The relationship between consumers and brands was demonstrated to be closer when consumers connect on social media with the brand (Hudson, Huang, Roth, & Madden, 2016). Social media helps to create a strong brand fan base, which can ease the process of connecting with consumers and identification of themselves with the brand (John, Emrich, Gupta, & Norton, 2017). Two articles were found to involve human brands in their studies. One was the study of Kupfer, Kübler, and Hennig-Thurau (2018), which took actors as human brands and the other one was from Saboo, Kumar, and Ramani (2016a), where instead of actors were musician.
The research by Kupfer et al. (2018) investigated brand cooperation in social media, when two or more brands work together to promote a certain product. The research was done within film industry; films were viewed as products and associated actors as partner brands. The research outcomes showed that social media power of the partner brand has a positive effect on sales. Higher sales can be generated by partnering with other actors, who are active on social media, have large audience, and post persuasive product related content. In contrast, the posts that are not related to the product can distract consumers and lead to downfall of sales. Comments and replies were not that efficient as actual posts themselves (Kupfer et al., 2018).
Saboo et al. (2016a) in line with human brands aimed to discover how consumers interact and connect with brands within social media platforms and how the brand’s social media activity influences their buying behavior. The focus was on how consumers can identify themselves with musicians, which leads them to be involved in his/her social media by sharing content, liking, commenting, etc. The following social media activities were measured: sampling of music (social sampling), following a certain music artist (social following), and commenting on posts (social word of mouth).
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The results suggested that when social sampling is increasing, product sales are decreasing. It was found that by acquiring more followers and comments on social media, the brand attractiveness and sales increase as well (Saboo et al. 2016a). A study conducted by Labrecque (2014) tried to explain relationships between consumers and brands on social media by two factors: openness of the communication and the level of perceived interactivity. The results showed that para-social interaction (PSI) has a positive influence on brand and consumer interaction creation, which leads to brand loyalty. The author suggested that PSI feeling can be created by brands with the right message structure, where the openness of communication is obvious.
Brands can also form those strong relationships via automated messages, which include earlier created drafts that are not perceived as automated (Labrecque, 2014). Consumer engagement and relationships with brands emerged from relatedness feeling was studied by Kim and Drumwright (2016). They examined how consumer’s feeling of relatedness to brands affects the efficiency of marketing activities on social media. The online experiment with 316 participants demonstrated that consumer perceived relatedness with the brands influences their motivation to engage, reach satisfaction, commit, trust the brand and, eventually, purchase (Kim & Drumwright, 2016).
There is a research which examined relationship between consumers and brands and how consumers perceive these relationships. The usage of social media had a positive influence on the relationship quality with the brand, as well as on WOM communication. The influence is more intense when human characteristics are being highly attached to brands (anthropomorphism), and when consumers possess high level of uncertainty avoidance. The relationship between consumers and brands was demonstrated to be closer when consumers connect on social media with the brand (Hudson et al., 2016).
In the study of brands connection within same industry it was proposed that negative feedback and talks about one brand also create negative image for competitor brand. Analyzes of recalls for car brands showed that there is a significant presence of perverse halo within car brands, especially when the brands are based in the same country. This effect is stronger when the information is transferred from a stronger brand to less strong brand. Halo effect also affects negatively to the sales performance of the competitor brand (Borah & Tellis, 2016).
The research by Lee and Watkins (2016) explored how consumers perceive luxury brands and how vlogs (video blogs) influence those perceptions. In the base of the study were the relationships between users and vloggers on YouTube. The founding was that watching vlogs positively affect user perceptions of luxury brand, which also affect purchase intentions. PSI with vloggers had its role in these outcomes. The authors concluded that PSI and Youtube can be used by marketers to create positive luxury brand perceptions (Lee & Watkins, 2016). Godey et al. (2016) focused on how social media marketing for luxury brands influences consumers through brand equity. Brand equity was a mediator between social media marketing and consumer responses.
The outcomes showed that social media marketing influences brand equity and consumer responses (price premium, reference, and loyalty) in a positive way (Godey et al., 2016). The study of Schweidel and Moe (2014) had the purpose to measure consumers’ attitude towards brands. The sentiment of social media post and the social media platform where it was posted were in the base of their study. Measuring what consumers post and where they post will give insights about the main attitude towards brands. By examining these attributes brands can gain new customer through social media communication with users (Schweidel & Moe, 2014).
De Vries, Gensler, and Leeflang (2012) conducted a research to investigate brand post popularity. They developed a conceptual model based on brand post characteristics, vividness, interactivity, informational content, etc. As important brand popularity indicators were taken the number of likes and comments. Conclusions indicated that separate strategies are needed for boosting post likes and separate for comments. For example, when a brand wants to enhance number of comments, it should share interactive post. Other users’ comments have an influence on likes: the more the positive attitude towards the post, the more likes it will get. Not only positive comments boost number of comments under the post, but also the negative ones by evoking interest (de Vries et al., 2012).
The study of Swani, Milne, Brown, Assaf, and Donthu (2017) also examined brand post popularity on Facebook; measuring it by the number of likes and comments. The authors wanted to explain the differences between brands among B2B and B2C markets. The results of the content analysis of posts from 500 brands showed that B2B content is more popular when the following factors are present: emotional and functional attractiveness of the message, information seeking opportunity, and corporate brand names. In B2B market posts get more likes than comments in comparison to B2C market (Swani et al., 2017).
Shi, Chen, and Chow (2016) examined interactions between consumers within brand pages on social media through the impact of customer values and gender differences. Functional, emotional, and social customer values were separated. The study revealed that from functional values consumers’ interactions with brands were influenced by economic benefit and information quality, from emotional values by arousal and entertainment, and by collaboration and interactivity from social values. Male customers were found to be driven by functional values and females by emotional and social (Shi et al., 2016).
One of the reviewed articles investigates brand issues which Universities face while recruiting students. The research question was whether more students can be attracted by brand activities on social media. The content analysis indicated that social media activities, especially interactive activities, increase the recruited students’ amount. High impact on student recruitment was coming from Facebook likes and Twitter followers. Connecting with the users who put likes or follow the brand can be perceived as a validation for the brand’s good reputation (Rutter, Roper, & Lettice, 2016).
The main idea of the next paper was to understand how brands create values among their consumers. This study separated two types of social media: owned (brand communicates with customers through own profile or channel) and earned (the content is shared by consumers and not the brand). The researchers presented that brand awareness, satisfaction, and purchase intention are positively affected by following the brand page. Earned and owned social media both influence brand awareness. Earned social media in addition affects purchase intention, whereas owned social media customer satisfaction. Brands should not use owned media for purchase persuasions, but rather work on satisfaction by helping consumers with their problems by answering questions and concerns, etc. Nevertheless, owned social media influences buying intentions when the brand has a good reputation, or it is a high involvement product (Colicev, Malshe, Pauwels, & O’Connor, 2018).
Hamilton, Kaltcheva, and Rohm (2016) also investigated values. The focus was on how customer values are influenced by interactions of brands and consumers on social media along with consumer immersion and satisfaction. The authors emphasized three consumer values: consumer lifetime, knowledge, and influencer values. The results implied that consumer influencer and knowledge values are affected by consumer immersion, whereas lifetime and, again, influencer values are affected by consumer satisfaction. The study separated three social media strategies focused on consumer satisfaction, consumer immersion from the interactions with the brand, and both at the same time. Immersion strategy can encourage consumers to share brand information with others, and to provide information on how the brand can improve and innovate. Using both strategies will provide opportunity to involve loyal customers, influencers, creators, etc. (Hamilton et al., 2016).
Some authors examined social media as a method of developing brand loyalty and trust. Gamboa and Gonçalves (2014) suggested that social media is not only a platform for raising a brand awareness, but also an effective tool for creating and maintaining customer loyalty. The findings of this study showed that Facebook generates certain communication with brands which stimulate customer loyalty through commitment, brand value, satisfaction, and trust. Customer satisfaction was found to be the most important antecedent for brand loyalty (Gamboa & Gonçalves, 2014). The article of Laroche et al. (2012) studied brand loyalty and trust within brand communities. Social media-based brand communities were shown to foster value creation and brand loyalty among community members. Only impression management and brand use influence brand trust. Brand communities on social media enhance shared consciousness, traditions, and commitments to society of community members. Obligations to society were shown to have high importance as well (Laroche et al., 2012).
One study aimed to understand ways to enhance the communication with brands and to describe the differences between user-generated content on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The data was taken from two brands with different social media strategies. Noticeable differences were found across the platforms concerning self-presentation and brand centrality. Youtube was found to be the first in self-presentation within user-generated content. In contrast Twitter users get involved mostly to follow up the news, share information, etc. Twitter, in turn, had the most brand-related content than the other two. Facebook was found to have both of brand centrality and self-presentation. The suggestions imply that on Facebook and Twitter brands need to be more active, when more marketer-directed content is present and users seek responses to the marketing actions (Smith et al., 2012).
Kumar, Choi, and Greene (2016a) examined brand performance based on social media marketing time varying effects, as well as cooperative effectiveness of social media and traditional marketing over time. This effectiveness was measured by social media impressions, and the authors demonstrated the time-varying effects of social media and traditional marketing. As traditional marketing were taken TV advertising, in-store promotion, and sampling. Over time the efficiency of social media and traditional marketing changes. The efficiency also varies in case of social media marketing in line with in-store promotional activities and product sampling (Kumar et al., 2016a).
