The impact of consumer perceptions and values on engagement behavior towards social media brand content

Social media platforms have become highly effective in facilitating consumer-brand engagement and building interactive marketing communication. The concept of consumer engagement has gained significant attention, particularly with the rise of social media brand content as a vital component of digital marketing. This dissertation investigates the consumer-based antecedents of engagement behavior on social media through a two-phase, integrated mixed-methods research design. Within this context, the potential effects of motivations grounded in Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT)-oriented motivations, consumers' content-driven perceptions, and human values on the consumption, contribution to, and creation of branded content are examined by combining qualitative focus group interviews with a quantitative consumer field survey. The research context is characterized by branded content posted on the official public Instagram profiles of the four leading smartphone brands: Apple, Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi. The findings from exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, cluster analysis, and ANOVA offer valuable insights into the consumer engagement on social media and enhance understanding how personal value orientations differentiate consumer segments based on their engagement with branded content.