research - relationship maintenance on social media

Relationship Maintenance on Social Media: An Examination of Personified Brand Characters’ Twitter Accounts
Dodoo & Wu, 2015

It is believed that the interactive nature of social media makes them even better than websites and blogs to promote straightforward dialogues between brands and consumers.

As a consequence of the rapid rise of social media, marketers consider how brand pages or even Twitter accounts can be leveraged to generate consumer engagement as well as enhance consumer-brand relationships (De Vries & Carlson, 2014).

Brand personification as a social media marketing strategy has grown in popularity (Kent (2014). 

Research has revealed that fictional brand characters generate more social media buzz than celebrities. For instance, Tony the Tiger, a brand mascot for Frosted Flakes since the 1950s gets more brand mentions than celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys and Sophia Vergara all together (Glenn, 2013). Furthermore, research indicates that brand mascots inspire consumers to engage in conversation and distribute content (Kent, 2014). The increasing transfer of brand characters onto social media and the evolution of brands’ social media marketing strategies beg the question of how brand personified characters on social media are used to manage consumer-brand relationship.

One of the main theories that relationship marketing is rooted in is the Social Exchange Theory (Clark, 1984; Clark & Mills, 1979, 1993). According to this theory, there are two basic types of relationships: exchange and communal relationship. The former emphasizes the consideration of costs and benefits (Clark & Mills, 1979). The calculation of self-interest is the main motivation to build and keep this type of relationship (Hess, Story, & Danes, 2011). Once the expected interests cannot be provided, such a relationship will terminate. The latter resembles one’s personal relationships with his/her close friends or family members (Hess et al., 2011). These relationships are ordinarily meaningful and long lasting (Duck, 1991). Conventional transactional marketing concentrates on exchange relationships, while relationship marketing calls for more emphasis on communal relationships between brands and consumers.
Given the purpose of this study, the relevance of viewing how brands use personified brand Twitter accounts manage relationship with their consumers under the umbrella of relationship marketing is evident. Brands desire to maintain an enduring consumer brand relationship, which requires a consideration of relationship maintenance strategies.

Additionally, social media have transformed the communication, collaboration and connectivity opportunities for individuals (Labreque, 2014).

The social media environment, furthermore, facilitates a constant two-way communication between brands and consumers, which is an important element in the maintenance and enhancement of relationships (Clark& Melancon, 2013).

In sum, the role of social media in consumer-brand relationship is predominantly evident in terms of encouraging consumers to engage with brands. On the one hand, consumers become active rather than passive participants in a mutually beneficial relationship. On the other hand, brands may take advantage of the potential of social media in their retention of existing consumers by preserving ongoing relationships with them (Malthouse et al., 2013). To further cement the rationale in the discourse of the role of social media in consumer-brand relationship, Labrecque (2014) proposed the use of parasocial interaction (PSI) theory as a perspective for the construction of effective social media strategies. The change in consumer-brand relationship stemming from the interactive nature of social media platforms is also reflected in the prospect that consumers become active contributors to the construction of brand stories (Gensler, Völckner, Thompkins, & Wiertz, 2013). It’s therefore important to add to the paucity of literature that exists by investigating the role of social media in consumer-brand relationship.

As social media have altered brands’ communication and marketing strategies, some brands have taken to having their brand characters or mascots feature on their social media pages such as Twitter and Facebook (Karlis, 2014). Twitter accounts exist for a number of brand characters that have been successfully received by consumers. Consumers have strong associations with brands characters, mascots as well as spokespersons which suggest that such brand personification should not be ignored on social channels (van Geldern, 2012). For example, Geico’s brand character, the Gecko has a verified Twitter account. The Geico Gecko’s twitter account presents various contents to its followers, ranging from its “personal opinions” to information about its daily activities.

The results reveal that the strategy of positivity is dominantly adopted by most personified brand Twitter accounts analyzed in this study. This implies that those brand characters make really strong attempts to maintain consumer-brand relationship by making messages pleasant. The provision of links, images and videos with text tweets increases the richness of information, making it more possible for consumers to feel pleasure in the conversations. The use of exclamation marks and positive emoticons presents the passion of the brand characters, indicating that they enjoy the conversations and expect consumers to have the same experiences. Such a result is parallel with the findings of previous research on corporate blogs (Cho & Huh, 2010).

For example, a large number of M&M’s tweets are about their upcoming new product-the Crispy M&M’s. The socio-emotional is the second most-adopted message type. Since consumers tend to have personal relationships with personified brand characters (Kim et al., 2014), it is reasonable for these Twitter accounts to use socio-emotional messages in the conversations to show their support for consumers. In fact, it is believed that in order to better manage consumer-brand relationship, social-emotional tweets need to be used more often. If so, consumers will be more engaged in the conservations with the characters and trust their relationships with the brands.