practical/impractical, beneficial/harmful, useful/useless, sensible/not sensible, efficient/inefficient, productive/unproductive, handy/not handy and ten adjective pairs also for the hedonic dimension: not fun/fun, dull/exciting, not delightful/delightful, not thrilling/thrilling, happy/unhappy, pleasant/unpleasant, cheerful/not cheerful, amusing/not amusing, funny/not funny, emotional/not emotional,. These items were all measured on a five-levels likert scale i.e. 1= “not functional” to 5= “functional”. For each dimension two social media posts were created in the form of Facebook posts mock-ups (a total of four). The utilitarian posts were mainly focused on offering economic benefits (both for Apple and Samsung customers accordingly), in particular one offered a price promotion and the other made a direct comparison with the competing brand, highlighting the superiority of the brand owned by the participants. On the other hand, the two hedonic Facebook posts relied on more abstract and entertaining associations, highlighting the emotional connection that a subject have with the brand. The two types of social-media content posts used in the experiment were pre-tested with 21 respondents external to the sample used in the main analysis (10 saw the utilitarian content, 11 the hedonic one), the difference in means between the two groups was significant at 99% confidence interval therefore the content was processed correctly.

Brand Attitude & Purchase Intention. In the third and last part of the questionnaire, after having seen either utilitarian or hedonic content, the dependent variables attitude towards the brand (ATB) and purchase intention (PI) are assessed using the validated scale developed by Spears & Singh (2004), which have high reliability, Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.94 and 0.97 respectively. This scale is composed by seven items, five of them measuring brand

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attitude: appeal, good/bad, pleasantness, favorability and likeability; the other two measuring purchase intention: purchase interest & likeliness to buy. As for measuring loyalty, the brand attitude scale items were measured on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1= “very unappealing” to 5= “very appealing”, 1= “very bad” to 5= “very good”, 1= “very unpleasant” to 5= “very pleasant”, 1= “very unfavorable” to 5= “very favorable”, and 1= “very unlikeable” to 5= “very likeable”. Same goes for purchase intention: purchase interest ranges from 1= “very low” to 5= “very high” and likeliness to buy ranges from 1= “very unlikely” to 5= “very likely”.

3.4 Statistical Procedure

Data was collected using Qualtrics and later exported and analyzed on SPSS. Dummy variables were created for the two conditions (utilitarian = 0, hedonic = 1) which in this case happen to be the independent variables. As previously mentioned, the numerical moderator loyalty was measured by 17 items (Loy1 to Loy17) with a 5-point Likert scale; four items were counter-indicative items (rLoy10, rLoy11, rLoy12, rLoy15), in other words they were negatively keyed, therefore they were recoded accordingly. Consequently, the variable LoyTOT has been created to measure the overall loyalty of participants. The same procedure was applied to the dependent variables purchase intention and brand attitude respectively PiTOT and BaTOT. Descriptive statistics and normality tests were applied to the variables, the Shapiro-Wilk test showed that none of the variable were normally distributed. There were no missing data. Two One-way ANOVAs for each brand were used to establish the relationship between the two different types of social-media branded content and the dependent variables, and in order to test the moderating role of loyalty the SPSS macro Process of Hayes (2012) was used. Specifically, Model 1 for simple moderation was implemented. Given that the variables violate the normality assumption bootstrapping was

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applied, and Hayes (2012) recommendation to resample 5000 times instead of 1000 was followed.

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4. RESULTS

4.1 Manipulation Checks

To investigate whether the individuals assigned to the two conditions correctly perceived one variable comprehending the ten utilitarian adjective pairs was created (UtiTOT) and one for the ten hedonic adjective pairs (HedTOT) and the means were compared with an independent samples t-test. Of the 272 participants, 154 were in the utilitarian condition and 128 in the hedonic condition. The mean of UtiTOT for the individuals in the utilitarian condition was significantly higher compared to those in the hedonic condition 3.46 (SD= 0.66) versus 2.73 (SD= 0.69). As for HedTOT, the mean of individuals in the hedonic condition was significantly higher than those in the utilitarian condition, respectively 3.61 (SD=0.69) and 2.59 (SD= 0.71). These differences were statistically significant at 95% confidence interval p < 0.001. Specifically of the 200 owning an Apple phone, 107 were assigned to the utilitarian condition, while the of 72 participants owning a Samsung 33 were in the utilitarian condition and 39 in the hedonic one.

4.2 Scales Reliability

Reliability of the scales used in the study were assessed. Reliability is the extent to which data collection techniques or analysis procedures yield consistent findings (Saunders et Al., 2009). The coefficient to measures reliability is Cronbach’s Alpha, and a scale is said to be reliable if its Cronbach’s Alpha is larger than 0.70. Loyalty towards the brand was measured using the scale developed by Parasuraman et Al. (1994) and later refined by Yu et Al., (2001). The scale comprehended 17 items and it was highly reliable, Cronbach’s Alpha equals 0.917. To measure hedonic and utilitarian contents the scales developed by Voss, Spangenberg and Grohmann (2003) were adopted, and they were also highly reliable, Cronbach’s Alpha for utilitarian items equals 0.906, while Cronbach’s Alpha for hedonic

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items equals 0.914. Finally, to measure attitude towards the brand and purchase intention the scale developed by Spears & Singh (2004) was adopted. Cronbach’s Alpha for the brand attitude scale equals 0.898 while Cronbach’s Alpha for the purchase intention scale equals 0.888, therefore all the scales used in the analysis were highly reliable (Cronbach’s Alphas > 0.70). Following a summary table that includes items specifications, loadings and reliability coefficients.

Table 1

Construct Construct Reliability

Loadings Items Source

Loyalty 0.919 0.518 0.597 0.789 0.704 0.769 0.787 0.759 0.749 0.519 0.432 0.744 0.676 0.896 0.753 0.752 Familiarity Knowledge Consideration Trust WOM1 WOM2 WOM3 WOM4 Comp. Behavior1 Comp. Behavior2 Comp. Behavior3 Comp. Behavior4 Switch. Behavior1 Switch. Behavior2 Switch. Behavior3 Yu et Al., (2001)

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0.704 0.633 WPP1 WPP2 Utilitarian Items 0.906 0.743 0.749 0.783 0.690 0.749 0.806 0.825 0.757 0.709 0.642 Ineffective-Effective Unhelpful-Helpful Not Functional-Functional Unnecessary-Necessary Impractical-Practical Harmful-Beneficial Useless-Useful Inefficient-Efficient Unproductive-Productive Not Handy-Handy Voss, Spangenberg and Grohmann (2003) Hedonic Items 0.914 0.641 0.754 0.811 0.780 0.793 0.778 0.769 0.797 0.700 0.695 Not fun-Fun Dull-Exciting Not Delightful-Delightful Not Thrilling-Thrilling Not Happy-Happy Unpleasant-Pleasant Not Cheerful-Cheerful Not Amusing-Amusing Not Funny-Funny Not Emotional-Emotional Voss, Spangenberg and Grohmann (2003)

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Attitude 0.840 0.886 0.846 0.835 Good/Bad Pleasantness Favorability Likeability (2004) Purchase Intention 0.891 0.949 0.949 Purchase Interest Purchase Likeliness

Spears & Singh (2004)

4.3 Main Analysis

Descriptive Statistics were developed for all the numerical variables for both Apple and Samsung customers. A summary of the description of the variables can be found in the table below. For convenience, the table reports the descriptive statistics of the full sample since no significant differences were found between the Apple and Samsung samples, anyway a copy of the three tables can be found in the appendix.

Table 2 Full Sample

Variables Mean SD Min. Max.

Loyalty 3,69 0,73 1,12 5 Brand Attitude 3,82 0,80 1 5 Purchase Intention 3,40 1,05 1 5 N 272

Bivariate correlation analysis was run to assess the relationships between the variables. To check the consistency of correlations three different analyses were run: one for Apple customers, one for Samsung customers and a general one for the full sample. For convenience below is reported only the full-sample correlation matrix, a copy of all the tables

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purchase intention are highly correlated with loyalty (p<0.01), and also between each other. More importantly, both purchase intention and brand attitude are highly correlated with social-media branded content (p<0.05, p<0.01 respectively). There are no significant differences between the general correlation matrix and the Apple-customers one, except that within Apple customers loyalty is significantly correlated with gender (p<0.05). However, correlations of Samsung customers significantly differ from the general table. In particular, the only highly significant correlations are between the dependent variables brand attitude and purchase intention (p<0.01), and between loyalty and social-media branded content (p<0.05). An understandable reason for these differences is that the Samsung sample is significantly lower than the Apple one (N=72 compared to N=200 respectively).

Table 3: Means, Standard Deviations, Correlations (Full sample)

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. Gender 0,57 0,495 - 2. Age 24,09 5,36 -0,037 - 3. Loyalty 3,69 0,73 0,068 -0,96 (0.919) 4. SM Content 0,48 0,5 -0,002 0,065 0,05 (0.835) 5. Brand Attitude 3,82 0,8 0,057 -0,018 0,296** 0,130* (0.901) 6. Purchase Intention 3,4 1,05 0,050 0,065 0,204** 0,162** 0,748** (0.891) **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

To test the relationships between the dependent variable and the independent variables ANOVAs were processed. Of the 272 participants 141 were assigned to the utilitarian condition and 131 to the hedonic condition. In general, individuals in the hedonic condition have a significantly higher purchase intention (M=3.58, SD=1.09) compared to those in the functional condition (M=3.24, SD=1.001), the difference is significant p<0.05. The same applies for brand attitude, the mean of brand attitude for individuals in the hedonic condition

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equals 3,92 (SD=0.87) while for individuals in the utilitarian condition equals 3,71 (SD=0.72), also this difference is significant, p<0.05. Specifically, Apple customers in the hedonic condition were 92 while 108 in the utilitarian, the average purchase intention in the hedonic condition was equal to 3.50 (SD=1.04) while 3.17 (SD=0.96) in the utilitarian p<0.05; while average brand attitude was 3,89 (SD=0.84) in the hedonic condition while 3.69 (SD=0.75) p<0.1. As for the Samsung customers, 33 were assigned to the utilitarian condition, 39 to the hedonic condition. Individuals in the hedonic condition on average had a higher brand attitude (M=3.99, SD=0.96) compared those in the utilitarian condition (M=3.79, SD=0.60) but this difference was not significant. Same applies to purchase intention, individuals in the hedonic condition on average had a purchase intention of 3.78 (SD=1.13), while purchase intention of those in the utilitarian condition was equal to 3.47 (SD=1.08), also this difference was not significant. Thus, in general both purchase intention and brand attitude were significantly higher in the hedonic condition than in the utilitarian condition. Therefore hypotheses 1 and 2 are both confirmed for the general sample and for Apple customers, but not for Samsung customers.

4.4 Moderation model

To test the remaining hypothesis a simple moderation analysis was run on SPSS. As previously mentioned, we used the SPSS macro Process by Hayes (2012) implementing model 1. The independent variable Social-media branded content was coded as dummy variable (0= Utilitarian content, 1= Hedonic content) the variables were mean centered for products following Hayes (2013), and the sample was bootstrapped 5000 times. Two analyses were run, one investigating the moderating effect of loyalty on the relationship between social-media branded content and brand attitude, and one investigating the moderating role of loyalty on the relationship between social-media content and purchase intention, both for

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Apple-customers and Samsung-customers. Even though the number of participants in the two samples were significantly different, some interesting findings have been achieved. The table below summarize the model for the Apple customers.

Table 4 - Moderation Model - Apple Model Summary

R R2 F p

Dependent Variable: Purchase Intention .499 .249 46.519 .000 95% Confidence Interval

Variable B Std. Error t Sig. Lower Bound Upper Bound

Constant 3.337 .063 52.775 .000 3.213 3.462

Loyalty .495 .123 4.025 .000 .252 .738

SM Content .360 .125 2.888 .005 .114 .606

SM Content*Loyalty 1.159 .233 4.970 .000 .699 1.619

The Apple sample included 200 participants, 107 in the utilitarian condition, 93 in the hedonic condition. As it is displayed in table 4 loyalty has a highly positive and significant effect on purchase intention (p<0.01). The same is true for social-media content, here meaning that when the dummy variable takes value of 1, hence hedonic content, purchase intention increases by 0.36 units (p<0.001), this is in line with what found in the previous hypotheses, hedonic content has a higher positive effect on purchase intention than utilitarian content. Finally, the last variable displayed is the interaction term between the dependent variable and the moderator loyalty. The effect is significant, meaning that loyalty definitely plays a role in moderating the effect of social media content on purchase intention; the moderating effect is big in magnitude and as we can see from the graph below it moderates the way in which different social-media posts affect participants. Particularly, when seeing hedonic social-media content, if loyalty increases by one unit, purchase intention increases by 1.16 units compared to the base value, while seeing utilitarian content decreases purchase intention compared to the mean. In other words, the more loyal an individual is the higher the

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effect of hedonic content on purchase intention (i.e. in the graph Low SMC is utilitarian content, High SMC is hedonic content). On the other hand, if loyalty decreases, the effect of hedonic content negatively impacts purchase intention, while the effect of utilitarian content increases purchase intention. Thus, hypotheses 3a and 4a are confirmed for the apple customers. The more loyal an individual is toward the brand the higher the impact of hedonic content on purchase intention while the lower the impact of utilitarian content. The less loyal an individual is toward the brand, the lower the impact of social-media hedonic content on purchase intention, while the higher the impact of utilitarian content. Notable, is the difference in purchase intention within the two conditions. When in the hedonic condition, the difference between high and low loyalty individuals is much larger than in the utilitarian condition.

Figure 1

Apple customers’ Purchase Intention

1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5 5,5 6 Low SMC High SMC Pur cha se Int ent io n Low Loyalty High Loyalty

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Figure 2

Apple customers’ Brand Attitude

The results are slightly different for brand attitude. As it is displayed in Table 5 loyalty has a slightly higher positive effect on brand attitude than on purchase intention, while social-media content in general have a lower effect (0.23) on brand attitude than on purchase intention, however this coefficient was not even significant at 10% CI. As for the interaction term, loyalty still has significant moderating effect on the relationship between social-media

1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5 5,5 6 Low SMC High SMC Br and A tti tude Low Loyalty

Table 5 - Moderation Model - Apple Model Summary

R R2 F p

Dependent Variable: Brand Attitude .509 .259 33.252 .000 95% Confidence Interval

Constant 3.796 .049 77.147 .000 3.699 3.893

Loyalty .510 .092 5.532 .000 .328 .692

SM Content .231 .097 2.384 .018 .040 .423

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content and brand attitude (p<0.001), but it is lower in magnitude compared to the relationship between social-media content and purchase intention. Specifically, in the hedonic condition, when loyalty is low brand attitude is significantly lower compared to when loyalty is high, while, on the other hand, in the utilitarian condition when loyalty is high brand attitude is significantly lower than when loyalty is lower as displayed in graph 2. Therefore, we can confirm also hypotheses 3b and 4b; the more loyal an individual is toward the brand, the higher the impact of hedonic content on brand attitude, while the lower the impact of utilitarian content. The less loyal an individual is toward the brand, the lower the impact of social-media hedonic content on brand attitude, while the higher the impact of utilitarian content. In general, the moderating effect is stronger on the relationship between the independent variable and purchase intention compared to brand attitude. Again, it is important to notice that also in this case the difference between the brand attitude of high and low loyal individuals is much larger in the hedonic condition than in the utilitarian condition. The results are not much different for Samsung customers, even though it has to be said that sample size was much lower compared to Apple customers, hence the results are generalizable to a limited extent. Table 6 shows the coefficients for the dependent variable purchase intention.

Table 6 - Moderation Model - Samsung Model Summary

R R2 F p

Dependent Variable: Purchase Intention .612 .3756 11.304 .000 95% Confidence Interval

Constant 3.469 .132 26.291 .000 3.296 3.733

Loyalty .031 .173 .179 .858 -.315 .378

SM Content .354 .259 1.367 .176 -.162 .872

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First, loyalty and branded social-media content both have a positive non-significant effect on both purchase intention and brand attitude, therefore, as previously said, we cannot confirm hypotheses 1 and 2 for Samsung customers. However, the moderating effect of loyalty on both dependent variables does take place and is strongly significant. Consistent with Apple customers, the moderating effect is way stronger on purchase intention than on brand attitude, hence the type of branded social-media content seems to have a more important role in determining the level of purchase intention than the level of brand attitude. Again, following the results for the Apple customers, the differences between the dependent variables within the social-media content conditions, is larger in the hedonic condition than in the utilitarian one.

Figure 3

Samsung customers’ Purchase Intention

1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5 5,5 6 Low SMC High SMC Pur cha se Int ent io n Low Loyalty High Loyalty

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Table 7 - Moderation Model - Samsung Model Summary

R R2 F p

Dependent Variable: Brand Attitude .526 .277 7.025 .000

95% Confidence Interval

Constant 3.798 .102 37.110 .000 3.594 4.002

Loyalty .089 .155 .577 .565 -.220 .399

SM Content .199 .195 1.021 .310 -.189 .588

SM Content*Loyalty .8776 .291 3.010 .004 .295 1.459

Figure 4

Samsung customers’ Brand Attitude

1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5 5,5 6 Low SMC High SMC Br and A tti tude Low Loyalty High Loyalty

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5. DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION

This final chapter elaborate on the findings of this study. A general discussion of the results is provided, followed by the theoretical and managerial implications that these findings imply. Finally, limitations of the present study and suggestions for future research are discussed.

5.1 General Discussion

The aim of this paper was to apply previous findings of advertising and loyalty literature to a social media context, by analyzing how less loyal and more loyal individuals differently perceive utilitarian and hedonic social media content, and how this impacts their brand attitude and purchase intention. Given the importance that social-media marketing gained in the last decade (Acker et Al., 2011; Laroche et Al., 2013), the fact that mobile advertising spending worldwide tripled between 2014 and 2016, and that in 2016 more than half of the users of the major social-medias accessed the platforms solely on their mobile device (Nanigans, 2018), the research focused on the mobile-phone industry, using Apple and Samsung as the main reference brands for the industry. This thesis contributes to previous literature in two main ways.

First, confirming what Wang et Al., (2013) and le Roux et Maree, (2016) found in the context of online shopping, hedonic content in general have a stronger positive effect than utilitarian content on both brand attitude and purchase intention, therefore this finding can be extended to a social-media marketing context as well. This result is definitely true for Apple customers, while for Samsung customers the coefficients go in that direction but are not statistically significant.

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Second, loyalty plays a statistically significant role in moderating the relationships between the two types of social-media branded content and the two dependent variables. Specifically, as predicted, the more loyal an individual is, the more his/her brand attitude and purchase intention will be positively affected by hedonic content, while negatively affected by utilitarian content. On the other hand, less loyal individuals are more positively affected by utilitarian content than by hedonic content. This hold true across both brands. More precisely, the differences within each condition (hedonic and utilitarian) are much larger for purchase intention than for brand attitude, meaning that the moderating effect of loyalty is significantly larger for purchase intention. These findings are in line with what has been found by Chiovenau (2008) and Curran & Healy (2014). That is, utilitarian attributes like economic benefits and convenience are perceived to be more important for individuals that have less attachment to the brand, while hedonic attributes, such as emotionality and entertainment, have a stronger influence on customers that are more loyal to the brand.

5.2.1 Theoretical implications

The present paper is one of the firsts in applying the theoretical reasonings and findings of similar previous researches to the social-media marketing context. While there are plenty of papers investigating the impact of advertising and social-media advertising on customers attitudinal variables, there is virtually no research investigating how different types of attributes (hedonic and utilitarian) within the content differently affect customers. Second, previous research investigating the effect of hedonic and utilitarian attributes on purchase intention and brand attitude (Wang et Al., 2013; le Roux et Maree, 2016) did not test for the moderating role that loyalty might have had on those relationships, while this study clearly shows the central importance that this variable has in defining the effectiveness of branded social-media content and the dependent variables. Third, the study confirms the high

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reliability of the scales used in the research (Yu et Al., 2001; Voss, Spangenberg and Grohmann 2003; Spears & Singh 2004). More importantly those scales were used in different contexts, hence the present paper confirms their applicability to a social-media marketing context given the high reliability coefficients that have been found, as reported in section 4.2.

5.2.2 Managerial implications

The results have practical implications for social-media marketing managers, especially those marketing high-involvement products such as electronic devices. These findings statistically prove that customers that have different levels of loyalty towards the brand are distinctly influenced by hedonic and utilitarian branded social-media content in terms of purchase intention and brand attitude. Thus, when creating campaigns on social-medias brands should take into account the present findings; particularly when targeting customers, it is important to remember that more loyal individuals respond better to emotional and engaging content, while on the other hand less loyal individuals are more attracted by content emphasizing convenience and economic benefits. In general, hedonic content has been found to have a higher positive effect than utilitarian content, and specifically purchase intention is the dependent variable that is more heavily affected. Being able to understand how to create the best combinations of social media posts based on the value messages behind them, not only will improve brands’ ability to attract new customers, but more importantly it will help their capacity to retain and keep entertained the already loyal individuals, which are the most valuable in terms of profit to the brand.

5.3 Limitations & Future Research

The current research has several limitations. First, only high-involvement brands were used in this analysis, including also low-involvement product might have been alter the

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direction of results, I believe including low-involvement products in future research would be a valuable way to extend research in this field, and also a way to generalize the results for the whole mobile-phones industry. Also, it would be interesting to see if these results hold true also for other product categories. Second, the current research was conducted using convenience and volunteering sampling techniques, hence representativeness, generalizability and the external validity of the results may be compromised and not guaranteed. Third, the study is not a real experiment, rather it is a vignette study hence a hypothetical situation, the main disadvantage of this is that it is not the same as experiencing a stimulus or action in everyday life, it is more an intention than actual behavior. Future research should conduct the research in a real-experimental setting to strengthen the results. In addition, the study was conducted using Facebook as the only social-media platform, using other platforms such as Twitter and Instagram would be helpful to see how the relationships investigated in the present study may vary on other social medias. Finally, common method bias may exist as subjects were asked to complete all the questions at the same point in time and through self-reporting, future research should use different data sources or multiple time points to collect data.

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The impact of hedonic and utilitarian social-media branded content on custormers' behaviors, and the moderating role of loyalty