Say what? How the interplay of tweet readability and brand hedonism affects consumer engagement

[en] Despite the influence of social media marketing, little is known about how branded messaging characteristics affect consumer engagement. We fill in this gap by assessing how readability interacts with brand hedonism to affect consumer engagement with brands based on our analysis of branded tweets for 96 of the most valuable brands according to Forbes Media. Drawing on processing fluency, we challenge the paradigm that reading ease enhances consumer responses universally. The effect of a tweet's readability is instead sensitive to a brand's perceived hedonistic nature, the degree to which it offers fun and enjoyable benefits. For less hedonic brands, tweets perceived as easy to read tend to result in greater engagement, and for more hedonic brands, tweets perceived as difficult to read tend to result in greater engagement. These findings offer insights for brand communication and social media strategy. © 2019 Elsevier Inc.

Disciplines :

Marketing

Author, co-author :

Davis, S. W.; Marilyn Davies College of Business, University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, TX, United States

Horváth, C.; Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands, ELTE Institute of Business Economics, Budapest, Hungary, Hungary

Grétry, Anaïs ; Université de Liège - ULiège

Belei, N.; Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Language :

English

Title :

Say what? How the interplay of tweet readability and brand hedonism affects consumer engagement

Publication date :

2019

Journal title :

Journal of Business Research

ISSN :

0148-2963

eISSN :

1873-7978

Publisher :

Elsevier, New York, United States - New York

Volume :

100

Pages :

150-164

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Funders :

IU - Indiana University
Rice University
TCU - Texas Christian University
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

Available on ORBi :

since 01 December 2021

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