“Click like if you like it”: the effect of directional posts on social network sites
| Pages | 672-690 |
| Published date | 11 September 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-01-2016-0020 |
| Date | 11 September 2017 |
| Author | Manuela López,Maria Sicilia,Peeter W.J. Verlegh |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
“Click like if you like it”: the
effect of directional posts on
social network sites
Manuela López and Maria Sicilia
Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business,
University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain, and
Peeter W.J. Verlegh
Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration,
VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract
Purpose –Social network sites (SNSs) are an important part of consumers’everyday lives, and have been
recognized as a useful marketing channel. However, little is known about how brands should communicate in
order to be more effective and maximize the diffusion of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) in these platforms.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of directional posts on consumers depending on previous
diffusion of the post and consumers’connectivity.
Design/methodology/approach –A between-subjects experimental design was used. The sample
consisted of 369 individuals.
Findings –The results show that directional posts only enhance the intention to spread eWOM and the
attitude toward the product when the brand post was highly diffused. This effect is stronger among highly
connected consumers (hubs) than among less well-connected individuals.
Originality/value –To the best of the authors̓knowledge, this is one of the first studies to analyze the
persuasiveness of marketers’explicit encouragements to “like”brand posts, a tactic known as directional
posts. The study investigates whether and how consumer responses to directional posts are influenced by
responses from others and by the number of connections that consumers have within the SNSs.
Keywords Social network sites, eWOM, Directional posts, Hubs, Post diffusion
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Social network sites (SNSs), such as Facebook and Twitter, have become extremely popular
among internetusers across the globe. Recentresearch shows that 74 percentof internet users
use SNSs (Pew Research Center, 2014), spending nearly two hours on these platforms on a
typical day (Globalwebindex, 2014). SNSs are formally defined as “web-based services that
allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system,
articulate a listof other users with whom they sharea connection, view andtraverse their list
of connections and thosemade by others within the system”(Boyd and Ellison, 2008, p. 211).
The core of SNSs consists of personalized user profiles to which consumers add personal
information, photos, videos, and information about what they like and dislike (Trusov et al.,
2010). Companiescan also build brand profileson SNSs, and create brand pages from whichto
establish direct contact with their customers. Any person interested may follow these brand
pages in order to receive product-related information and to interact with the brand.
SNSs allow consumers and brands to share information, and create and sustain
“parasocial”relationships (Labrecque, 2014). The continuous interactions among consumers
permit rapid and wide diffusion of information and allow for the possibility of exponential
Online Information Review
Vol. 41 No. 5, 2017
pp. 672-690
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-01-2016-0020
Received 21 January 2016
Revised 11 October 2016
13 March 2017
Accepted 10 April 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
This research was supported by the Grant No. ECO2012-35766 from the Spanish Ministry of
Economics and Competitiveness and by the Fundación Séneca-Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología de la
Región de Murcia (Spain), under the Grant No. II PCTRM 2007-2010.
672
OIR
41,5
growth of the number of consumers aware of a product or brand. Information transmission
between consumers reaches a higher scope than advertising does (Goldenberg et al., 2001).
Therefore, marketers are trying to select appropriate approaches and message appeals to
engage consumers (Swani et al., 2013). In particular, companies and academics alike are
interested in identifying tactics that trigger consumers to share, post, or comment on brands
(Bernritter et al., 2016; De Vries et al., 2012; Kim et al., 2015; Labrecque, 2014; Yu, 2014).
These tactics seem especially appropriate for new product launches and other situations in
which firms have limited timeframes for achieving their objectives (Godes and Mayzlin,
2009; Kozinets et al., 2010; Verlegh et al., 2013).
Extant studies have focused on how to reach a high level of diffusion for information
(Hinz et al., 2011; Goldenberg et al., 2009; Kwok and Yu, 2013; Yu, 2014). Many of these
studies have focused on how to drive consumer interactions, such as likes, comments, and
shares in response to brand posts (De Vries et al., 2012; Kwok and Yu, 2013; Schultz, 2016;
Yu, 2014). Aspects such as vividness, interactivity, content type, post category, message
length, post timing, and post location have been already analyzed (De Vries et al., 2012;
Kwok and Yu, 2013; Luarn et al., 2015). However, the effect of explicit encouragements to
“share”or “like”brand posts, referred to as directional posts by Coursaris et al. (2016) , is
mostly unknown. To cover this gap in the literature, this paper studies how explicit
promotions to “like”a brand post influence consumers’intentions to spread the brand
post. We also examine the extent to which the effectiveness of a directional post depends
on the behaviors of others, and more specifically on the number of times other consumers
have previously shared, commented on, or liked the post. Finally, the effectiveness of the
strategy may also depend on the level of connectivity of the individual exposed to
the brand post. This latter aspect is emerging as an important issue in SNSs. According to
recent literature, impacting highly connected individuals (“hubs”) is crucial to reach high
information diffusion (Goldenberg et al., 2009; Hinz et al., 2011). Thus, marketers have a
strong interest in targeting hubs in their SNSs campaigns despite the difficulty in
engaging these particular consumers (Goldenberg et al., 2009; Hinz et al., 2011; Porter and
Donthu, 2008; Trus ov et al., 2010).
Our study builds on the literature of persuasion knowledge and social influence, and
aims to make three specific contributions to the literature. First, it establishes the
persuasiveness of marketers’explicit encouragements to “like”brand posts, a tactic that is
being increasingly used in social media marketing (Stephen et al., 2015). Second, it
investigates whether and how consumer responses to such directional posts are influenced
by responses from others. Third, it examines whether the effectiveness of this strategy
depends on the number of ties or connections that consumers have within the SNSs.
Our research adds to literature not only on social media marketing, by showing the effect of
strategies to engage consumers to “like”brand posts, but also contributes to the literature on
persuasion knowledge, by showing how consumers may use social information in order to
interpret and respond to marketers’persuasion attempts.
2. Theoretical background
Traditionally, consumers have spoken with their friends, relatives or acquaintances about
products and brands. This word of mouth (WOM) is “a face-to-face conversation between
consumers about a product or a service experience”(Sen and Lerman, 2007, p. 77). WOM is
the most important source of information for consumers. Individuals consider opinions by
others more credible and more influential than firm-generated information such as
advertising or personal selling (Arndt, 1967; Grewal et al., 2003).
The advances of information technology have profoundly changed the way consumers
communicate transcending the traditional limitations of WOM (Babić-Rosario et al., 2016).
SNSs facilitate not only consumers’conversations about products and brands, but also the
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Effect of
directional
posts on SNSs
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