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The Brand Personality Effect: Communicating Brand Personality on Twitter and its Influence on Online Community Engagement

브랜드 개성 효과: 트위터 상의 브랜드 개성 전달이 온라인 커뮤니티 참여에 미치는 영향

  • Received : 2014.01.29
  • Accepted : 2014.02.22
  • Published : 2014.03.28

Abstract

The use of new technology greatly shapes the marketing strategies used by companies to engage their consumers. Among these new technologies, social media is used to reach out to the organization's audience online. One of the most popular social media channels to date is the microblogging platform Twitter. With 500 million tweets sent on average daily, the microblogging platform is definitely a rich source of data for researchers, and a lucrative marketing medium for companies. Nonetheless, one of the challenges for companies in developing an effective Twitter campaign is the limited theoretical and empirical evidence on the proper organizational usage of Twitter despite its potential advantages for a firm's external communications. The current study aims to provide empirical evidence on how firms can utilize Twitter effectively in their marketing communications using the association between brand personality and brand engagement that several branding researchers propose. The study extends Aaker's previous empirical work on brand personality by applying the Brand Personality Scale to explore whether Twitter brand communities convey distinctive brand personalities online and its influence on the communities' level or intensity of consumer engagement and sentiment quality. Moreover, the moderating effect of the product involvement construct in consumer engagement is also measured. By collecting data for a period of eight weeks using the publicly available Twitter application programming interface (API) from 23 accounts of Twitter-verified business-to-consumer (B2C) brands, we analyze the validity of the paper's hypothesis by using computerized content analysis and opinion mining. The study is the first to compare Twitter marketing across organizations using the brand personality concept. It demonstrates a potential basis for Twitter strategies and discusses the benefits of these strategies, thus providing a framework of analysis for Twitter practice and strategic direction for companies developing their use of Twitter to communicate with their followers on this social media platform. This study has four specific research objectives. The first objective is to examine the applicability of brand personality dimensions used in marketing research to online brand communities on Twitter. The second is to establish a connection between the congruence of offline and online brand personalities in building a successful social media brand community. Third, we test the moderating effect of product involvement in the effect of brand personality on brand community engagement. Lastly, we investigate the sentiment quality of consumer messages to the firms that succeed in communicating their brands' personalities on Twitter.

새로운 기술의 활용은 고객과의 관계를 맺기위한 기업들의 마케팅 전략을 변모시켜왔다. 새로운 기술 중에서 소셜 미디어는 기업들이 온라인 고객들에게 다가가기 위한 도구이며, 유명한 소셜 미디어 사이트 중의 하나는 마이크로 블로깅 플랫폼인 트위터이다. 매일 5억건이상의 트윗이 발생하기때문에 연구자들에게는 풍부한 데이터의 원천이며, 기업들에겐 매력적인 마케팅 채널이다. 그럼에도 불구하고 효과적인 트위터 활용전략을 수립하는 것이 어려우며, 이는 적절한 트위터 활용에 대한 이론적인 또는 실증적인 검증이 이루어지지 않았기 때문이다. 본 연구는 기업들이 마케팅 채널로서의 트위터를 어떻게 효과적으로 활용할 수 있는지에 대한 실증적인 근거를 브랜드 개성과 브랜드 관여를 중심으로 연구하여 제공하고자 한다. 본 연구는 Aaker의 브랜드 개성에 대한 연구에서 제시한 브랜드 개성 척도를 활용하여 트위터 메시지가 브랜드 개성을 띄고 있는지와 이에 따른 고객들의 참여와 반응을 분석하고자 한다. 또한, 제품의 관여도에 따라서 조절효과가 존재하는지도 분석하였다. 23개 브랜드의 8주간의 트위터 계정의 포스팅을 수집하였으며, 오피니언 마이닝을 통하여 연구 가설을 검증하였다. 구체적인 본 연구의 목적은 첫째로 마케팅 연구에서 제시된 브랜드 개성의 개념이 소셜 미디어인 트위터에도 적용이 가능한지 분석하는 것이다. 둘째는 오프라인 브랜드 개성과 온라인 브랜드 개성간의 일치여부와 소셜 미디어 브랜드 커뮤니티의 활성화간의 관계를 밝히고자 한다. 마지막으로, 제품의 관여도에 따라 온라인/오프라인 브랜드 개성의 일치도가 조절효과를 갖는지를 분석하고자 한다.

Keywords

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