The antecedents and consequences of social media engagement with a suitability advertisement

Abstract

Social–media–users are increasingly placing their opinions about organisations and their actions on social–media. This is especially true when companies take sustainability related initiative or circulate a sustainability ad, because consumers are concerned over sustainability and have lack of trust on organisations. Social–media–users’ positive/ negative opinion significantly influences brand’s reputation and sales. This thesis investigates the antecedents (positive or negative captions accompanying a sustainability–ad) and consequences (users’ purchase intentions and further sustainable–behavioural intentions) of social–media–engagement with a sustainability–ad through the lens of ‘self–consumption–vision’ (SCV), ’pleasure–arousal–dominance’ (PAD) theory of emotion, and social influence theory. These theories have been chosen because, choice of products with sustainability association is mostly emotional in nature, but consumers do not see themselves adopting those because of social influence. It is posited that, positive captions should generate greater SCV in other users/audience than negative captions, because positive sustainability–related messages are more readily accepted than a negative one and initiate greater information processing which facilitate SCV. In turn, higher SCV should generate higher levels of PAD. This should motivate the users to engage more on social–media. Furthermore, social–media–engagement should lead to greater purchase intentions and other sustainable–behaviour through normative and informational influence. (positive vs negative caption) x 2 (high vs low source expertise) between–subject experiment with 279 respondents reveals that, positive captions induce greater level of SCV and PAD than negative captions, which lead to higher social–media–engagement with the sustainability–ad, purchase intentions and further sustainable–behavioural 5 intentions. Significant interaction–effect was observed between the types of captions and level of source–expertise on social–media–engagement– if the source–expertise is low, the users will engage more for positive caption than the negative caption, but if the souse–expertise is high, people will engage more for negative caption than positive caption. This thesis contributes to both social–media–engagement and sustainability–advertising streams of literature by examining the role of consumers opinions on social–media–engagement and the role of social–media–engagement on sustainable–behaviour intention. This will help managers to understand focus of their attention while promoting products with sustainability association. Future studies may examine users’–reciprocity in social–media–platforms and social–acceptance of sustainable–behaviours.