Behind-the-scenes of a brand : the impact of perceived backstage on consumer responses

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2011-12

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Moon, Jang Ho

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Abstract

Consumers watch what a brand does, listen to what a brand says, and expect to make a meaningful connection with a brand via social media. Thus, creating effective and persuasive content on behalf of a brand to attract consumers becomes an important task for today’s marketers in social media. In this dissertation, brand information disclosure is defined as any communication of a brand’s relevant information, thoughts, and feelings, which are generated and deliberately disclosed by marketers. Further, disclosing perceived backstage of a brand by showing various behind-the-scenes information is proposed as a unique type of brand information disclosure, which is interpreted as a higher degree of brand information disclosure. Motivated by the integral role of self-disclosure in interpersonal relationships, the purpose of this dissertation study is to investigate the influence of a brand’s disclosure of perceived backstage information through social media. Specifically, this study explored how the degree and the scarcity of information disclosure would influence on consumer’s intimacy, liking, and trust toward a brand as well as consumer-brand relationship quality. Further, the study attempts to investigate the moderating role of consumer’s advertising skepticism on consumer responses. The findings from this dissertation study illustrate that degree of brand information disclosure is a significant influence on consumers’ brand evaluations and consumer-brand relationship quality in a social media environment. In addition, findings highlighted the influential role of the scarcity of information disclosure, depending upon the degree of information disclosure. Moreover, the findings evidenced how the consumer’s general advertising skepticism can play a significant role when consumers are exposed to information from the brand via social media.

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