Examining the drivers of customer responses to social media experiences

Customers have used social media heavily to search for and share information about brands and interact with the brand community. The interaction between customers and social media creates experiences that affect customers’ behavioural responses and enhance the customer-brand relationship. Additionally, each type of brand concept has distinctive characteristics so that designing a successful social media campaign requires a deep understanding of customer experiences of that brand. However, customer experiences on social media of brand concepts have not yet been largely examined. Therefore, this research aimed to examine the influence of social media experiences on customers’ responses (customer engagement and customer inspiration to purchase) with respect to functional brands and symbolic brands. Further, this research investigated how social media experiences influence customer-brand relationship dimensions (emotional attachment to brands and brand love) and self-congruence, which, in turn, impact customers’ behavioural responses to brand concepts. This research, conducted in Australia, applied positivist quantitative research and employed a cross-sectional design using two online surveys, corresponding to functional brands and symbolic brands, with a total of 302 and 299 correctly completed responses respectively. The hypotheses were tested using Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling. The findings for functional brands revealed that education, escapism, and excitement experiences significantly influenced customer engagement, while only education experience positively influenced customer inspiration to purchase functional brands. Additionally, the findings showed the effects of three customer experience dimensions on customers’ behavioural responses were mediated by emotional attachment to brands. For the symbolic brands, customer engagement was affected by both escapism and aesthetics experiences, but only the aesthetic experience positively impacted customer inspiration to purchase symbolic brands. The findings revealed that the effects of escapism experience and aesthetic experience on customers’ behavioural responses were mediated by brand love. Additionally, self-congruence was found to mediate the effect of aesthetic experience on customer inspiration to purchase symbolic brands. By employing the theory of experience, this research makes an original contribution to our understanding of the role of each experience dimension on social media and their relevance for symbolic and functional brands. In practice, the findings provide marketers with the guidance of which experience dimensions affect customer engagement, customer inspiration to purchase, and enhance the customer-brand relationship corresponding to functional brands and symbolic brands through social media.