Taking a global view on brand post popularity: Six social media brand post practices for global markets

• Published in: Business horizons Vol. 60; no. 5; pp. 621 - 633
• Main Authors: Lin, Hsin-Chen, Swarna, Hepsi, Bruning, Patrick F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.09.2017
• Subjects: Brand social media; Cross cultural marketing; Global marketing strategy; Social media strategy; Word of mouth; Cross cultural marketing; Word of mouth; Brand social media; Global marketing strategy; Social media strategy
• ISSN: 0007-6813; 1873-6068
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2017.05.006

Brand post popularity positively relates to consumers’ purchase intentions, actual sales, and stock prices. Research suggests that social media posts should be vivid, practical, interesting, personalized, and interactive. However, cross-cultural research also suggests that practices might not be equally effective across different regional markets. While vividness and practicality could be consistently important across cultures, characteristics of interest, personalization, and interactivity might need to be adapted to the cultural conditions of specific target markets. We consider how individualism/collectivism, long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and high-context/low-context cultures could influence brand post effectiveness. We provide suggestions for how to manage social media brand post popularity from a cross-cultural perspective to inform both domestic and global social media marketing campaigns. Suggested practices include: (1) making brand posts engaging; (2) targeting the ‘I’ in individualistic cultures and the ‘we’ in collectivist cultures; (3) focusing on consumers’ identity in less long-term oriented cultures and on functional information in more long-term oriented cultures; (4) ensuring that posts help reduce uncertainty; (5) planning for one-way communication in higher power distance countries and two-way communication in lower power distance countries; and (6) making messages less direct in higher-context cultures and more direct in lower-context cultures.