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1. Introduction
Social media has become a mainstream media platform that connects one-third of the world’s population (Nelson-Field and Taylor, 2012). Communication budgets are re-adjusting as advertisers move away from traditional media and invest greater resources into digital advertising and social media. It is estimated that over 15 million brands globally are registered with the social media site, Facebook (Koetsier, 2013), attempting to reach more than 1 billion consumers (Stieglitz et al., 2014). In line with an increased focus on research exploring customer engagement (Brodie et al., 2013; Maslowska et al., 2015), particularly in the digital space (Hollebeek et al., 2014), practitioners are looking for guidance on how to build engagement using social media.
Social media sites are an increasingly popular touch point for wine consumers, with the viral and social capabilities of online networks creating a new forum for customer interaction with wine brands (Barber et al., 2008; Bulearca and Bulearca, 2010; Keller, 2009). While over 2,500 Australian and New Zealand wine brands have a presence on the social media site, Facebook (Mastermind, 2015), little research has addressed how wine brands communicate via social media platforms. Recent research has, however, indicated the importance of this area, with social media network participation leading to enhanced business performance (Quinton and Wilson, 2016), and improved product quality through access and knowledge of the needs and expectations of customers (Fiore et al., 2016). While wine marketers have been trying to understand how social media works and how their businesses can use them (Dean and Forbes, 2016), there is little empirical research available to describe exactly how wine consumers engage with brands in this forum.
Our research attempts to guide further academic investigation on the topics of social media and engagement in the wine industry, through the use of rich and valuable social media data available through Facebook. Our research contributes to knowledge in social media and engagement in a number of ways. First, the research identifies the main communication strategies used by wine brands on Facebook. Second, we identify valuable statistics and trends regarding engagement rates on wine brand Facebook pages which can be used by both practitioners and academics for benchmarking and further academic scrutiny. Third, we explore the trends of...