Brand Communication on Short Video Platforms:
A content analysis of online engagement factors in TikTok
Master Thesis
Name: Doreen Feng - 12063835
Supervisor: Dr James Slevin
Master’s Programme: Communication Science
Corporate Communication Track
Abstract
Short video platforms have risen sharply recent years. Brands also noticed the popularity of them, and have tried to invest their brand communication on this emerging social media.
However, due to lack of operational guidelines, brands are unable to develop appropriate content strategies to engage with consumers effectively, which leads to big wastes of efforts of creating short videos that consumer are not interested. To solve this problem, the relationship of content types of short videos that brands post and consumer engagement, and the moderation effect of exposure to spokespeople on this relationship were tested. This study aimed to deliver practical suggestions for organizations to better implement brand communication strategy on short video platforms. TikTok, a Chinese skyrocketing short video platform was adopted as the
representative case. The quantitative content analysis method was used to analyze 526 short videos that Top10 influential brands on TikTok posted during one month. As the results
indicated, content type was not a strong factor for the posting strategy on short video platforms. Only promotional content negatively predicted consumers sharing behavior on short video significantly, which suggested that brands should avoid using promotional content if they launch a marketing campaign on Tiktok. Besides, moderation effect was significant in short videos with informative and promotional contents on commenting behavior. It suggested that brands should increase the exposure to real people, especially celebrities, when they plan to release information or promote their product to consumers on short video platforms.
Brand Communication on Short Video Platforms: A content analysis of online engagement factors in TikTok
Short-video applications enable users to capture memorable moments, and create, edit, share and view fragmentary videos that last for few seconds or minutes, such as TikTok,
Snapchat, Instagram, Kuaishou (Xie, Tsai & Zhang, 2019). Since most short video platforms are mobile applications that capture brief attention spans and provide relative convenience for users to consume visual content while they are on the go, it has risen sharply recent years among other social media (Zea & Heekyoung, 2019). For instance, TikTok, the Chinese short-form video has over 150 million daily active users. Its users open the app 4.7 times daily and nearly 22% of which use the app for more than 1 hour per a day (Zhang, Wu & Liu, 2019).
Corporate regard social media as important channels of their brand communication. In the past few years, about $4.3 billion has been invested in social media marketing by companies (Williamson, 2011). Many consumers have become followers of organizations that they like on social media, and engage with the brands by “liking”, “sharing” or “commenting” the posts (Grančay, 2014). Since consumer engagement on social media has been found to positively influence consumers’ emotional bond with a brand, as to increase brand usage intent, corporate utilize social media as an ongoing communication tool to interact and maintain ongoing
relationships with consumers (Tuškej & Podnar, 2018).
Organizations also notice the popularity of short video, and have tried to invest their brand communication to better engage with consumers on this emerging social media. However, practitioners are lacking of operational guidelines as reference and are unable to develop
appropriate strategies to engage effectively on short video platform since it is the latest social media sensations (Yurie, 2018). For example, some practitioners regard short video application
as advertising platform and post abundant elaborate ads on it, which is not in line with customers' preferences on short video platform. Also, many of them apply communication strategies of other social media but found it not suitable on short video platform. Consequently, corporate waste time and money to post short videos that consumer are not interested, and miss the opportunity to better communicate and foster deepen relationships with them.
Appealing content has been found to be the most important element in establishing a successful social media presence (Parent et al, 2011). And content attributes (e.g. emotional, humorous, and directly informative advertising) are highly associated with consumer
engagement (Lee, Hosanagar & Nair, 2018). On the other hand, some top brands adopted
spokespeople as creative brand strategies on social media (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). And they used spokespeople to build a brand-consumer relationship with consumers (Fleck & Zeitoun, 2014). With the context of short video platforms as a new killer social media applications, the Research Question is:
What content types of short videos that corporate post achieves higher consumers’ engagement in the form of liking, sharing or commenting? And if exposure to spokespeople has an impact on this relationship?
This research looked at the relationship of content types (i.e. informative, promotional, remuneration, social and entertainment content) of brand posts on short video platform and consumers’ engagement in the forms of liking, sharing and commenting, and the moderation effect of exposure to spokespeople (i.e. no exposure to spokespeople, exposure to celebrities and exposure to regular people) on this relationship. The previous researches have investigated on the success of brand communication on social media like Facebook and Twitter (see for instance, De Vries, Gensler & Leeflang, 2012; Menon et al, 2019; Seo & Park, 2018), little is known about
how short video platforms play their role in the engagement with consumers. This study aimed to deliver practical suggestions for organizations to better implement brand communication strategy on short video platforms. It provided practitioners guidelines to come out with content strategies on short video platforms that could increase consumers’ likability of the brand. To be more specific, practitioners could know what content types motivate more engagement, and whether it is necessary to invite regular people or celebrities to appear in the videos.
In this study, TikTok, a Chinese skyrocketing short video platform was adopted as the typical case. This study analyzed data composed of 526 short videos that corporate posted on TikTok from 17th Oct, 2019 to 17th Nov, 2019. The collected dataset consists of short video posts obtained from 10 authoritative brands’ accounts on TikTok. The quantitative content analysis method was used to code those the short videos that posted on brands account.
Theoretical Framework Brand communication on social media
Social media create commercial opportunities for corporations such as disseminating information to their target consumers, discovering potential consumers (Turban, Bolloju & Liang, 2011), fostering relationships with customer (De Vries, Gensler & Leeflang, 2012), and also serve as a channel for sales promotion, advertisement, recruitment, customer management (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). As brands invest more and more on social media, researchers also noticed this phenomenon and put efforts to investigate brand communication and marketing strategies on those platforms. Jothi, Neelamalar and Prasad (2011) used content analysis to analyze branding communication strategies on Facebook, Twitter and Orkut. They analyzed different social networking sites among top three Indian social networking sites and found that effective strategy should be attractive to their customers, which facilitates consumer satisfaction.
Ashley and Tuten (2015) employed a content analysis of creative strategies content on social media of top brands and found that brands should keep social media content fresh and frequent, and incentive for consumer participation. Wen and Song (2017) conducted a content analysis to examine corporate ethical branding of Fortune 500 companies on YouTube and suggested that interactive and engaging communications are key components of successful ethical branding. Voorveld (2019) combined theoretically and a practically approach to o formulate six directions for future research on brand communication in social media, one of which is personalized brand content in social media. In all, previous studies of this area are more likely to use content
analysis method and pointed out the importance of content strategies and incentives of consumers’ engagement on brand communication of social media.
Consumers’ Engagement with Brand on Social media
Corporate communication scholars emphasis on on two-way communication,
relationship, dialogue and engagement between organization and public for many years (See for instance, Grunig & Grunig, 1992; Marcnamara, 2016). Since social media are intrinsic to
affordance of visibility, persistence, reviewability which enable users to access the brand posts at any time and place, and editability and experimentation which makes consumers to easily
express themselves to the company Bucher & Helmond, 2017), it is the excellent vehicles for corporate to foster relationships and engage with customers (De Vries, Gensler & Leeflang, 2012). Short video platforms with the essence of User-generated content that is a form of customer co-creation value also afford possibilities for users to engage with brands (Xie, Tsai & Zhang, 2019).
Customer engagement behavior included recommendations, word-of-mouth activity, helping other customers, writing blogging or reviews, and engaging in legal action (Van Doorn et
al, 2010). In the social media era, consumers actively engage with corporate by co-creation, positive and negative contribution and co-destruction, while passively engage with firms by consumption, dormancy and detachment (Dolan et al, 2016). On the one hand, researchers focused on business antecedents and outcomes of consumers’ engagement on social media. For instance, Hollebeek, Glynn and Brodie (2014) suggested that consumer brand involvement serves as antecedent of social media engagement, and consumer brand connection and usage intent are outcomes. Guesalaga (2016) found social media engagement predicts social media usage in sales. Oh et al (2017) found consumer engagement behavior on Facebook and YouTube positively correlate with movie gross revenue. On the other hand, factors affecting brand social media post on consumer engagement have been investigated by researchers. Balan (2017) found a strong correlation between numbers of brand posts and engagement which were measured by the number of likes, and sum of likes and comments.
Moreover, content of brand posts largely drives consumer engagement on social media (Dessart et al, 2015). For instance, Schreiner, Fischer and Riedl (2019) reviewed 45 studies to investigated the impact of content characteristics on emotional and behavioral engagement, and found that appeal of the posts and high media richness have a positive effect, which is highly dependent on context factors (e.g. content strategy of brand). Cvijikj and Michahelles (2013) examined the relationship between content characteristics of content types, media types and posting time of brand post and consumer engagement on Facebook. Another empirical investigation researched the brand post engagement on Twitter and Facebook for airlines company. Vividness and interactivity as design factors, and 5 types of contents were examined (Menon et al, 2019). Thus, understanding influential factors especially content strategy of brand post on emerging social media like short video platforms with audiovisual features that could
present communication efforts in a vivid way (Wen & Song, 2017), on consumer engagement is valuable for researchers and practitioners to explore better branding way using new technology.
Besides, consumers’ engagement is primarily manifested as “sharing”, “commenting”, “liking”, “disliking”, “Retweeting”, “Reposting”, “replying”, and using hashtag to engage in brands searchable topics, as well as mentioning brands on their own posts on on social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube) (Menon et al, 2019; Phua et al, 2017; Khan, 2017). On TikTok, “liking”, “sharing” and “commenting” are regarded as the most common way for users’ engagement with brands.
Content Types of Brand Posts
Content of brand post plays an essential role to motive consumer engagement and
facilitate valuable out comes for brands (Malthouse et al., 2013). Previous studies largely applied Uses and Gratification Theory that demonstrated individuals actively use specific media to satisfy specific needs (Katz & Foulkes, 1962) to understand the motivations of brands’ post content on consumer social media engagement (Dholakia et al. 2004; Cvijikj & Michahelles, 2013; Dolan & Goodman, 2016). Three content types (i.e. information, entertainment, remuneration) of brand post were commonly categorized into main groups of social media content by scholars, while Dolan and Goodman (2016) added relational content (also named social content). Based on it, Menon et al (2019) also examined promotional content on brand post engagement.
Informational content refers to posts that contain information about the product, brand and company. It is one of the main gratifications for consumers to participation on brand social media communities (Dolan & Goodman, 2016). Cvijikj and Michahelles (2013) found posts with brand-related information increase the level of consumer engagement in form of liking and
commenting, but not sharing on Facebook brand pages. Findings of Menon et al (2019) showed that informative content has no influence on comments, and is not significantly related to shares on Facebook. Lee et al (2018) found directly informative content is related with lower
engagement on social media. Hence I hypothesis that:
H1a: The more informational content brands post, the less consumers’ engagement in the form of liking that brands achieve on short video platforms.
H1b: The more informational content brands post, the less consumers’ engagement in the form of sharing that brands achieve on short video platforms.
H1c: The more informational content brands post, the less consumers’ engagement in the form of commenting that brands achieve on short video platforms.
Promotional content content involves coupon, contest and special offer for consumers. Although promotions are the mainly concerns when consumer interacts with a brand (Liu et al. (2017), previous study found promotional content not tend to be popular among users on social media (Hong, 2011). Hence I hypothesis that:
H2a: The more promotional content brands post, the less consumers’ engagement in the form of liking that brands achieve on short video platforms.
H2b: The more promotional content brands post, the less consumers’ engagement in the form of sharing that brands achieve on short video platforms.
H2c: The more promotional content brands post, the less consumers’ engagement in the form of commenting that brands achieve on short video platforms.
Remuneration content offers a reward includes monetary incentives, giveaways, compensations and job-related benefit (Dolan & Goodman, 2016). The greater the reward, the
higher engagement with brands. Remuneration content may be extremely effective if the incentives are attractive (Nisar & Whitehead, 2016). Hence I hypothesis that:
H3a: The more remuneration content brands post, the higher consumers’ engagement in the form of liking that brands achieve on short video platforms.
H3b: The more remuneration content brands post, the higher consumers’ engagement in the form of sharing that brands achieve on short video platforms.
H3c: The more remuneration content brands post, the higher consumers’ engagement in the form of commenting that brands achieve on short video platforms.
Social content encourages consumers to engaging with the brand by inviting them to give feedback or asking question to them (Menon et al, 2019). Since it naturally calls for consumer engagement, I hypothesis that:
H4a: The more social content brands post, the higher consumers’ engagement in the form of liking that brands achieve on short video platforms.
H4b: The more social content brands post, the higher consumers’ engagement in the form of sharing that brands achieve on short video platforms.
H4c: The more social content brands post, the higher consumers’ engagement in the form of commenting that brands achieve on short video platforms.
Entertainment content provides pleasure, aesthetic, enjoyment and emotional release for consumer (Dolan & Goodman, 2016). Luo (2002) found entertainment plays more important role to motivate engagement with top brands. Cvijikj and Michahelles (2013) found entertaining content was most influential than information and remuneration to increase consumer
engagement. This is in line with findings of Menon et al (2019), in which entertaining content is found to be most positively related to brand post engagement. Hence I hypothesis that:
H5a: The more entertainment content brands post, the higher consumers’ engagement in the form of liking that brands achieve on short video platforms.
H5b: The more entertainment content brands post, the higher consumers’ engagement in the form of sharing that brands achieve on short video platforms.
H5c: The more entertainment content brands post, the higher consumers’ engagement in the form of commenting that brands achieve on short video platforms.
Moderating effect of exposure to spokespeople
Spokespeople were adopted by top brands as one type of creative strategies on social media. (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). Companies use spokespeople (e.g. ads featuring celebrities, regular people and famous CEOs) as their brand strategy to humanize their brands, in doing so to build a brand-consumer relationship with consumers (Fleck & Zeitoun, 2014). Endorsement of celebrities play important role in brand communication on social media, due to the reason that consumers may transfer much-admired characteristics of celebrities to products that they endorse, in which improve the marketing-communications effectiveness of brands (Erdogan & Drollinger, 2008). Not in line with this, Verhellen and De Pelsmacker (2013) found that the effect of using a celebrity expert endorser to attract additional attention and prominence on brand recognition in self-produced videos posted on YouTube is only marginally reinforced. Besides, regular people such as everyday consumers or employees of the brand are not generally thought of as endorsing a brand. If brands plan to use regular people as spokespeople to capture the interest of target audience, they would better to put more inject some dramatic tension (Fleck & Zeitoun, 2014). Hence, I hypothesis that:
H6a1: The relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of liking will be stronger if celebrities expose in the short video than those expose to regular people.
H6a2: The relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of sharing will be stronger if celebrities expose in the short video than those expose to regular people.
H6a3: The relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of commenting will be stronger if celebrities expose in the short video than those expose to regular people.
H6b1: The relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of liking will be stronger if the short video that brand post has exposure to celebrities than those have no exposure to people.
H6b2: The relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of sharing will be stronger if the short video that brand post has exposure to celebrities than those have no exposure to person.
H6b3: The relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of commenting will be stronger if the short video that brand post has exposure to celebrities than those have no exposure to person.
H6c1: The relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of liking will be stronger if the short video that brand post has exposure to regular people than those have no exposure to people.
H6c2: The relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of sharing will be stronger if the short video that brand post has exposure to regular people than those have no exposure to people.
H6c3: The relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of commenting will be stronger if the short video that brand post has exposure to regular people than those have no exposure to people.
Fig. 1. Framework for Content Type on Brand Post Consumer Engagement on short video. Methodology
Sampling
To help corporate develop appropriate strategies of brand communication on short video platforms, this study adopted TikTok as the short video case for the following reasons: Firstly, TikTok has skyrocketed in popularity recently with a large global user group. It has been downloaded over 800 million times worldwide (Yurie, 2018) with the number of its monthly active users worldwide reached too 500 million. Secondly, millions of brands have noticed the latest sensation of this emerging social media and established brands' official accounts on TikTok
already, especially from 1st June, 2018 when corporate could identify themselves as authoritative with a blue “V” mark. Thirdly, lacking of guidelines, practitioners meet challenges in enacting content strategy for TikTok to communicate with consumers in an effective way.
This study analyzed data composed of 526 short videos that corporate posted on TikTok from 17th Oct, 2019 to 17th Nov, 2019. To find out factors that most effective in motivating consumers engagement, this study selected short video posts from Top 10 authoritative brands’ accounts on TikTok, according to newrank.cn, a third party organization that provide ranking evaluation of social media. The Top 10 influential accounts were chosen among total number of 2347723 brands' accounts on TikTok based on their performance of 5 parameters (i.e. previous followers, increasing followers, sharing, commenting and liking) that extracted during 11 Nov, 2019 to 17th Nov, 2019. The complete list of selected accounts and their high-level
characteristics are provided in Appendix A. Since the analysis subject is short video rather than people and samples are selected longitudinally, this study adopted quantitative content analysis as research method.
Operationalization
Independent variable: Content types.
To help brands find out the most influential content factors in consumer engagement, this study adopted content types model that previous scholars (Menon et al, 2019) defined, which categorized content factors into 5 types: 1) Informative content contains cues allow consumer to discriminate between brand. Any scene in the short video tells general information about specific products, company, or service will be coded as informative content. Resnik and Stern (1977) defined 14 types of information cues in television advertising. Based on it, this study combined actual situation on TikTok and extracted 7 items of informative content (e.g. price, quality,
performance, function). 2) Promotional content involves discount, coupon, giveaways or any type of offer aiming to attract attention from consumers to encourage some form of participation, in which companies use them to disperse brand messages and persuade consumers to buy the product. 3) Remuneration content provides rewards that includes monetary incentives, benefits that helps consumers to learn something new. Example items are reward, knowledge,
recruitment. 4) Social content encourages consumers to engaging with the brand by inviting them to give feedback or asking question to them. It also calls for users to act in some way, such as clicking “likes”, sharing the post. 5) Entertainment content provides pleasure, aesthetic,
enjoyment and emotional release for consumer. Typical examples are a singing, dancing, eating, anecdote, etc. This study performed manual coding.
Moderator: Exposure to spokesperson.
To help brands find out whether spokespeople appearances are necessary for short video platforms, and whether celebrity helps brands increase salience comparing to regular people, this study defined the moderator of exposure to spokespeople in 3 conditions: 1) No exposure: only products or scenery shots show in the short video and no characters appear. 2) Exposure to regular people: ordinary or usual people showing in the video, such as company employees, normal consumers, passerby. 3) Exposure to Celebrity: any individual who enjoys public recognition exposed in the video, such as famous CEO, entertainment star, political star.
Dependent variable: Consumer Engagement.
Cvijikj & Michahelles (2013) indicated that the number of comments, likes and shares is not an absolute measure, but is related to the number of page fans. In their previous study, they used the likes ratio, comments ratio, and shares ratio as more accurate measures. Based on it, this
study used numbers of followers on 17th, Nov, 2019 of brands’ TikTok accounts as references. To be more accurate, the calculation of the depended variables was computed as follows:
1) Accurate Liking Ratio (Likes Rotio) = !"#$%&' )* +,-%' !"#$%&' )* .)//)0%&'
2) Accurate Commenting Ratio (Comments Ratio) = !"#$%&' )* 1)##%23' !"#$%&' )* .)//)0%&' 3) Accurate Sharing Ratio (Shares Ratio) = !"#$%&' )* 456&%'
!"#$%&' )* .)//)0%&' Procedure
The coder first read general introduction and coded rules of the research, and reported followers of the brand’s account and date of posting of the short video. Next, the coder
interpreted the presence of subcategories of 5 content types. The coder coded 1 for presence and 0 for absence. Then, the coder chosen 3 situations of exposure to spokespeople. Last, the coder reported the numbers of consumer engagement.
Results Descriptive statistics
The analysis of the 504 units of short videos from Top 10 corporate accounts on TikTok showed that 11.5% of units have no spokespeople exposed in the video, 56% of units have exposure of regular people, 32.5% of units have exposure to celebrity. In regard to content types of short videos, entertainment content was most used type in 504 units (M = 0.21, SD = 0.17), compared to remuneration content (M = 0.17, SD = 0.14), informative content (M = 0.11, SD = 0.15), promotional content (M = 0.11, SD = 0.12) and social content (M = 0.04, SD = 0.09). Besides, the obtained results indicated that consumers engage by liking the short video (M =
503.27, SD = 2136.03) that brand post far more frequently compared to comments (M = 9.13, SD = 70.96) and shares (M = 15.14, SD = 115.88) the video.
The effect of content types on consumer engagement
The multiple regression model with consumer engagement in the form of liking, sharing and commenting as dependent variable, and content types as independent variable was
conducted. The regression model predicting likes ratio of short videos that brands post from content types is not statistically significant, F (5, 490) = 2.05, p = .071. The content types explain only 2% of the variance in consumer engagement in the form of liking (R2=.02). Therefore, the regression model can not predict likes ratio of short videos. The informative content did not negatively predict likes ratio of the short videos, b = –151.10. The effect is not statistically significant, t = –0.21, p = .836, 95% CI [–1588.46, 1286.26], and extremely weak in strength, b* = –0.01. H1a was rejected. The promotional content did not negatively predict likes ratio, b = – 1733.92. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = –0.10, t = –1.88, p= .061, 95% CI [– 3550.87, 83.03]. H2a was rejected. The remuneration content did not positively predict likes ratio, b = 979.63. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = –0.06, t = 1.30, p = .194, 95% CI [–500.73, 2459.99]. H3a was rejected. The social content did not positively predict likes ratio of the short videos, b = 1579.63. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = –0.06, t = 1.41, p = .158, 95% CI [–615.74, 3775.00]. H4a was rejected. The entertainment content did not
positively predict likes ratio, b = –43.95. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = –0.003, t = –0.07, p = .946, 95% CI [–1310.01, 3775.00]. H5a was rejected.
The regression model predicting shares ratio of short videos that brands post from content types is not statistically significant, F (5, 494) = 2.10, p = .064. The content types explain only 2.1% of the variance in consumer engagement in the form of sharing, which is very slightly for a
social scientific model (R2=.02). Therefore, the regression model can not predict shares ratio of short videos. The informative content did not negatively predict shares ratio, b = 49.47. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = 0.06, t = 1.25, p = .211, 95% CI [–28.08, 127.01]. H1b was rejected. The remuneration content did not positively predict shares ratio, b = 21.98. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = 0.03, t = 0.54, p = .589, 95% CI [–57.90, 101.86]. H3b was rejected. The social content did not positively predict shares ratio, b = 79.34. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = 0.06, t = 1.31, p = .190, 95% CI [–39.56, 198.23]. H4b was rejected. The entertainment content did not positively predict shares ratio of the short videos, b = –41.24. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = –0.06, t = –1.18, p = .237, 95% CI [– 109.74, 27.26]. H5b was rejected. However, the promotional content type negatively predicted shares ratio. A one-unit increase in promotional content with a 106.36-point decrease in shares ratio, b = –106.36. The effect is statistically significant t = –2.12, p = .034, 95% CI [–204.74, – 7.99], and it was weak in strength, b*= –0.11. H2b was supported.
The regression model predicting comments ratio of short videos that brands post from content types is not statistically significant, F (5, 493) = 0.63, p = .680. The content types explain only 0.6% of the variance in consumer engagement in the form of commenting, which is very slightly for a social scientific model (R2=.006). Therefore, the regression model can not predict comments ratio of short videos. The informative content did not negatively predict comments ratio, b = –12.10. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = –0.03, t = –0.50, p = .621, 95% CI [–60.12, 35.91]. H1c was rejected. The promotional content did not negatively predict comments ratio, b* = –0.05, b = –30.37. The effect is not statistically significant, t = –0.98, p = .327, 95% CI [–91.20, 30.46], and extremely weak in strength. H2c was rejected. The remuneration content did not positively predict comments ratio, b = –9.02. The effect is not
statistically significant, b* = –0.02, t = –0.36, p = .719, 95% CI [–58.30, 40.26]. H3c was rejected. The social content did not positively predict comments ratio, b = –28.86. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = –0.04, t = –0.77, p = .441, 95% CI [–102.31, 44.60]. H4c was rejected. The entertainment content did not positively predict comments ratio, b = –10.20. The effect is not statistically significant, b* = –0.02, t = –0.47, p = .636, 95% CI [–52.50, 32.10]. H5c was rejected. Table 1 shows the results of content types performed on consumers’ engagement in the form of liking, sharing and commenting.
Table 1
Regression models to predict consumer’s engagement of content types (N = 506) Consumer engagement
Likes ratio Shares ratio Comments ratio
b b* b b* b b* Constant 495.32 23.34 19.08 Informative content –151.10 –0.01 49.47 0.06 –12.10 –0.03 Promotional content – 1733.92 –0.10 –106.36 –011* –30.37 –0.05 Remuneration content 979.63 –0.06 21.98 0.03 –9.02 –0.02 Social content 1579.63 –0.06 79.34 0.06 –28.86 –0.04 Entertainment content –43.95 –0.003 –41.24 –0.06 –10.20 –0.02 R2 .02 .02 .006 F 2.05 2.10 0.63 Note: * p <.05.
Moderation effect of exposure to spokespeople
The two stage hierarchical multiple regression was conducted to test the moderation effect of exposure to spokespeople in the short videos that brand post on relationship of content types and consumer engagement in the form of liking, sharing and commenting. At stage one of the regression, content types, dummies of exposure to regular people and dummies of exposure to celebrity were entered in the regression model with consumer engagement as dependent
variable. Then, moderator of exposure to regular people and celebrity were entered at stage two in the model.
For relationship of informative content and likes ratio, adding moderator of exposure to regular people, b = 1012.16, t = 0.42, p = .676, 95% CI [–3750.53, 5774.85] and moderator of exposure to celebrity, b = 3188.32, t = 1.17, p = .241, 95% CI [–2151.20, 8527.84] did not show a significant result in the regression model, F (5,494) = 1.15, p= .336. The moderation effect explains only 1.1% of the variance in informative content on likes ratio (R2=.01). For relationship of promotional content and likes ratio, adding moderator of exposure to regular people, b = 1010.10, t = 0.36, p = .719, 95% CI [–4510.84, 6531.04], and moderator of exposure to celebrities, b = 2659.78, t = 0.88, p = .380, 95% CI [–3284.81, 8604.36], did not show a significant result in the regression model F (5,495) = 1.68, p= .138. The moderation effect explains only 1.7% of the variance (R2=.02). For relationship of remuneration content and likes ratio, adding moderator of exposure to regular people, b = 567.62, t = 0.20, p = .839, 95% CI [– 4921.97, 6057.21], and moderator of celebrities, b = –489.48, t = –0.17, p = .867, 95% CI [– 6226.11, 5247.14], did not show a significant result in the regression model F (5,494) = 0.88, p= .495. The moderation effect explains only 0.9% of the variance (R2=.01). For relationship of social content and likes ratio, adding moderator of exposure to regular people, b = 2241.23, t = 0.73, p = .465, 95% CI [–3782.79, 8265.26], and moderator of exposure to celebrities, b = 34.48, t = 0.01, p = .992, 95% CI [–6925.12, 6994.07], did not show a significant result in the
regression model F (5,496) = 0.87, p= .505. The moderation effect explains only 0.9% of the variance (R2=.01). For relationship of entertainment content and likes ratio, adding moderator of exposure to regular people, b = –90.72, t = –0.03, p = .974, 95% CI [–5638.70, 5457.27], and moderator of exposure to celebrities, b = –244.19, t = –0.08, p = .933, 95% CI [–5940.56,
5452.19], did not show a significant result in the regression model F (5,495) = 0.55, p= .739. The moderators effect explains only 1.7% of the variance (R2=.02). The above results showed that the moderator effect on content types and likes ratio was not significantly in the regression model. It indicted that whether celebrities, regular people or no people exposed in the short video, the relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of liking would not be statistically different. Hence, H6a1, H6b1, H6c1 were rejected.
For relationship of informative content and shares ratio, adding moderator of exposure to regular people, b = 180.48, t = 1.37, p = .171, 95% CI [–78.26, 439.22] and moderator of
exposure to celebrity, b = 170.92, t = 1.16, p = .248, 95% CI [–119.35, 461.20] did not show a significant result in the regression model, F (5,498) = 0.68, p= .639. The moderation effect explains only 0.7% of the variance in informative content on shares ratio (R2=.01). For relationship of promotional content and shares ratio, adding moderator of exposure to regular people, b = 78.40, t = 0.51, p = .607, 95% CI [–221.09, 377.88], and moderator of exposure to celebrities, b = 181.92, t = 1.11, p = .268, 95% CI [–140.50, 504.35], did not show a significant result in the regression model F (5,499) = 1.58, p= .164. The moderation effect explains only 1.6% of the variance (R2=.02). For relationship of remuneration content and shares ratio, adding moderator of exposure to regular people, b =70.18, t = 0.46, p = .644, 95% CI [–227.59, 367.95], and moderator of exposure to celebrities, b = –11.11, t = –0.07, p = .944, 95% CI [–322.32, 300.11], did not show a significant result in the regression model, F (5,498) = 0.77, p= .570. The moderation effect explains only 0.8% of the variance (R2=.01). For relationship of social content and shares ratio, moderator of exposure to regular people, b = 245.94, t = 1.48, p = .139, 95% CI [–80.18, 572.06], moderator of exposure to celebrity, b = 88.85, t = 0.46, p = .643, 95% CI [– 288.09, 465.79], did not show a significant result in the regression model F (5,500) = 1.14,
p= .336. The moderation effect explains only 1.1% of the variance (R2=.01). For relationship of entertainment content and shares ratio, moderator of exposure to regular people, b = 15.48, t = 0.10, p = .919, 95% CI [–284.46, 315.41], and moderator of exposure to celebrities, b = 97.28, t = 0.62, p = .535, 95% CI [–210.65, 405.20], did not show a significant result in the regression model F (5,499) = 1.18, p= .317. The moderation effect explains only 1.2% of the variance (R2=.01). The above results showed that the moderation effect on content types and shares ratio was not significantly in the regression model. It indicted that whether celebrities, regular people or no people exposed in the short video, the relationship between content types and consumers’ engagement in the form of sharing would not be statistically different. Hence, H6a2, H6b2, H6c2 were rejected.
For relationship of informative content and comments ratio, adding moderator of
exposure to regular people, b = 196.06, t = 2.45, p = .014, 95% CI [39.07, 353.04] and moderator of exposure to celebrity, b = 207.03, t = 2.31, p = .021, 95% CI [30.94, 383.12] showed a
significant result in the regression model, F (5,497) = 2.59, p= .025. The moderation effect explains 2.5% of the variance in informative content on comments ratio (R2=.03). For
relationship of promotional content and comments ratio, adding moderator of exposure to regular people, b = 237.40, t = 2.33, p = .020, 95% CI [33.56, 398.56] and moderator of exposure to celebrity, b = 207.03, t = 2.38, p = .018, 95% CI [40.97, 433.83] showed a significant result in the regression model, F (5,498) = 2.63, p= .023. The moderation effect explains 2.6% of the variance in informative content on comments ratio (R2=.03). The above significant results of moderation effect indicated that in the short video with informative content and promotional content, short videos with exposure to celebrity would gain highest engagement in the form of
commenting, followed by those with exposure to regular people, and those with no exposure to spokespeople gain lowest commenting. Hence, H6a3, H6b3, H6c3 were partially supported.
For relationship of remuneration content and comments ratio, adding moderator of
exposure to regular people, b =197.43, t = 2.14, p = .033, 95% CI [16.16, 378.70], and moderator of exposure to celebrities, b =167.73, t = 1.74, p = .083, 95% CI [–21.71, 357.16], did not show a significant result in the regression model, F (5,497) = 1.99, p= .079. The moderation effect explains only 2% of the variance (R2=.02). For relationship of social content and comments ratio, adding moderator of exposure to regular people, b =140.91, t = 1.39, p = .166, 95% CI [– 58.45, 340.26], and moderator of exposure to celebrities, b =147.67, t = 1.26, p = .208, 95% CI [–82.65, 377.98], did not show a significant result in the regression model, F (5,499) = 1.60, p= .159. The moderation effect explains only 1.6% of the variance (R2=.02). For relationship of entertainment content and comments ratio, moderator of exposure to regular people, b = –199.35, t = –2.14, p = .033, 95% CI [–382.40, –16.30], and moderator of exposure to celebrities, b = – 184.67, t = –1.93, p = .054, 95% CI [–372.55, 3.21], did not show a significant result in the regression model F (5,498) = 1.92, p= .089. The moderation effect explains only 1.9% of the variance (R2=.02). The above non significant results indicated that in the short video with remuneration, social and entertainment content, whether celebrities, regular people or no people exposed in the short video, consumers’ engagement in the form of commenting would not be statistically different. Hence, H6a3, H6b3, H6c3 were partially rejected.
Conclusion Discussion
The research problem of this study is that when investing brand communication on short video platforms, corporate are lacking of operational guidelines and are unable to develop
appropriate content strategies to engage effectively on these emerging platforms, which lead to big wastes of efforts and miss the opportunity to better communicate with consumers. The research questions are what content types of short videos that corporate post achieve higher consumers’ engagement in the form of liking, sharing or commenting. And if exposure to spokespeople in the short videos has an impact on this relationship. Previous studies have found that brand communication on social media helped corporate foster relationships with consumers, and content of brand posts largely drives consumer engagement on social media. Eventually, the prediction of 5 content types (i.e. Informative, promotional, social, remuneration and
entertainment content) that Top 10 influential corporate accounts posted on TikTok on 3 forms of consumers’ engagement (i.e. liking, sharing and commenting), and the moderation effect of spokespeople were examined. This study adopted quantitative content analysis method, and TikTok was chosen as the short video case.
As the results showed, content type was not a strong factor for the posting strategy on short video platforms. It only marginally predicted consumer engagement
significantly. The informative content, promotional, remuneration, social and entertainment
content did not predict engagement in the form of liking. It indicated that those 5 content types have little connection with liking behavior on short video platforms, which is not in line with what scholars (Menon et al, 2019; Liu et al, 2017)) have found on Twitter. Besides, entertainment content was found not to be significantly related to the sharing and commenting behavior on short video platforms, which is contrary to what scholars (Cvijikj & Michahelles, 2013; Hong, 2011) have found on Facebook. Their findings showed that entertaining content was the most influential in increasing the engagement on business-related Facebook Pages. Informative, social
and remuneration content were found to have no prediction on sharing and commenting on short video as well.
However, only promotional content negatively predicted consumers sharing behavior on short video significantly. This is in line with findings of Menon et al (2019) and Swani et al (2013), which showed that brands should avoid explicitly commercial content on Facebook posts. The reason for the negative prediction effect of promotional content on short video might be that consumers does not regard short video platforms as channels to gain financial benefits. They are bored of pervasive advertising everywhere, and don't think such promotional offers valuable. Therefore, promotional content negatively predicted sharing behavior.
For the moderation effect of exposure to spokespeople, it was no found to be significant on prediction of all content types and consumer engagement in the form of liking and sharing. These results demonstrated that whether regular people, celebrity exposed or no people exposed in the video, it had no difference on consumers liking or sharing behavior on short video
platforms. These findings were contrary to what scholars found in print and television
advertisement (Amos et al, 2008; Verhellen, & De Pelsmacker, 2013) of the prominent role of celebrity endorsement.
Meanwhile, the moderation effect was found to be significant in short videos with informative and promotional content on consumer engagement in the form of commenting. Those celebrities exposed in the short videos with informative and promotional contents motived highest comments behavior among consumers, followed by regular people exposure in the videos. And short videos with exposure to those two types of spokespeople gained higher comments than those with no exposure to spokespeople significantly. The reason for the results might be that exposure to spokespeople increased the credibility of the brand or products. The
short videos with informative and promotional content are more likely to persuade consumers to buy the products. Since they are unable to touch the objects online, consumers would prefer to communicate with real people about information of the product. Also, the consumers might think that celebrities are more authoritative and persuasive than ordinary people. In addition, the moderation effect on relationship of entertainment content and comments ratio was not
significant in the regression model, but significant in the interaction level within the model. This might cause by the significant effect of exposure to spokespeople on consumer comments. In another words, exposure to spokespeople might predict comments’ engagement directly. Implication
The findings of this study also has several implications for practitioners. Firstly, promotional content negatively predicted sharing behavior on short video platforms. When brands launch a marketing campaign on Tiktok, practitioners should avoid using promotional content in the short videos because they hope more consumers see and share the posts about the commercial campaign.
Secondly, moderation effect was significant in short videos with informative and promotional contents on commenting behavior. Therefore, if brands plan to release information about achievements of the company, or promote their product to consumers on short video platforms, they are suggested to increase the exposure to real people in the video to better communicate with consumers about the information of the brands or products, especially increase exposure to celebrities to improve credibility.
Thirdly, it seems like no single type of content standing out in engaging with consumers. When brands formulate communication strategies on short video platform, there is no need to limit only one type of content in the video. Brands could choose specific content types and decide whether invite spokespeople to expose in the short video, according to their specific needs. Limitations, and suggestions for future study directions
Several limitations of this study suggest directions for future research. Firstly, this study only examined short videos that Top 10 influential brands’ accounts posted within one month.
During this period, the special event of Double Eleventh Day, a Chinese e-commercial shopping day like Black Friday, was held, which lead promotional contents appeared more than usual. Also, several brands (e.g. Wanda Cinemas, Alibaba) have posted far more short videos than others. Future researches are suggested to use other sampling techniques such as random samplings or systematic samplings.
Secondly, the moderator of exposure to spokespeople was roughly divided into three categories in this study. The other factors of spokespeople such as personal attractiveness might influence the results. Therefore, future studies should control those interference factors of spokespeople.
Thirdly, this study did not consider industries of the brands as control variables, which might affect the outcomes. For instance, the entertainment contents were largely exposed in videos of entertainment industry (e.g. Wanda Cinemas), while informative contents largely showed in videos of internet industry (e.g. Alipay). The prediction of content types on consumer engagement might be varies among different industries. Future study could compare relationship of content types and consumer engagement among different industries, or only focus on one specific industry.
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Appendix A
Appendix B Codebook Introduction
This content analysis aims to find out how brands could better enact their content strategy on TikTok, a representative short video platform. The relationship of Content types (i.e.
informative, Trendiness, entertaining, social and remuneration content) on consumers’
engagement (i.e. liking, sharing and commenting), and exposure to spokespeople (exposure to celebrity, exposure to regular people, no exposure to people) as moderator will be examined. all short videos of 10 representative TikTok brands’ accounts are selected as sample.
Sampling and Coding Units
I will code short videos of 10 representative TikTok brands’ accounts from different industries (e.g. mobile industry, food and beverage industry, Garment industry). I will collect short videos that brand posted within the one last month, which from 17th Oct, 2019 to 17th Nov, 2019. Eventually, 526 short videos are selected as coding units.
General coding rules
● All images, texts and icon showing in the short video are taken into account.
● The background music, headline, hashtag, mentioned account are excluded in the coding parts.
● The coder will refer to the overall definitions provided in this codebook, including the sections definitions to interpret whether these aspects of content types and spokespeople are present in each unit of the report.
● Associations or prior opinions of the coder about a particular organization should not be taken into account.
● Only code what is shown in the short video. Do not code your own interpretations, assumed consequences or any latent meanings.
● Each short video can be associated with more than one frame or with no frame(s). The framing elements are not mutually exclusive.
● Keywords are solely and indication for the presence of the frame – always check carefully before coding.
Categories
V1 Coder. Doreen Feng
V2 Followers of the Account.
This code refers to the total number followers of the brand, as at 12:00pm on 17th November 2019.
V3 Date of Posting.
This code refers to the short video’s date of posting. V4 Content Types.
Section A- Informative Content.
Definition: short videos that contain information about the product, brand, company and services including important announcements to consumers. It contains cues allow the consumer to discriminate between brand.
A01 – Price or Value
Definition: refers to the amount of money for the product, or the amount of money that can be received for something.
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent A02 – Quality
Definition: refers to how good or bad something is. Keywords: condition, nature
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent A03 – Performance
Definition: refers to how successful an investment, company, etc. is and how much profit it makes:
Keywords: achievement, success, triumph, victory Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent
A04 – Packaging
Definition: material used for wrapping or covering goods to protect them, or the process of putting together information, products, or services to be sold as a set
Keywords: shape, delivery, wrap Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent A05 – Guarantee
Definition: refer to a written promise to return the customer's money or repair or exchange the product if there is a problem with it within a particular period.
Keywords: warrantee, repair, exchange, return, agreement, insurance Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent
A06 – Function
Definition: refer to the substances of product, or the way it works. Keywords: sustenance, nutrition, efficacy
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent A07 – New ideas
Definition: refers to a suggestion or plan for doing something. Keywords: plan, suggestion, thought
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent
Section B- Promotional Content.
Definition: promotional content (excluded informative content) involving a contest, coupon, or any type of offer aiming to attract attention from consumers to encourage some form of participation, in which companies use them to disperse brand messages and build awareness.
B01 – Advertisement
Definition: a picture, sign, etc. that is used to make a product or service known and persuade people to buy it.
Keywords: purchase, bargain, good deal, buy Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent B02 – Discount
Definition: a reduction in the usual price of a product or service Keywords: decrease, concession, allowance
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent B03 – Bonus
Definition: an extra amount of money that is given to consumer as a present or reward. Keywords: benefit
B04 – Coupon
Definition: a piece of paper or card that customers can use to buy goods and services at a lower price, or to get them free.
Keywords: voucher
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent B05 – Giveaways
Definition: something that is given free to a customer Keywords: gift, free-samples, prize drawings
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent
Section C- Remuneration Content.
Definition: Remuneration content provides rewards includes monetary incentives or monetary compensations, job-related benefit. Also, it also helps consumers to learn something new, get exclusive content, and gain acknowledgement and support from other consumers.
Note: to distinguish promotional content and remuneration content, this study code short video content as promotional if they include various special offers of the product. Contents that involve benefits that helps consumers to get more knowledge, and compensations that consumers could get from marketing campaigns are coded as remuneration content.
C01 – Campaigns
Definition: a planned series of activities that are intended to achieve a particular aim Keywords: movement
C02 – Reward
Definition: refers to give consumers money or other advantages because they have been successful or provide important information about something.
Keywords: award, remuneration Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent C03 – Winner information
Definition: the information of someone who wins a game, competition and contest. Keywords: the name, gender etc. of the winner
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent C04 – Instruction
Definition: the act of teaching someone how to do something. Keywords: how to, guidance, follow steps
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent C05 – Knowledge
Definition: skill in, understanding of, or information about something, which consumers can get from the content
Keywords: ability, expertise, know-how, learning Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent
C06 – Recruitment
Definition: the process of employing new people to work for a company or organization Keywords: job offer, recruiting, hiring
C07 – Corporate Social Responsibility
Definition: the idea that a company should be interested in and willing to help society and the environment as well as be concerned about the products and profits it makes.
Keywords: public benefit, welfare activity Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent
Section D- Social Content.
Definition: Social content encourages consumers to engaging with the brand by inviting them to give feedback or asking question to them. It also calls for users to act in some way, such as asking users to rate or choose their favorite products, or name a favorite branch, or the post may include some kind of contest.
D01 - Feedback
Definition: information about something such as a new product or someone's work, that provides an idea of whether consumers like it or whether it is good.
Keywords: assessment, critique
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent D02 – Answer question
Definition: ask for information from consumers, and invite to consumers to answer questions, or
Keywords: inquiry, questioning, query Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent D03 – Sharing opinion
Definition: refer to invitation to consumers to share their thought or belief about something or someone
Keywords: feel, judge, point of view, thought Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent D04 – Rate
Definition: refer to invitation to consumers to judge the value or character of someone or something:
Keywords: rate, choose, rank
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent D05 – Call for more interaction
Definition: invite consumers to comment, click like, share, repost, or send private messages, email, and have a call
Keywords: comment, like, share, repost, send message, email, call Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent
Section E- Entertainment Content.
Definition: Entertainment content provides pleasure, aesthetic, enjoyment and emotional release for consumer. And it does not need to be related to the product or brand.
E01 – Jokes
Definition: refers to funny video that can make people laugh Keywords: amusing content, funny video
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent E02 –Anecdotes
Definition: refers to a short, often amusing story about an event, usually involving a particular person
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent E03 – Sitcom
Definition: a video series in which the same characters are involved in amusing situations in each show.
Keywords: drama, melodrama.
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent E04 – Singing and dancing
Definition: the activity of making musical sounds with the voice, or move the body and feet to music
Keywords: singing songs, rap, dance Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent E05 –Play sports or play games
Definition: refers to a game, competition, or activity needing (physical) effort and skill that is played or done according to rules, for enjoyment
Keywords: sports, games, work-out Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent E06 –Play instruments
Definition: refers to play an object, such as a piano, guitar, or drum, that is played to produce musical sounds.
Keywords: playing piano, guitar, drum, violin etc. orchestra Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent
E07 –Cooking or eating
Definition: refers to the activity of preparing or cooking food, or to put food into the mouth, chew it, and swallow it.
Keywords: playing piano, guitar, drum, violin etc. orchestra Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent
E08 – Adorable pet
Definition: refers to an adorable animal that treated kindly. Keywords: pet, dog, cat
Code “1” if present; Code “0” if absent V5 Exposure to Spokespeople.
Is there any exposure to spokespeople in the video?.
A. no people exposed in the video.
Refer to no spokespeople including cartoon characters shows in the video. B. only regular people exposed in the video.
Refer to ordinary or usual people showing in the video; as normal stakeholders as would be expected. Ordinary cartoon characters are also included. Examples are company employees, normal consumers, passerby, normal employees from partner, media, government, suppliers, Ordinary cartoon characters.
C. celebrity exposed in the video.
Refer to any individual who enjoys public recognition. Examples are famous CEO, professional expert, entertainment star, political star, online influencer, famous cartoon character.
Note: Once any celebrity shows in the video, it will be code as “celebrity exposed in the video”
V6 Consumer Engagement Section A- Numbers of Liking
This code refers to the total number of Likes of the short video Section B- Numbers of Sharing
This code refers to the total number of Comments of the short video Section C- Numbers of Commenting
