Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Social media research has received much credence in recent times given that it is considered part of individuals’ daily activities and by extension serve as a vehicle for brand connection and engagement (Bianchi and Andrews, 2018). While this provides novel communication channel to engage consumers, most retail firms have developed social media strategies to enhance their engagement practices with current and prospective customers (Assimakopoulos et al., 2017). Although consumers consider it a norm to engage with others on social media, it is a challenge to gauge their interest in social media brand engagement practices (Dholakia, 2006). This suggests that the amount of consumer effort required in participating in social media brand engagement (SBE) practices could vary from individuals.
Given that previous works suggest cognitive effort as a key construct in explaining consumer engagement decision behaviours (Hansen, 2012; Sweeney et al., 2015), it is interesting to understand how this drives consumers’ motivation to follow brands on social media. It is argued that consumers have limited cognitive resources, which is allocated in a prudent manner (Garbarino and Edell, 1997; Payne, 1982). In this vein, cognitive effort on the part of the consumer is likely to cause a drawback in relation to their drive in actively engaging with brands on social media, given the time constraints on the part of the consumer. In this study, cognitive effort is defined as the amount of energy, resources, time and force put into a behaviour or practice (Hansen, 2017; Söderlund and Sagfossen, 2017).
Given the available options and the effort required of the consumer, it could be argued that consumers’ interest in participating in social brand engagement (SBE) may be self-determined or externally controlled (Carlson et al., 2018; Ferguson et al., 2015). Furthermore, considering that customer engagement behaviours are driven by their own intentions (Jaakkola and Alexander, 2014), understanding the effects of autonomous and controlled motivations in SBE practices is of paramount interest, which could lead to outcomes such as brand purchase intention (Hollebeek et al., 2014). While more consumer motivations in participating in SBE practices could lead to response outcome behaviours, this may be driven by the level of effort required by the consumer (Hansen, 2017).
Furthermore, while not all consumers will be willing...