Consumer Awareness and Interactions in Online Brand Community
Antecedents and Consequences
Mathupayas Thongmak
MIS Department, Thammasat Business School, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand
Keywords: Facebook Fan Pages, Social Interactions, PTAT, Marketer-generated Content, Antecedents, Consequences.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore brands in various categories based on the conceptual model of the
marketer-generated content. Objective measures were collected from almost three-hundred popular brand
fan pages in Thailand, both national and international brands. The findings present the insightful social
media strategy of brands in nine brand categories such as the proportion of each posting content type.
Images and videos play a dominant role in brands’ strategies. Among the antecedents of consumer
awareness and interaction, the quantity of marketer-generated content is not much vital as the existing fan
bases. Total fans increase the consumer awareness and interactions (PTAT). PTAT consequently drives the
future consumers to like the brand pages. Some brand categories could attract more fans than others. Only a
few studies investigated marketer-generated content of Fan pages in inclusive brand categories using
objective measures. Thus, this study fills the literature gap with some interesting results.
1 INTRODUCTION
Social media, particularly social networking sites,
provide firms opportunities to communicate with
prospect consumers and enable the consumers to
online engage with brands (De Veirman et al.,
2016). They are also alternative channels offering
cost advantages with personal and social nature
over traditional media channels (Coursaris et al.,
2013, Augar and Zeleznikow, 2013). If applied
them correctly, positive economic effects could be
happened to brands and companies (Hutter et al.,
2013). Facebook is a leading social networking
site, which had 1.09 billion daily active users on
average for March 2016. More than eighty percent
of active users were outside the US and Canada
(Facebook.com, 2016).
Social interactions on a social networking site
reflect insights for each brand (Schultz, 2016b).
Successful online brand communities such as a
Facebook fan page needs fans’ engagement and
interactions (Huang, 2013, Jahn and Kunz, 2012).
In addition, online brand community participation
affects community consequences of participation,
which later impacts brand consequences of
participation (Madupu and Cooley, 2010).
However, in Facebook brand pages, consumers
generally act in lurking behavior than posting
behavior (De Veirman et al., 2016, Leach et al.,
2012). Therefore, social media management such
as monitoring social interactions (user posts and
corresponding likes, comments, or shares) is
required to enable suitable reaction strategies for
negative social interactions (Schultz, 2016b). The
strategies regarding number of posts, relevant and
popular content, high information quality,
advantageous campaigns, etc. should completely
engage, integrate, and immerse fans into the vivid
and interactive brand community (Jahn and Kunz,
2012, Chua and Banerjee, 2015b, Jayasingh and
Venkatesh, 2015, Sabate et al., 2014, Erdoğmuş
and Cicek, 2012, Chow and Shi, 2015).
Some studies explore the engagement and
interactions of consumer in social media. Coursaris
et al. (2013)
conduct a longitudinal study on brand
posts of big three firms in Fortune 110 companies,
to offer a set of topology regarding Facebook page
marketing messages. The proposed topology
consists of seven post categories: brand awareness,
corporate social responsibility, customer service,
engagement, product awareness, promotional, and
seasonal, and 23 sub-categories.
Rohm et al.
(2013)
examine the role of social media among
digital natives. Results indicate that brand
engagement are driven by five consumer
motivations: entertainment, connection to the
28
Thongmak, M.
Consumer Awareness and Interactions in Online Brand Community - Antecedents and Consequences.
DOI: 10.5220/0006423100280037
In Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications (ICETE 2017) - Volume 2: ICE-B, pages 28-37
ISBN: 978-989-758-257-8
Copyright © 2017 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

brand, timeliness of information and service
responses, product information, promotions and
incentives. Saji et al. (2013) examine the impact of
content strategy consisting of content types,
posting agility, posting day, and content context on
customer engagement regarding the number of
likes and comments. The content type and content
agility have significant influence on engaging
customers in brand communities created on social
media. Hutter et al. (2013) analyse how activities in
a car manufacturer’s Facebook page and fan
interactions impact consumers’ brand awareness,
word of mouth (WOM) actions, and purchase
decision.
Kim et al. (2014)
investigate the effect of
consumers’ relationships with brands on consumers’
engagement in retweeting Twitter messages about
brands. Habibi et al. (2014)
explore how consumers’
relationship elements such as brand, product,
company, and other consumers affect brand trust.
Findings sum that three of four factors positively
drive brand trust.
Chan et al. (2014) test the
influence of system support, community value,
freedom of expression, and rewards and recognition
on customer engagement and the effect of customer
engagement on repurchase intention and word-of-
mouth intention.
Angela Hausman et al. (2014)
study factors impacting likes and comments on
Facebook brand pages and the mediating effect of
modes of interaction on the relationship between
personal traits and consumers’ liking and
commenting behavior. Sabate et al. (2014) empirically
test a conceptual model regarding the impact of
content richness and time frame on the number of
likes and comments. Stavros et al. (2014) reveal four
motivations underpinning fans’ desires to engage
Facebook sites of National Basketball Association
teams, which are passion, hope, esteem, and
camaraderie.
Kim and Hettche (2015)
conduct a content
analysis of posts on corporate Facebook pages to
examine the social media marketing practices of
those global brands in terms of their media types,
content orientation, and the number and type of
users responding to the content.
Chua and Banerjee
(2015a) investigate the association of brand posts’
incentives, vividness and interactivity and users’
attention (likes, comments, and shares of brand
posts).
Touchette et al. (2015) explore the social
media strategy of apparel brands’ Facebook pages.
Photos and advertisements are applied to promote
products and sales without utilizing a specific play
theme such as play as frivolity.
Hsu et al. (2015)
analyse a proposed model integrating the use and
gratification theory with the dual mediation
hypothesis. Findings reveal that both perceived news
entertainment and informativeness positively affect
the interestingness of attitude toward the news,
which later influence the hedonic and utilitarian
dimensions of attitude toward Facebook fan pages.
Schultz (2016b) explores consumer social
interactions on social networking sites of six apparel
retail brands, by analysing the fan number, brand
posts, and response behavior, and consumer
activities such as liking and sharing. Zoha et al.
(2016) explore the impact of the most frequently
posted contents of 14 international brands of
electronics firms on the brand fan pages’ People
Talking About This (PTAT) metric. De Veirman et
al. (2016) investigate consumers’ motivations
differing the level of activeness and public visibility
on Facebook brand pages. Results show that both
lurking and posting behaviors are driven by social
interaction desires. Lurking behavior is also
impacted by entertainment motives and posting
behavior is affected by empowerment motives.
Schultz (2016a) explains brand post interactions by
post vividness, interactivity, and content. Vividness
and content types positively and negatively impact
the brand post interactions. Interactive
characteristics have a positive influence on users’
social interactions.
Even though the existing literature investigates
social interactions in brand communities, social
marketing and social media engagement strategies
are still at the early stage and are quite limited such
as the unknown about how social media channels
are being used, what their potentials are, and how
consumers interact (Cvijikj and Michahelles, 2013,
Angela Hausman et al., 2014, Cervellon and
Galipienzo, 2015, De Veirman et al., 2016, Rohm
et al., 2013). The literature also generally focuses
on a specific brand category or message category
(Coursaris et al., 2013). Factors driving consumers
to contribute in online social pages are yet to be
thoroughly explored (Leach et al., 2012). Also,
only few researches explore the effects of brand
activities (marketer-generated content) on
consumers’ social awareness and interactions. The
goals of this paper are thus to evaluate the effect of
marketers’ activities in the Facebook brand pages
together with the fan bases on consumer awareness
and interactions represented by the PTAT metric,
to examine the consequence of the PTAT, and to
compare different strategies applied by nine brand
categories in terms of the post frequency, the
popularity of posts, media types, and average
response time.
Consumer Awareness and Interactions in Online Brand Community - Antecedents and Consequences
29

2 RELATED LITERATURE
2.1 Facebook Brand Pages
Brand communities are another form of consumer
communities representing social networks of
consumer knowledge and companionship. Social
networking sites and brand communities have the
same basic property in terms of their members
interacting with each other (Zaglia, 2013). Social
media-based brand communities encompass five
unique dimensions: social context (members can
obtain a great deal of information about other
members), structure (no explicit or implicit
structure), scale (brand communities can reach
millions of members), storytelling (more interactive
from using video and photos accompanied by texts),
and numerous affiliated brand communities (the cost
of creating a brand community is close to zero)
(Habibi et al., 2014). Brand communities can
influence consumers to feel favorable toward brands.
Some studies confirm that brand communities affect
consumers’ satisfactions that eventually enhance
brand loyalty. Good relationship in a brand
community also has a positive impact on purchase
intentions, increasing sales. Consumers' relation-
ships with brands, products, or companies positively
affect brand trust. Those relationships are stronger
for highly engaged customers more than lower
engaged customers (Habibi et al., 2014, Hsu et al.,
2015, Cvijikj and Michahelles, 2013, Jahn and
Kunz, 2012). Social media-based brand communities
also enable brand owners the ability to increase
value, brand trust, and brand loyalty (Chen et al.,
2013).
Facebook, the dominant social networking site,
provides five tools for firms to use the platform for
marketing purposes, including Facebook ads,
Facebook brand pages, social plugins, Facebook
applications and sponsored stories (Cvijikj and
Michahelles, 2013, Augar and Zeleznikow, 2013).
Facebook fan page, emerged in 2007, is an open
platform that can help enterprises to initiate a brand
community for direct interaction with consumers
such as customer service, sharing news, or offering
product information to their consumers (Chen et al.,
2013, Hsu et al., 2016, Cvijikj and Michahelles,
2013, Beukeboom et al., 2015). Fan pages can be
used for presenting business advertisements,
commercial marketing, or professional knowledge
(Hsu et al., 2016). Companies use Facebook fan
pages because of increasing trustworthiness and
goodwill, lead generation, ability to engage with
consumers, accessing to customer’s feedback, and
cheaper form of advertising (Leach et al., 2012). A
company can generate interactions with consumers
by writing on a company’s wall or creating posts.
Companies are flexible to choose media types such
as status, link, photos, or app in order to spread
information in their ways (Zoha et al., 2016, De
Vries et al., 2012). The news feed linked to a brand
page is sent to members connecting to the page and
their online friends through a ticker, enhancing
word-of-mouth effects and enabling push-based
customer relationship management (Hsu et al., 2016,
Podobnik, 2013, Trefzger and Baccarella, 2016,
Luarn et al., 2015). Nowadays, almost every major
brands have Facebook fan pages (Jayasingh and
Venkatesh, 2015).
Ongoing interactions are crucial for social
networks, whereas social relationships are important
for brand communities (Zaglia, 2013). The
Facebook fan pages or brand pages are prominent
due to their rapid membership growth (Hsu et al.,
2016). Facebook fan pages could be used as an
explicit brand communication and interaction
channel, to be first of all a connection between
consumers and the brand (Jahn and Kunz, 2012).
Fans can engage or interact with a company,
improving their brand experience, by posting content
on the wall, commenting on existing posts, giving
likes, sharing posts on their profile, and so on. These
actions represent a form of word-of-mouth
communication, which significantly increases brand
commitment, purchase decision making, and sales
(Cvijikj and Michahelles, 2013, Zoha et al., 2016,
De Vries et al., 2012, Shen and Bissell, 2013,
Angela Hausman et al., 2014).
2.2 Posted Content and Customer
Engagement
Customer engagement starts from initializing a
relationship with fans to generating brand activities
(posts or user posts) and supporting consumer
activities (likes, comments, and shares) (Schultz,
2016b). Customer engagement in online brand
community is positively related to repurchase
intention and WOM intention. It is the strategy for
establishing and retaining competitive advantages
(Chan et al., 2014). However, generally only 1
percent of fans contributing a lot by posting
messages, responding to other members’ questions,
joining brand contests, and share their experiences
about the brand with other members (Madupu and
Cooley, 2010).
Although Facebook users tend to follow many
brand pages, not all brand posts are popular,
ICE-B 2017 - 14th International Conference on e-Business
30

attracting significant likes, comments, or shares
(Chua and Banerjee, 2015b). Valuable content, both
hedonic and functional, are thus crucial for attracting
consumers to brand fan pages. In addition,
delivering interesting, entertaining, and innovative
content to fan page users are important (Jahn and
Kunz, 2012). Online-passing behavior occurs in
social networking sites when consumers pass along
content such as information about products or brands
by liking, commenting, or sharing the posted content
(Kim et al., 2014). Popularity of brand posts is
shown by receiving the number of likes, comments,
and shares (Chua and Banerjee, 2015b). Facebook
brand pages implement the algorithm containing
factors such as post popularity (likes and
comments), content types (photos, videos, status
updates) to select the relevant content among a lot of
content to push to the fans’ news feeds (Trefzger and
Baccarella, 2016). Facebook posts also have a
positive effect on sales because customers
immediately react to posts by visiting the brand store
(Augar and Zeleznikow, 2013). Therefore, good and
persuasive content could create the ripple effect on
Facebook brand pages.
3 RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
AND HYPOTHESES
3.1 Marketer-Generated Content:
Posts per Day, Post Timing,
Average Length of Posts, and
Curiosity
Good content strategy increases consumers’
interactions (Cvijikj and Michahelles, 2013,
Chauhan and Pillai, 2013, De Vries et al., 2012,
Swani et al., 2013, Malhotra et al., 2013).
Consumer-brand relationships and post content are
crucial factors motivating fans to participate and
contribute to online brand communities (Huang,
2013). If companies provide entertainment, brand-
related information, and remuneration, engagement
motivations of fans will be met, increasing the
number of likes and comments and gaining more
interaction duration (Cvijikj and Michahelles, 2013).
Informational supports also positively impact brand
community commitment (Chen and Shen, 2015).
Generating more brand-related information drives
the number of likes, comments, and interaction
duration on brand fan pages (Cvijikj and
Michahelles, 2013, De Vries et al., 2012). De Vries
et al. (2012) proposes that posting informational and
entertain content may increase the brand post
popularity in terms of the volume of likes and
comments.
Online engagement depends on the various
content of posts (Luarn et al., 2015). Posting and
response behavior is shown by the average posts per
day and the average response rate per day orderly
(Schultz, 2016b). Posting daily challenges could
enhance the learning experience of fan members
(Zaglia, 2013). Brand post vividness, interactivity,
and content type are expected to have a significant
impact on post interactions (Schultz, 2016a).
Different types of posts have different impact on
PTAT, especially image posts with details and
feature videos (Zoha et al., 2016). Content types,
media types, and posting times tend to relate to
online engagement (Cvijikj and Michahelles, 2013,
Schultz, 2016a).
Schultz (2016a) proposes that the publication
day of post would significantly impact post
interactions. Posts created on weekdays and during
business hours may receive higher post popularity
(Sabate et al., 2014). Posting day of the week is a
relevant factor for choosing the appropriate time for
posts (Cvijikj and Michahelles, 2011). It is possibly
that users would visit brand fan pages during the
weekends than on weekdays, resulting in higher post
popularity (De Vries et al., 2012). Posting content on
weekdays is important for the user engagement in
terms of likes and comments because people are
possibly willing to spend this time on the workdays
(Cvijikj and Michahelles, 2013).
Schultz (2016a) proposes that the longer a brand
post placed at the top of page generates the higher
post interactions. Lengths of messages may impact
click-through rates of advertisements (De Vries et
al., 2012). Posts with a proper amount of texts are
may gained higher popularity than posts with no or a
lot of texts (Trefzger and Baccarella, 2016). If
posting content is favorable, brand owners should
listen to their fans and response to their questions
and suggestions. Brand pages may be applied as
crowdsourcing channels, by asking consumers’
opinions (De Veirman et al., 2016). Brand post
topics such as questions have a significant influence
on the number of likes and comments (Schultz,
2016a).
So, hypotheses are proposed as follows:
H1: Posts per day on an online brand community
have an impact on consumer awareness and
interactions (PTAT).
H2: Post timing on an online brand community
have an impact on consumer awareness and
interactions (PTAT).
Consumer Awareness and Interactions in Online Brand Community - Antecedents and Consequences
31

H3: Average length of posts on an online brand
community has an impact on consumer awareness
and interactions (PTAT).
H4: Curiosity (amount of posting questions) on
an online brand community have an impact on
consumer awareness and interactions (PTAT).
3.2 Number of Fans (Total Likes)
A Facebook fan page’s popularity is important since
the fan page should have as many as possible users
to view the brand’s posts (Trefzger and Baccarella,
2016). The engagement rate is related to the number
of fans (Laurens, 2013). Total fans show the market
developments, for instance, expansion strategies.
Decrease of fan numbers reflect some problems in
the consumer-brand relationship (Schultz, 2016b).
The like button on a fan page is a straightforward
tool to engage fans into brand communications and
co-creations (Wallace et al., 2014). Total likes are
the multiplier of possible reach. So, they affect a
brand’s social media strategy. The number of fans
show the ability to influence users’ friends and the
potential to provide insights about sales or brand
value (Schultz, 2016b). Facebook points that people
who liked Facebook fan pages are more engaged,
active, and connected than others. Total likes are
also the measure of the return on investment in
social media (Wallace et al., 2014). Likes on
Facebook fan pages enable firms to increase their
brand awareness and engagement, which later
contributes to companies’ return on investment
(Angela Hausman et al., 2014).
There is a positive relationship of the number of
followers over customer engagement regarding the
number of likes and comments (Sabate et al., 2014).
The total fans on the publication date of the brand
post negatively affect the post popularity in terms of
shares (Schultz, 2016a).
In virtual community,
users’ normative influence and informative influence
have positive effects on eWOM review credibility
and adoption (Hsu et al., 2016). The number of
pages that users followed or liked could drive
overall consumer engagement and consuming level
(Luarn et al., 2015). Intensity of a brand fan page
usage significantly increases the fan-page
engagement and brand loyalty (Jahn and Kunz,
2012).
So, hypothesis is proposed as follows:
H5: The number of fans on an online brand
community have an impact on consumer awareness
and interactions (PTAT).
3.3 People Talking About This
PTAT metric reflects a Facebook fan page’s
awareness and interaction over time
(Socialbakers.com, 2014).
It integrates stories , for
instance, liking/ commenting/ sharing posts,
answering questions, responding to events, or
claiming offers
(Othman et al., 2013). Likes,
comments, and shares provide a method to measure
consumer-brand interactions (Kim and Hettche,
2015). Liking posts are in turn spreading content for
their personal networks (Malhotra et al., 2013). A
single like can refer a post to hundreds of friends
and to other friends’ networks who liked the post,
generating social contagion effects (Swani et al.,
2013). More likes a post received, the probability
that the post is sent to more fans’ news feed
(Trefzger and Baccarella, 2016). Higher social
interaction and brand interaction significantly bring
more fan engagement (Jahn and Kunz, 2012).
Higher levels of brand awareness also significantly
lead to higher WOM activities and purchase
intentions (Hutter et al., 2013). Social interaction is a
common motivation for engaging activities in online
brand communities such as Facebook fan page (De
Veirman et al., 2016). Strong consumer participation
can drive a brand forward, creating reaches for each
post (Socialbakers.com, 2014).
So, hypotheses are proposed as follows:
H6a: Consumer awareness and interactions
(PTAT) positively affect fan growth by day.
H6b: Consumer awareness and interactions
(PTAT) positively affect fan growth by week.
H6c: Consumer awareness and interactions
(PTAT) positively affect fan growth by month.
A Facebook fan page’s popularity is important since
the fan page should have as many as possible users
to view the brand’s posts (Trefzger and Baccarella,
2016). The engagement rate is related to the number
of fans (Laurens, 2013). Total fans show the market
developments, for instance, expansion strategies.
Decrease of fan numbers reflect some problems in
the consumer-brand relationship (Schultz, 2016b).
The like button on a fan page is a straightforward
tool to engage fans into brand communications and
co-creations (Wallace et al., 2014). Total likes are
the multiplier of possible reach. So, they affect a
brand’s social media strategy. The number of fans
show the ability to influence users’ friends and the
potential to provide insights about sales or brand
value (Schultz, 2016b). Facebook points that people
who liked Facebook fan pages are more engaged,
ICE-B 2017 - 14th International Conference on e-Business
32

active, and connected than others. Total likes are
also the measure of the return on investment in
social media (Wallace et al., 2014). Likes on
Facebook fan pages enable firms to increase their
brand awareness and engagement, which later
contributes to companies’ return on investment
(Angela Hausman et al., 2014).
4 METHODOLOGY: DATA
SAMPLE AND DATA
COLLECTION
To choose the best players on social networking
platforms, top one-hundred Facebook fan pages,
ranked based on the number of fans, listed on
Socialbakers.com (2013) were applied to identify
brand pages and to select studied samples. Other
brand pages in the same categories were collected
more to complete the samples, under criteria that
brands had concrete products or services and they
were top brands in each category. The list consisted
of various brand categories including Fast-Moving
Consumer Goods (FMCG), e-commerce, retail
foods, telecommunications, electronics, fashion,
finance, jewellery & watches, and retail.
The unit of analysis was per brand page. The
Facebook fan pages of 328 brands were analyzed
from the page themselves, free statistics from
Socialbakers.com, and free statistics from
Likealyzer.com, using one-month period. Free
statistics from various sources because of their
objective measures. Focusing on marketer-generated
content on each brand page, collected information
for this study comprised of fans growth (by day/ by
week/ by month) from Socialbakers.com, likes,
PTAT, posts per day, likes, comments and shares per
post, posts per type (picture/ video/ message/
Pinterest), timing, length of posts, curiosity, and
response time from Likealyzer.com. Curiosity is
how frequent is a brand page poses questions to its
fans. Way off, slightly off, and perfect of timing
were turn to 1 to 3 respectively. Way off means
“You publish many posts between 00 - 03 (GMT).
But posts published between 15 - 18 (GMT) engage
more users”. Slightly off means “So close! You
publish many posts between 15 - 18 (GMT). But
posts published between 18 - 21 (GMT) engage
more users.”. Perfect means “You publish the
majority of your posts between 15 - 18 (GMT)”
(Meltwater, 2016). At this time, your followers seem
to be most active.”. Length of posts were converted
“less than 100 characters” to 1, “100-500 characters”
to 2, “more than 500 characters” to 3, and “more
than 500 words” to 4. For curiosity, “You should ask
more questions” is equal to 1, and “A good amount
of questions” is changed to be 2.
After data collection by the research assistant
was completed, 31 brands were excluded from data
analysis due to too much lack of data about brand
pages. Final dataset encompassed 297 fan pages in
Thailand (both local and international brands) from
9 brand categories.
5 RESULTS
5.1 Descriptive Statistics
Of 297 brand fan pages, there are 82 pages from
Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), 44 pages
from e-commerce, 33 pages from retail foods, 8
pages from telecommunications, 30 pages from
electronics, 41 pages from fashion, 34 pages from
finance, 4 pages from jewelry & watches, and 21
pages from retails. Electronics, FMCG, retail foods,
jewelry & watches, fashion, finance, telecommuni-
cations, e-commerce, and retail brands, arranged in
descending order, gained a number of attention from
fans, as shown in Table 1.
According to the descriptive value, e-commerce
and retail brands are quite active in daily
communicating messages. However, posts from
FMCG, telecommunications, and electronics receive
high engagement in terms of average likes,
comments, and shares per post. Considering posted
content, fan pages in every brand category heavily
pay attention to picture posting, especially FMCG,
retail foods, fashion, jewelry & watches, and retail
brands. Comparing to others, telecommunications,
electronics brand pages utilize videos more than
brands in other categories. Posts including images
and videos are significantly popular than posts
without them (Trefzger and Baccarella, 2016).
Image posts significantly receive more likes and
comments (Zoha et al., 2016). Photos, videos, and
status updates also are top three post types that
receive high volume of likes and comments (Lee et
al., 2014). Therefore, the post strategy of those
brands may move to the right direction. E-
commerce, telecommunications, and finance pages
sometimes apply texts to convey marketing
messages to consumers. E-commerce brands show
the remarkable use of Pinterest posts.
Telecommunication brands are outstanding in terms
of average response time, responding users’ posts on
their pages.
Consumer Awareness and Interactions in Online Brand Community - Antecedents and Consequences
33

Table 1: Information about fan pages, classified by brand categories.
Brand Category Avg. Fans Avg.
Posts/
Day
Avg. Likes,
Comments &
Shares per
post
Avg.
Picture
Posts
(%)
Avg.
Video
Posts
(%)
Avg.
Message
Posts (%)
Avg.
Pinterest
Posts (%)
Avg.
Response
Time
(mins)
FMCG 2,121,549 3.28 2,317 91.95 4.11 1.66 2.29 3,681
E-Commerce 596,581 10.80 649 76.85 2.60 5.66 14.90 1,915
Retail Foods 1,767,610 1.94 796 93.29 1.77 1.89 3.05 1,168
Telecommunications 863,106 5.96 1,215 79.16 6.78 5.73 8.33 86
Electronics 2,375,338 2.62 1,143 84.22 5.70 1.81 8.61 1,166
Fashion 1,774,408 3.19 446 91.19 3.81 2.03 2.98 1,836
Finance 926,074 2.93 648 82.86 3.59 6.06 7.50 1,059
Jewelry & Watches 1,049,355 3.15 699 96.85 0.00 1.05 2.10 696
Retail 389,973 10
*
481 94.84 2.58 1.39 1.20 993
*
excluding one outlier brand.
5.2 Data Analysis
Table 2: Summary of multiple regression analysis for
variables PTAT (N = 297).
Variable B SE B Beta
Posts per Day 299.426 238.552 .057
Timing 2340.331 4153.976 .025
Length of posts -5561.407 5518.014 -.045
Curiosity -8801.333 19601.590 -.020
No. of Fans
(Likes)
.010 .001 .628**
R
2
.41
F for change in
R
2
40.512***
*p < .05. **p < .01.
Multiple regression and simple linear regression
are applied to verify the proposed framework. As
shown in Table 2, only the number of fans
significantly has a positive impact on consumer
awareness and interactions. Therefore, H1 – H4 are
rejected, whereas H5 are confirmed. Using the
Stepwise method, it was found that PTAT level
explains a significant amount of the variance in the
value of fans growth by day (F(1, 295) = 58.416, p <
.01, R
2
= .165, R
2
Adjusted
= .162). The analysis shows
that PTAT level significantly predict fans growth by
day (Beta = .407, t(295) = 7.643, p = .000). When
fans growth by week was predicted, it was found
that PTAT level (Beta = .405, p < .01) was a
significant predictor. The overall model fit was R
2
=
.164. The result of the simple linear regression also
indicated that PTAT explained 20.8% of the
variance (R
2
=.208, F(1,295)= 77.355, p<.01). The
PTAT positively increase fans growth by week (Beta
= .456, p < .01). So, H6a – H6c are accepted.
6 DISCUSSION AND
IMPLICATIONS
Testing hypotheses support literature research. For
instance, fans’ impressions drive fan pages’
engagement (Lee et al., 2014). The effects of day
and time on likes per post are not supported (Sabate
et al., 2014). A post published on weekdays or
weekends has no impact on social interactions.
Longer posts decrease the number of likes,
comments, and shares (Schultz, 2016a). Posts with a
moderate amount of texts are more accepted than
posts with too few or too many texts (Trefzger and
Baccarella, 2016). Posts created in the peak hours
have no influence on the engagement level (Cvijikj
and Michahelles, 2013). Electronic WOM is
transmitted in an exponentially growing nature
through social media (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011).
However, this study yields some different results
from the past studies. For example, in sport context,
72 percentage of posts from the health coach
received social interactions at least once, showing
the importance of average posts per day (Merchant
et al., 2014). Saji et al. (2013) confirms that content
agility significant affects the number of likes and
comments. Content agility is the timing of the day
during which the post was made. They divided total
hours of a day into 6 slots, 4 hours each. Total fans
have a negative influence on sharing behavior
(Schultz, 2016a). A report from Socialbakers.com
points that in general more fans decrease
engagement rates. However, a study of Laurens
(2013) indicates that the number of fans has no
significant influence on the engagement rates, but
the friends among fans have a positive effect on the
engagement rate of brand pages (Laurens, 2013).
There is no significant effect of like rations on
ICE-B 2017 - 14th International Conference on e-Business
34

interaction duration. Posted days significantly affect
the comments (Cvijikj and Michahelles, 2011).
In sum, this study support that the number of
fans affects consumer awareness and interactions,
but in the positive way. The consumer awareness
and interactions in terms of PTAT later significantly
increase more fans daily, weekly, and monthly.
Giving different results from the literature research,
marketer-generated content in terms of average posts
per day, post timing, average length of posts, and
average posted questions insignificantly affect social
interactions.
This study extends the framework in the literature
studies by adding the aspect of strategies applied by
marketers in terms of posts per day, post timing,
average length of posts, and curiosity. To my best
knowledge, there are few studies analyzing the effects
of marketer-generated content on consumer
interactions, using objective measures. For practical
implications, this study confirms the importance of
fan bases on consumer awareness and interactions,
which finally impact future fans. The quantity of
marketer-generated content is not much important as
the quality or the variety of posting content. There are
still more rooms for brands in various brand
categories to promote their brand pages to increase
the number of fans. Using pictures and videos could
attract more consumers to engage with the posts,
increasing PTAT. PTAT is important to involve more
non-fans to become fans and to participate in quality
posts of brands in the future, creating a ripple effect.
7 CONCLUSION, LIMITATIONS,
AND FUTURE RESEARCH
The goals of this study are to understand how
marketers of leading Facebook fan pages in Thailand
interact with their consumers and to evaluate the
effectiveness of marketer-generated content in terms
of posts per day, post timing, average length of
posts, and curiosity across nine brand categories, and
to compare different content strategies applied by
product categories. The findings show the
importance of content quality more than content
quantity. Fan bases are also vital to create customer
awareness and interactions. These social interactions
could increase new fans in the near future. Posting
images is dominant in the content strategy applied
by all brand categories, supported by the literature
that photos/ images have a significant effect on fan
engagement. Content strategy from brands in the
successful category (such as FMCG posts many
images and videos) could be applied by other brand
categories. However, average response time of
brands in almost all categories should be improved.
The focus of this study was on a social
networking system, Facebook fan pages. But most
studies generally conduct in the Western context.
Thailand is listed as the top three countries with the
highest Facebook users in November 2015
(Statista.com, 2016). This study thus provides
complement findings from different environments,
using Thailand fans as a case study. Future research
should extend the study about marketer-generated
content across various social media. Other variables
regarding marketer-generated content such as
specific content types according to brand categories
should be studied. Comparing the results of this
research with other research in Southeast Asian
countries should be studied.
REFERENCES
Angela Hausman, D., Kabadayi, S. & Price, K. 2014.
Consumer–brand engagement on Facebook: liking and
commenting behaviors. Journal of Research in
Interactive Marketing, 8, 203-223.
Augar, N. & Zeleznikow, J. I just saw this on Facebook, I
need it now': exploring small business use of
Facebook. In: DENG, H. S., CRAIG, ed. 24th
Australasian Conference on Information Systems
(ACIS), 2013. RMIT University, 1-11.
Beukeboom, C. J., Kerkhof, P. & De Vries, M. 2015. Does
a Virtual Like Cause Actual Liking? How Following a
Brand's Facebook Updates Enhances Brand
Evaluations and Purchase Intention. Journal of
Interactive Marketing, 32, 26-36.
Cervellon, M.-C. & Galipienzo, D. 2015. Facebook pages
content, does it really matter? Consumers’ responses
to luxury hotel posts with emotional and informational
content. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 32,
428-437.
Chan, T. K., Zheng, X., Cheung, C. M., Lee, M. K. & Lee,
Z. W. 2014. Antecedents and consequences of
customer engagement in online brand communities.
Journal of Marketing Analytics, 2, 81-97.
Chauhan, K. & Pillai, A. 2013. Role of content strategy in
social media brand communities: a case of higher
education institutes in India. Journal of Product &
Brand Management, 22, 40-51.
Chen, H., Papazafeiropoulou, A., Duan, Y. & Chen, T.-K.
The Antecedents and Outcomes of Brand Experience
on The Social Networking Site. ECIS, 2013. 10.
Chen, J. & Shen, X.-L. 2015. Consumers' decisions in
social commerce context: An empirical investigation.
Decision Support Systems, 79, 55-64.
Chow, W. S. & Shi, S. 2015. Investigating Customers'
Satisfaction with Brand Pages in Social Networking
Consumer Awareness and Interactions in Online Brand Community - Antecedents and Consequences
35

Sites. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 55,
48-58.
Chua, A. Y. & Banerjee, S. 2015a. How Businesses Draw
Attention on Facebook through Incentives, Vividness
and Interactivity. IAENG International Journal of
Computer Science, 42.
Chua, A. Y. & Banerjee, S. Marketing via social
networking sites: A study of brand-post popularity for
brands in Singapore. Proceedings of the International
MultiConference of Engineers and Computer
Scientists, 2015b.
Coursaris, C. K., Van Osch, W. & Balogh, B. A. A Social
Media Marketing Typology: Classifying Brand
Facebook Page Messages For Strategic Consumer
Engagement. the 21st European Conference on
Information Systems, 2013 Utrecht University,
Utrecht, Netherlands. 46.
Cvijikj, I. P. & Michahelles, F. 2011. A case study of the
effects of moderator posts within a facebook brand
page. In: DATTA, A., SHULMAN, S., ZHENG, B.,
LIN, S.-D., SUN, A. & LIM, E.-P. (eds.) Social
Informatics. Springer.
Cvijikj, I. P. & Michahelles, F. 2013. Online engagement
factors on Facebook brand pages. Social Network
Analysis and Mining, 3, 843-861.
De Veirman, M., Cauberghe, V. & Hudders, L. Why are
people interacting with brands on Facebook:
unraveling consumers' motivations for lurking and
posting on Facebook brand pages. EMAC 2016, 2016.
De Vries, L., Gensler, S. & Leeflang, P. S. 2012.
Popularity of brand posts on brand fan pages: an
investigation of the effects of social media marketing.
Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26, 83-91.
Erdoğmuş, İ. E. & Cicek, M. 2012. The impact of social
media marketing on brand loyalty. Procedia-Social
and Behavioral Sciences, 58, 1353-1360.
Facebook.com. 2016. Stats [Online]. Available:
http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ [Accessed
April 30, 2016].
Habibi, M. R., Laroche, M. & Richard, M.-O. 2014. The
roles of brand community and community engagement
in building brand trust on social media. Computers in
Human Behavior, 37, 152-161.
Hsu, L.-C., Chih, W.-H. & Liou, D.-K. 2016. Investigating
community members’ eWOM effects in Facebook fan
page. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 116,
978-1004.
Hsu, L.-C., Wang, K.-Y., Chih, W.-H. & Lin, K.-Y. 2015.
Investigating the ripple effect in virtual communities:
An example of Facebook Fan Pages. Computers in
Human Behavior,
51, 483-494.
Huang, F.-H. Motivations of Facebook users for
responding to posts on a community page.
International Conference on Online Communities and
Social Computing, 2013. Springer, 33-39.
Hutter, K., Hautz, J., Dennhardt, S. & Füller, J. 2013. The
impact of user interactions in social media on brand
awareness and purchase intention: the case of MINI on
Facebook. Journal of Product & Brand Management,
22, 342-351.
Jahn, B. & Kunz, W. 2012. How to transform consumers
into fans of your brand. Journal of Service
Management, 23, 344-361.
Jayasingh, S. & Venkatesh, R. 2015. Customer
Engagement Factors in Facebook Brand Pages. Asian
Social Science, 11, 19.
KAPLAN, A. M. & HAENLEIN, M. 2011. Two hearts in
three-quarter time: How to waltz the social media/viral
marketing dance. Business Horizons, 54, 253-263.
Kim, D.-H. S., Lisa & Hettche, M. 2015. Analyzing media
types and content orientations in Facebook for global
brands. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing,
9, 4-30.
Kim, E., Sung, Y. & Kang, H. 2014. Brand followers’
retweeting behavior on Twitter: How brand
relationships influence brand electronic word-of-
mouth. Computers in Human Behavior, 37, 18-25.
Laurens, A. 2013. Who Likes to Engage? An Investigation
of the Influences of Facebook Fan Page
Characteristics on the Engagement Rate. Master in de
Toegepaste Economische Wetenschappen.
Leach, H. S., Komo, L. W. & Ngugi, I. K. 2012. Engaging
Consumers Through Company Social Media
Websites. Computing & Information Systems, 16.
Lee, D., Hosanagar, K. & Nair, H. 2014. The effect of
social media marketing content on consumer
engagement: Evidence from facebook. Available at
SSRN, 2290802.
Luarn, P., Lin, Y.-F. & Chiu, Y.-P. 2015. Influence of
Facebook brand-page posts on online engagement.
Online Information Review, 39, 505-519.
Madupu, V. & Cooley, D. O. 2010. Antecedents and
consequences of online brand community
participation: A conceptual framework. Journal of
Internet Commerce, 9, 127-147.
Malhotra, A., Malhotra, C. K. & See, A. 2013. How to
create brand engagement on Facebook. MIT Sloan
Management Review, 54, 18-20.
Meltwater. 2016.
Analyze and monitor your Facebook
Pages [Online]. Available: http://likealyzer.com/
[Accessed].
Merchant, G., Weibel, N., Patrick, K., Fowler, J. H.,
Norman, G. J., Gupta, A., Servetas, C., Calfas, K.,
Raste, K. & Pina, L. 2014. Click “like” to change your
behavior: a mixed methods study of college students’
exposure to and engagement with Facebook content
designed for weight loss. Journal of medical Internet
research, 16, e158.
Othman, I., Bidin, A. & Hussain, H. Facebook Marketing
Strategy for Small Business in Malaysia. Informatics
and Creative Multimedia (ICICM), 2013 International
Conference on, 2013. IEEE, 236-241.
Podobnik, V. An analysis of facebook social media
marketing key performance indicators: The case of
premier league brands. 12th International Conference
on Telecommunications (ConTEL), 2013. IEEE, 131-
138.
Rohm, A., D. Kaltcheva, V. & R. Milne, G. 2013. A
mixed-method approach to examining brand-consumer
interactions driven by social media. Journal of
ICE-B 2017 - 14th International Conference on e-Business
36

Research in Interactive Marketing, 7, 295-311.
Sabate, F., Berbegal-Mirabent, J., Cañabate, A. &
Lebherz, P. R. 2014. Factors influencing popularity of
branded content in Facebook fan pages. European
Management Journal, 32, 1001-1011.
Saji, K., Chauhan, K. & Pillai, A. 2013. Role of content
strategy in social media brand communities: a case of
higher education institutes in India. Journal of Product
& Brand Management, 22, 40-51.
Schultz, C. D. Driving likes, comments, and shares on
social networking sites: how post characteristics affect
brand interactions in apparel retailing. Proceedings of
the 18th Annual International Conference on
Electronic Commerce: e-Commerce in Smart
connected World, 2016a. ACM, 9.
Schultz, C. D. 2016b. Insights from consumer interactions
on a social networking site: Findings from six apparel
retail brands. Electronic Markets, 1-15.
Shen, B. & Bissell, K. 2013. Social Media, Social Me: A
Content Analysis of Beauty Companies’ Use of
Facebook in Marketing and Branding. Journal of
Promotion Management, 19, 629-651.
Socialbakers.com. 2013. February 2013 Social Marketing
Report: Thailand [Online]. Available:
http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/1515-february-
2013-social-media-report-facebook-pages-in-thailand
[Accessed].
Socialbakers.com. 2014. A Marketer's Guide to Facebook
Metrics [Online]. Available: http://www.socialbakers.
com/resources/studies/a-marketers-guide-to-facebook-
metrics [Accessed].
Statista.com. 2016. Number of Facebook users in
Southeast Asia as of November 2015, by country (in
millions) [Online]. Available: https://www.statista.
com/statistics/193056/facebook-user-numbers-in-
asian-countries/ [Accessed].
Stavros, C., Meng, M. D., Westberg, K. & Farrelly, F.
2014. Understanding fan motivation for interacting on
social media. Sport management review, 17, 455-469.
Swani, K., Milne, G. & Brown, B. P. 2013. Spreading the
word through likes on Facebook: Evaluating the
message strategy effectiveness of Fortune 500
companies. Journal of Research in Interactive
Marketing, 7, 269-294.
Touchette, B., Schanski, M. & Lee, S.-E. 2015. Apparel
brands’ use of Facebook: an exploratory content
analysis of branded entertainment. Journal of Fashion
Marketing and Management, 19, 107-119.
Trefzger, T. F. & Baccarella, C. V. V., Kai-Ingo.
Antecedents of brand post popularity in Facebook:
The influence ofimages, videos, and text. The 15th
International Marketing Trends Conference, January
21st - 23rd 2016 2016 Venice, Italy. 1-8.
Wallace, E., Buil, I., De Chernatony, L. & Hogan, M.
2014. Who “likes” you… and why? A typology of
Facebook fans. Journal of Advertising Research, 54,
92-109.
Zaglia, M. E. 2013. Brand communities embedded in
social networks. Journal of business research, 66,
216-223.
Zoha, R., Hasmah, Z., Kumaran, S., Sedigheh, M. &
Mohd Hairul Nizam, M. 2016. Determining the
relationship between fanpage contents and PTA
metrics.
Consumer Awareness and Interactions in Online Brand Community - Antecedents and Consequences
37