Emoji use and its effects on customer engagement in a social media marketing context

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2021-06-28
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en
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In recent years, the use of the emoji’s has increasingly enjoyed more attention of researchers and practitioners in the field of social media marketing. Numerous studies, especially regarding the effects of emoji use on customer engagement provided different frameworks of how and in which ways this relationship could be established. In this research, we aimed to compare two different routes of how this relationship might function: on the one hand an emotional route, where the effect of emoji’s on customer engagement through positive affect was assessed. On the other hand an associative route, where the effect of emoji’s on customer engagement through perceived playfulness was assessed. The key difference between the two routes lies in their effects based on time: the emotional route is oriented at short-term effects, while the associative route was oriented at long-term effects. The comparison was made while focusing on the directive speech act oriented emoji, which was directly aimed at creating customer engagement. The goal of this research was to compare the two routes and possibly identify the dominant route within this framework and answer the research question ‘What is the effect of ‘directive move’ oriented emoji’s in brand communication on customer engagement through positive affect and perceived playfulness?. To test the effects, a scenario-based experiment in the form of a survey was created. The results showed that the use of the directive speech act oriented emoji influences customer engagement through perceived playfulness, thus establishing proof for the possible long-term effect emoji use has on customer engagement. Furthermore, we found that positive affect, thought to be oriented at the short-term effects, plays a role in establishing an effect on the long-term. Testing the effects on product category indicated that the effects do not differ between hedonic and utilitarian products. The findings in this research offer theoretical and practical implications oriented to how emoji’s can influence customer engagement and thus make brand communication practices on social media more effective.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen
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