Driving Likes, Comments, and Shares on Social

Networking Sites – How Post Characteristics Affect

Brand Interactions in Apparel Retailing
Carsten D. Schultz
University of Hagen
Universitätsstr. 11
58097 Hagen, Germany
+49 2331 987-2617
[email protected]

ABSTRACT Overviews and agendas are, for example, provided for social
Based on 415 posts from 6 apparel retail brands, this study media brand management [11], online social networks [24], social
analyzes the liking, commenting and sharing behavior on one media [35], social metrics [39], and social commerce [53].
social networking site. These brand post interactions are explained Researchers have analyzed various types of social media, such as
by post vividness, interactivity, and content. We also consider the blogs (e.g., [15], [16]), microblogs (e.g., [48], [55]), user-
post timing and check for post length and fan number. This study generated product rating and review websites (e.g., [6], [41]),
extends the literature in three ways: by addressing post content social shopping communities (e.g., [19], [36]), and social
types, including hashtags as an interactive measure, and studying networking sites (e.g., [8], [25]), and have considered the
the domain of apparel retailing in which both brands and combination of traditional and social media (e.g., [37], [54]) as
consumers are highly engaged and exhibit a high likelihood of well as multiple types of social media (e.g., [9], [46], [47]).
social interaction. Vividness characteristics and content types This study focuses on social networking sites. Social networking
have positive and negative effects on the number of post sites can be described as online platforms for networks of
interactions. Interactivity characteristics, apart from links to a individual and organizational users to share and consume various
website, as well as the period of time a post is positioned at the types of information [45]. Lines of research on social networking
top of a brand page, positively affect social interactions. However, sites focus on modeling (online) social networks (e.g., [1], [5],
post publications on weekdays or weekends have no effect on user [25], [50]), the privacy of social networking sites (e.g., [23], [26],
social interactions and increasing post length negatively affects [28], [33], [52]), and the opportunities and risks associated with
the liking, commenting, and sharing behavior. social networking sites (e.g., [4], [7], [14], [32], [40]).
CCS Concepts An ongoing research and practical question is how individuals
• Information systems➝World Wide Web • Web applications create value for brands through social media. Kumar et al. [27]
➝ Social networks. identify four components of the so-called customer engagement
value. Firstly, individuals directly create value by engaging in
Keywords transactions with the brand. Secondly, incentives may initiate
Brand post engagement; brand post popularity; commenting; recommendations from existing consumers that lead to the
liking; sharing; social media; social networking site. acquisition of new consumers. Thirdly, intrinsic motivation may
result in recommendations and thus in converting prospects,
1. INTRODUCTION retaining consumers, and increasing shopping value. Many
New media has introduced significant new ways of disseminating consumers find information provided by other consumers, such as
information [17, 51]. The social exchange is one aspect of this comments and recommendations, to be more valuable than
development characterized by collaboration, community, corporate information [2, 3, 12, 51]. Thus, these consumer
conversation, and sharing [18]. Correspondingly, social media has interactions may increase trust in a company and consequently
become the subject of increasing research interest. increase consumption intention [20, 34, 41] and revenue [6, 31].
Fourthly, consumer interactions on social media platforms provide
a data source for market research, for example for product
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for improvements and innovations.
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
Therefore, a relevant research and practical question is what
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights drives users to interact with brands on social networking sites.
for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be Jahn and Kunz [22] identify functional and hedonic values, brand
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or and social interactions, and self presentation as motives for using
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior brand pages on social networking sites. The present study adds
specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from especially to the understanding of brand post characteristics
[email protected]. driving user interactions, such as linking, commenting, and
ICEC '16, August 17-19, 2016, Suwon, Republic of Korea sharing behavior (e.g., [8], [30], [43]). It specifically analyzes post
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to
vividness, interactivity, and content. Furthermore, the study
ACM.
© 2016 ACM. ISBN 978-1-4503-4222-3/16/08…$15.00 includes post timing and checks for post length and fan number.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2971603.2971612
Thus, it extends the literature in three ways: by addressing post [12] compare the effect of user-generated and marketer-generated
content types, including hashtags as an interactive measure, and content in the case of a brand page of a casual wear retailer. The
studying the domain of apparel retailing. The apparel retail authors find that general activity in brand pages increases sales. In
industry provides ideal conditions for studying consumer their study, the marginal effect of consumer-generated content is
interactions, because of high consumer engagement with fashion about 22 times higher than the effect of marketer-generated
and lifestyle and the correspondingly high likelihood of consumer content. To drive sales, undirected messages are found to be more
social interactions. effective than directed ones for informative and persuasive
consumer-generated content, whereas directed messages are more
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The next effective than undirected ones for persuasive marketer-generated
section briefly discusses findings on social media in the apparel content [12]. To identify the social interaction strategies of
industry and the literature on brand post interactions. Based on the competing apparel retail brands, Schultz [45] analyzes their
relevant literature, the hypotheses and research framework are posting and response behavior and identifies a prototypical
derived. Afterwards, the data and method are presented. Section representative for three out of four social interaction strategies.
four then presents and discusses the empirical results. The paper The apparel retail brands follow either a low interaction strategy
concludes with the limitations of our study and outlines directions with few posts and a low response rate, a posting strategy with
for future research. many posts and a low response rate, or a high interaction strategy
with many posts and a high response rate. The present study adds
2. RELATED LITERATURE to the literature on social media in the apparel industry by
2.1 Social Media in the Apparel Industry analyzing the characteristics of brand posts driving brand post
engagement.
Previous research has addressed social media in the apparel
industry. In an undergraduate sample, young consumers are found 2.2 Brand Post Interactions
to engage in word-of-mouth activities, based on brand excitement,
The ability to directly engage consumers via brand messages
brand image, and brand love [21]. For a social shopping
(posts) is mentioned as one beneficial aspect of social networking
community that focuses on fashion, living, and lifestyle,
sites [8, 14] and is one dimension of a brand’s social media
researchers identify the effect of direct shopping features, such as
strategy [45]. Consequently, the characteristics of brand posts
filter and search mechanisms, and consumer social interactions,
have seen increasing research interest with regard to consumer
such as lists, profiles, styles, and tags, on conversions [36] and
interactions and creating consumer engagement [8, 30, 42, 43, 44,
micro-conversions [19]. Using an experimental Facebook shop for
49]. Table 1 provides an overview of related research.
accessories and clothing, trust in the social networking site is
found to play a mediating role in the relationship between social Pletikosa Cvijikj and Michahelles [42] analyze the post type,
interactions and purchase intentions [34]. Based on 186 content category, and day of the week of 120 posts by a Swiss
questionnaires from a sample of female college students, Park and consumer goods brand. The results of a non-parametric analysis of
Cho [38] study how social networking sites affect consumer variance indicate that both post type and category are significant
information seeking behavior in the context of apparel. The for the likes ratio, comments ratio, and interaction duration. Likes
authors find that commitment is determined by factors reflecting and comments ratio refer to the number of likes and comments
the consumers’ psychological attachment to the online adjusted by the fan number. For the day of the week, the authors
community. Commitment thus positively relates to the find that posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays show a difference in
information seeking behavior, potentially moderated by social the number of comments received.
pressure to conform to the peer group’s expectations. Goh et al.
Table 1. Literature overview
No. of Brand Content Additional Dependent
Study Industry Post Type Post Timing Method
Posts Pages Type Variable Variable
Pletikosa Cvijikj 120 1 consumer media category day of the week – likes ratio Kruskal-Wallis
and Michahelles goods comments ratio non-parametric
2011 duration ANOVA
de Vries et al. 2012 355 11 diverse vividness entertainment top of page industry likes OLS regression
interactivity information weekday post length comments
valence of
comments
Pletikosa Cvijikj 5,035 100 food & vividness entertainment peak hours manufacturer likes ratio Negative
and Michahelles beverage interactivity information weekday vs. retailer1 comments ratio binomial
2013 remuneration shares ratio regression
duration
Sabate et al. 2014 164 5 travel media – business hours fan number likes OLS regression
agency weekday post length comments
Luarn et al. 2015 1,030 10 diverse vividness entertainment – – likes ANOVA
interactivity information comments
remuneration shares
social
Trefzger et al. 2016 560 3 automotive media – – post length likes ratio ANOVA

This study 415 6 apparel vividness category top of page fan number likes OLS regression
409 interactivity weekday post length comments
shares
1
secondary analysis
In their influential study, de Vries et al. [8] examine the vividness, confirms that media affect post engagement and differ for
interactivity, content, and valence of comments of 355 brand posts different interaction measures [42]. Furthermore, medium (link)
across six product categories. The authors also control for the day and high (video) vividness lead to higher engagement than no
of the week, message length, top of the page position, and the (status) and low (picture, album) vividness [30]. However, a
product category potentially influencing the number of likes and medium level outperforms a high level of vividness – a surprising
comments. Vivid and interactive posts, as well as the share of result, because links direct users away from the brand page and
positive comments influence the number of likes. The number of post to other content. In contrast, links have also been shown to
comments is, by comparison, affected by interactive brand posts, have a negative effect on the number of comments [44]. Other
such as questions, and the share of positive and negative studies confirm the positive effect of low (photo) and high (video)
comments. vividness on the number of likes [8, 44, 49], while the number of
comments is positively affected by low vividness (photo) posts
An extensive study of 5,035 posts from 100 food and beverages [44]. The difference between picture and video posts is attributed
brand pages analyzes post vividness, interactivity, content, and to the time that users need to process brand posts [44, 49]. The
post timing with respect to consumer interactions measured by quality of the media may also affect post interactions.1 While the
likes ratio, comments ratio, shares ratio, and duration [43]. Vivid results differ, the relevance of post vividness is generally
posts with entertaining or informative content increase the likes supported. Consequently, this study models the levels of vividness
ratio, while interactivity, remuneration, and post timing decrease and hypothesizes:
the likes ratio. Interactive posts also decrease the comments ratio
while it is positively affected by any content. The shares ratio H1. Brand post vividness has a significant effect on post
increases with entertaining posts with pictures or videos, yet interaction.
decreases during peak hours and for status posts. Users interact
longer with entertaining, informative, and vivid content posted Interactivity, defined as “the degree to which two or more
communication parties can act on each other, on the
during peak hours.
communication medium, and on the messages and the degree to
Based on 164 posts from five Spanish travel agencies, Sabate et which such influences are synchronized” [29, p. 54], animates
al. [44] study the effect of media content (link, image, video) and users to respond to brand posts. The level of post interactivity has
post timing on the number of likes and comments. Both image and been studied in previous research resulting in mixed findings [8,
video influence the number of likes, but neither links nor timing 30, 43]. Pletikosa Cvijikj and Michahelles [43] show that low
do. In contrast, the number of comments is affected by images and interaction posts (status and photo posts) create more likes and
timing. comments than highly interactive posts (link and video posts). A
different finding is that the use of questions, attributed as a highly
Across 10 brand pages, Luarn et al. [30] analyze the vividness, interactive element, leads to more likes but fewer comments [8].
interactivity, and content of 1,030 posts to create user engagement Based on the same operationalization, Luarn et al. [30] find that
in form of likes, comments, and shares. A medium level of higher interactivity generally increases the likelihood of liking,
vividness generates the highest amount of engagement. User commenting, and sharing. While interaction time may warrant a
engagement also increases with higher interactivity. In case of negative effect [43], higher interactivity increases the likelihood
remuneration, information, entertainment, and social posts, users of users engaging in liking, commenting and sharing a brand post
are more likely to like a brand post. Social content, however, [8, 30]. As a consequence, this study models various interactive
creates more comments than entertainment, information, and elements and proposes the following hypothesis:
remuneration. Sharing is predominantly evoked by entertaining
and informative posts rather than remuneration or social ones. H2. Brand post interactivity has a significant effect on post
interaction.
Trefzger et al. [49] study 560 posts from three automotive brands
and find that posts including images and a moderate amount of The content of brand posts has been primarily captured by
text receive the highest number of likes adjusted by the fan assigning posts to selected categories. One approach is the
number. The authors conclude that brand posts should allow fast categorization of general content types. The initial approach of
processing. classifying information and entertainment posts [8] was
subsequently complemented by remuneration posts [43] and
2.3 Research Framework and Hypotheses social posts [30]. Findings are overall mixed. A second approach
In this study, brand post interactions – likes, comments, and is to distinguish between types of brand post topics [42]. In [42],
shares – are explained by post vividness, interactivity, and the brand post topics include announcement, information,
content. We also consider the post timing with regard to the length question, questioner, promotion, and statement and are provided
of time a post is positioned at the top of the page and differentiate by a social media manager. Post topics are found to significantly
between weekdays and weekend. Finally, the study controls for affect the number of likes and comments. This study follows the
post length and fan number of the corresponding brand page. second approach based on content analysis.
Thus, we extend the analysis to the post content category, include
hashtags as an interactivity aspect, and extend the analysis of H3. Brand post content type has a significant effect on post
brand post characteristics to the domain of apparel retailing in interaction.
which both brands and consumers are highly engaged and exhibit The timing of brand posts is relevant for users’ interactions with
a high likelihood of social interaction [12, 36, 38, 45]. the respective content. Correspondingly, research has addressed
Brand posts are categorized as status update, photo, album, link, various aspects of post timing. Based on user activities, Pletikosa
event, or video. These different media types appeal to the users’ Cvijikj and Michahelles [43] differentiate between low and peak
senses to a varying degree. The extent to which brand posts
stimulate user senses has been referred to as vividness [8, 30]. 1
We thank an anonymous reviewer for this comment. In the present
Results on these degrees of media vividness vary. An initial result study, media quality was comparably good for all brand posts.
user activities. In their study, peak user activity time negatively Research operationalizes interactivity in two ways. As before, one
affects engagement measured by likes and shares. However, user approach is based on the types of media posts [43], the other
activity and post timing are not independent of each other. Sabate approach utilizes post characteristics [8, 30]. This study follows
et al. [44] alternatively distinguish between business and non- the later operationalization. Specifically, the following post
business hours and find that posting during business hours has a characteristics are recorded: link, voting, call to act, question,
positive effect only on the number of comments. For global competition, and additionally also the characteristic hashtag. The
brands and their pages spanning different time zones, this study thus considers four levels of interactivity. The base line
distinction may not be applicable. level of no interactivity is when none of the characteristics is
The duration at the top of the page depends on the posting strategy present. A link to a website, a hashtag or voting for alternatives
and can thus be scheduled accordingly [8]. In accordance with represents a low level of interactivity. A medium level of
findings from other online instruments, a first result confirms that interactivity is represented by a call to action, such as visiting a
the longer the exposure of a brand post at the top of the page, the certain website, commenting on an event or product, or checking
more likes and comments the post receives [8]. Correspondingly, out an announced promotion. Contests are considered as another
we propose the following hypothesis: characteristic for the medium level of interactivity. In accordance
with the literature, questions represent a high level of interactivity.
H4a. The longer a brand post is positioned at the top of the page,
the higher the number of post interactions. To capture the content of a brand post, the brand posts are
categorized as announcement, competition 2 , coverage, human
Another aspect of post timing is the day of the week. Previous resources, product and promotion. Announcement includes the
research contrasts weekdays with weekends [8, 43, 44]. While categories of charity, holiday, human resource, and statement.
user activities on Facebook are generally higher during weekdays Table 2 provides an overview of these post topic categories.
[13], de Vries et al. [8] and Sabate et al. [44] find no significant
effect, whereas Pletikosa Cvijikj and Michahelles [30] identify a Table 2. Post categories
negative effect of weekdays on the number of likes and a positive Post Category n Description
effect on the number of comments. This study thuschecks a Announcement – Announcement of charity and recruiting
potential weekday effect. events, holidays, and statements.
Charity 10 Information on a charity event
H4b. The day of post publication has a significant effect on post
interaction. Competition 23 Posts presenting a competition
Coverage 41 Reports on events neither directly related
In line with previous research, this study also controls for post to products nor promotions, such as photo
length [8, 44, 49] and fan number [30, 42, 43, 44, 49]. Post length shoots or global sports events.
affects the amount of information and also the user’s ability to Holiday 17 Posts referring to a holiday, season, or
process the information [44, 49]. Previous results indicate no weekend
significant effect [8], a positive effect on the number of likes [44], HR 6 Information about recruiting events
and argue for a medium level of text to allow fast processing [49]. Product 284 Posts related to specific products
We also control for the fan number of a brand page since the Promotion 28 Promotion activities, such as discounts,
likelihood of user engagement, liking, commenting, and sharing sales, or store openings.
increases with larger fan numbers [44, 49]. Statement 6 Posts stating an opinion on a topic, such
Figure 1 displays the conceptual framework for this study. as family values and sustainability.

Vividness H1
For the time a post is positioned at the top of the brand page, we
measure the period in seconds until the next post. In consequence,
Interactivity H2 Likes
the empirical analysis is based on 409 of 415 brand posts for six
H3
Comments
apparel retail brands. The day of the week as well as the fan
Content type
number correspond to the publication date of the post. Post length
H4a Shares
has been measured in number of characters [44], words [8], and
Top position
text lines [49]. This study uses the number of characters for post
length. The user interactions are measured by the number of likes,
Weekday H4b
comments, and shares on a brand post.
Post length Fan number
3.2 Data
Figure 1. Conceptual framework The present study is based on data from six apparel retail brands.
The apparel retail industry was chosen in line with previous
3. Methodology research because both the brands and the consumers are highly
engaged and exhibit a high likelihood of social interaction [12, 36,
3.1 Operationalization of Variables 38, 45]. The six apparel retail brands are C&A, Ernsting’s family,
In accordance with previous research, this study operationalizes Esprit, H&M, Primark, and Zara. All six brands are well-
four levels of vividness according to the types of media posts [8], established, active on social networking sites, and have retail
[30], [43]. Status posts are attributed with no vividness, since outlets. The social interactions are recorded from the global pages
these posts use only short text messages. Pictorial posts, such as
photos and albums, are considered to represent a low level of
2
vividness. Events and links are posts categorized as medium level In contrast to contest which only refers to the singular post of the actual
of vividness as these provide additional information after a click. contest, competition also includes coverage of the event, such as the
The high level vividness consists of video posts. announcement of the winners.
of these retail brands. The brands represent a variety of retail weekdil dummy variable if the brand post is published on a
sizes. Esprit, H&M, and Zara are globally represented brands; weekday,
C&A and Primark are located primarily in Europe, and Ernsting’s lengthim post length of the brand post measured by the number of
family is a retailer represented in Austria and Germany. characters,
Facebook is a leading global social networking site which all six fansin number of fans on the publication date of the brand post,
retailer brands use. Facebook reports 1,591 million active users
ɛi error term for the like, comment, and share model.
per month for the fourth quarter of 2015 and revenue of $17,928
million for 2015 [10]. 4. Results
For the six apparel retail brands, all brand posts and the resulting The standardized estimation results of the like, comment, and
user interactions on the social networking site Facebook were share model are presented in table 4. Two post characteristics had
recorded from April 14, 2014 to May 31, 2014. A total of 415 no effect on either interaction metric. Firstly, linking to a website
brand posts were retrieved accounting for 717,982 likes, 13,980 does not affect user post interactions. Links lead users away from
comments, and 13,203 shares. Table 3 provides a data overview. brand posts and while links do not positively increase the
interaction behavior, they appear not to decrease the likelihood of
Table 3. Data overview interacting. Secondly, the 45 posts on weekends (11%) showed no
Brand Fans* Posts Likes Comments Shares different influence on post interactions than the 364 posts on
weekdays (89%). Thus, Hypothesis 4b is not supported. Even
C&A 5,426,106 42 6,317 124 290 though, this is in line with some previous findings [8, 44], the data
Ernsting’s is skewed towards weekday posts.
161,156 64 5,700 3,766 593
family Table 4. Standardized estimation results for post interactions
Esprit 1,200,880 33 16,954 289 583 ln ln ln
H&M 19,078,157 193 528,118 4,049 7,718 Like Comment Share
Vividness no (reference) – – –
Primark 2,791,462 71 90,740 4,468 2,404
low Picture .252* .156 .339*
Zara 21,443,252 12 70,153 1,284 1,615
medium Event -.362** -.139 .008
* as at May 31, 2014
high Video .122 .111 .276**

3.3 Method Interactivity no (reference) – – –

Previous studies draw on analysis of variance or regression to low Link .048 -.026 ,040
analyze post interactions (see Table 1). This study follows the
regression approach to determine the degree to which a post Hashtag .157** .178** ,143**
characteristic affects post interactions. The dependent variables yi
Voting .131** .263** ,212**
are number of likes, comments, and shares representing count data
with a Poisson distribution. Correspondingly, and in line with medium Call to act .088** .171** ,150**
previous research [8, 43, 44], we use the natural logarithms of
these dependent variables. The dependent variables are calculated Contest .097** .267** ,178**
as ~yi  ln yi  1 . The model for the brand posts j is formulated
high Question .032 .117** -,067
as:
Content Announcement
– – –
3 6 4 type (reference)
~
yij    if vividifj    ig iaigj    ihtopicihj Competition -.107** -.116** -.144**
f 1 g 1 h 1 (1)
  ik positionikj   il weekdilj   imlengthimj   in fansinj   i Coverage .213** .162** .125**

where Product .269** .222** .107

j data on brand post j, Promotion .021 .112* .033

~
yi i refers to the logarithm of the three dependent variables Timing Position .020 .124** .137**
number of likes, comments, and shares per brand post,
Weekday .018 .008 .008
vividif dummy variable for post vividness including picture,
event, and video; reference category is no vividness, Control Post Length -.235** -.150** -.230**
iaig dummy variable for post interactivity including link, Fans -.058 -.045 -.103**
hashtag, voting, call to act, question, and contests;
reference category is no interaction, unstandardized Constant 9.090** 3.839 8.923*

topicih dummy variable for post content type including product, F-Value 25.470** 13.203** 9.364**
promotion, coverage, and competition; reference
category is announcement, adjusted R2 .505 .337 .258

positionik duration in seconds the brand post is positioned at the ** p < .05, * p < .1
top of the page,
The adjusted R2 is .505 (R2 is .525) for the like model. The (ln) explain why the finding deviates from a previous study [44]. We
number of likes is significantly positively affected by picture, plan to extend on this finding and integrate the social interaction
hashtag, voting, call to act, contest, coverage and product strategy into future analysis.
category, while events, competitions, and post length have a Further, the three interaction measures are highly correlated and
negative effect. may influence one another. Future research should address this
The comment model explains 36.5% (R2) of the comment interrelationship from a longitudinal perspective.
variance. The adjusted R2 is .337. The categories hashtag, voting,
call to act, contest, question, coverage category, product, and 5. Discussion
promotion as well as time at the top of the page significantly Analyzing brand post characteristics increases the understanding
increase the (ln) number of comments, whereas the competition of consumer interactions and thus their attitude towards certain
category and post length have a negative impact. The vividness post elements. The study adds to our understanding of consumer
characteristics show no significant effect. behavior in social media.
The explained variance R2 is .289 (adj. R2 is .258) for the share The media types picture and video positively affect consumer
model. The categories picture, video, hashtag, voting, call to act, interactions. So far, the use of pictures is prevailing in apparel
contest, and coverage as well as time at the top of the page have retailing. Thus, consumers may expect a certain amount of post
significant positive effects on the (ln) number of shares. vividness. In consequence, brands may have to adjust their social
Competition category, post length, and the number of fans media strategy accordingly. Brands also need to carefully evaluate
negatively impact the sharing behavior. if videos of a comparable quality to pictures actually provide
Post vividness shows significant effects on likes and shares, but added value for the increased media costs.
not on comments. Hypothesis 1 is thus partly supported. However, Interactive characteristics drive likes, comments, and shares.
the apparel retail brands predominantly use pictures in brand posts Therefore, implementing these elements in brand posts supports a
(n = 376, 91.9%). 3 In consequence, this finding should be high interaction social media strategy [45]. These characteristics
cautiously interpreted, even if it confirms earlier results [8, 44]. thus contribute to consumer engagement and enable brands to
Apart from linking to a website, post interactivity characteristics interact with their target groups.
positively affect the interaction measures. Thus, hypothesis 2 is
Consumer interactions are varied across content types. Posts
supported. As one extension to previous research, hashtags
related to competitions are found to negatively affect interaction
provide a further aspect of post interactivity. Hashtags are similar
measures. However, posts on the contest itself receive a high
to links in providing a means to accessing additional information
amount of likes, comments, and shares. Consumers seem to react
(posts including the same hashtag), but hashtags also differ from
differently to the contest, which may ask to like, comment, or
links because users stay on the social networking site.
share, and additional posts covering the contest.
The study also extends on the content type of brand posts and For apparel retailing, event coverage and product announcements
deduces a number of corresponding categories. The reference increase the number of consumer interactions. An important point
category announces charity and recruiting events, holidays, and here is that product announcements positively affect interaction
statements. As competition posts on social networking sites behavior, while product promotions, including discounts and
generally ask users to like, comment, and/or share certain sales, have no significant or comparably smaller effect on post
information, the negative impact of competition posts surprises. In interactions.
contrast, coverage, product, and promotion posts are shown to
have a positive effect on post interactions. Overall, there is partial Considering the length of time a post is positioned at the top of
support for Hypothesis 3. the page, brands have to strategically plan the posting schedule.
Brand posts need to be positioned at the top of the page for a
Regarding the time a brand post is positioned at the top of the reasonable amount of time to receive the necessary exposure, but
brand page, the results show significant positive effects on the also have to be replaced regularly to keep the page fresh and up-
commenting and sharing behavior. On average, a brand post is to-date. In case of negative consumer interactions [4, 7, 32, 40],
positioned at the top of the page for 16.42 hours (sd = 26.89). In new brand posts may be an alternative to deleting brand or user
the case of commenting and sharing, users may need a certain content, which generally upsets consumers.
amount of exposure to be willing to engage more deeply with the
brand message. The post length has significant negative effects on the interaction
measures. Research thus has to analyze for which purpose
Additionally, post length is found to negatively affect all three
consumers use social media and how much attention is attributed
interaction measures. Assuming a linear relationship in all three
to these purposes. Brand posts then have to be designed
models, this finding is in line with previous research [49] in which
accordingly.
the authors found a moderate amount of text to drive the highest
number of likes – allowing for fast processing of the brand post. 6. Limitations and Future Research
The number of fans only shows a significant (negative) effect on The study used data from the apparel retail industry, which
the sharing behavior. Based on the social interaction framework provides a high likelihood of brands and consumers engaging and
[45], we find that the apparel retailer with the fewest fans, interacting on social networking sites. Future research may
Ernsting’s family, employs a highly interactive strategy. This may contrast high and low involvement brands and analyze whether
the results are transferable to less involving brands. Even though
3
the apparel retail industry provides highly engaging elements and
The three vividness characteristics show in fact high VIF-values, a high likelihood of social interactions, future research needs to
because of the small reference group. We also calculated the three
validate the applicability of the study results.
models with picture as a reference category. Since the results
correspond with the presented findings, the results are presented
according to the no vividness reference category.
Demographic data on the fans of the brand pages was not Investigation of the Effects of Social Media Marketing.
available for this study. Even though some demographic data has Journal of Interactive Marketing 26, 2, 83-91.
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[42], it is not only relevant for retailers whether these groups are Impact of User-Generated Content on Music Sales. Journal
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