A Conceptual Model of Drivers of Online Brand Engagement: Moderating Role of COVID-19

Introduction

‘In today’s highly dynamic and interactive business environment, the role of “customer engagement” (CE) in cocreating customer experience and value is receiving increasing attention from business practitioners and academics alike’ (Brodie et al 2011). The rapid use of information technology has resulted in the emergence of different social media platforms, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and blogs, to name a few, which have transformed how businesses create value and communicate with buyers (Kumar, 2018). The usage of the internet and web technologies has led to an e-commerce community with thousands of brands and products from e-stores across the globe for consumers and a context in which buyers can browse for products, compare prices, and take advantage of great offers. The growing needs and demands of users in recent times, growing body of information that are available in connection with the patronage of products as well as the emergence of the internet as a market place has become significant for today businesses to use the internet as an avenue to attract and retain buyers including building their brands. Misuraca, Scepi & Spano, 2020 asserted that a high volume of buyer’s information displayed online helps brands or businesses achieve more profound insight into buyers' needs and desires. It also leads to prospective consumers viewing the user-generated content on online brand communities, for instance, reviews and comments, enabling higher buyer identification of products or brands. Thus, firms should actively manage their social media content in a compelling and differentiate their brand experiences to harness the psychological process of buyer engagement (Chen, 2018). “The phenomenal rise of the Internet and the extensive use of social media in all walks of society have reshaped the way business in general and marketing in particular are approached. In this sense, social media transformed the fundamentals of marketing practices and opened new horizons for efficient and up-to-date online management of marketing activities. Firms across all industries are steadily building their competitive strategies leveraging the power of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc”. (Yasin et al 2019). Companies can use social media as a driver to engage buyers with their brands or products, promote buyer brand relationships, and boost the sales of their brands. Due to the widespread usage and rapid growth of the internet, businesses are constantly searching for several ways to establish brand engagement with consumers on digital platforms (Eigenraam et al., 2018), such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, to name a few through digital content marketing. According to (Hollebeek & Macky, 2019) digital content marketing is the development and flow of relevant and valuable brand-related information to prospective buyers on the internet to create favorable brand involvement, trust, and long-term relationships. Though companies have several ways of implementing their digital content marketing, they usually utilize social media drivers to build their brand engagement (Ki & Kim, 2019). Digital content marketing (DCM) created to add value to purchaser's life, for instance, educating them on how to use a product or brand, whereas online drivers provide a short cut to these desired outcomes. Thus, online drivers have an existing connection of trust with buyers, and buyers also search for content created by online drivers for valuable information and advice. Nevertheless, companies and businesses believe that buyers engagement with an online driver will lead to involvement with their brands. The relationships are, however, not empirically established. According to Eigenraam et al., 2018 online engagement practices involves the buyer's perspective.