Article (Scientific journals)
“Don't pretend to be my friend!” When an informal brand communication style backfires on social media
Gretry, Anaïs; Horváth, Csilla; Belei, Nina et al.
2017In Journal of Business Research, 74, p. 77–89
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Keywords :
Communication style; Social Media; Brand Trust; Informal; Brand Familiarity; Consumer-brand relationships
Abstract :
[en] Social media are now essential platforms for marketing communications, and the volume of consumer-brand in- teractions on these platforms is exploding. Even so, it remains unclear how brands should communicate with consumers to foster relationships and, in particular, to gain their trust. A fundamental decision in this regard is the choice of a communication style, specifically, whether an informal or a formal style should be used in social media communications. In this paper, we investigate how adopting an informal (vs. formal) communication style affects brand trust and demonstrate that using an informal style can either have a positive or negative effect on brand trust, depending on whether consumers are familiar with the brand or not. We further show that these ef- fects occur because consumers expect brands to behave according to social norms, such that the use of an infor- mal style is perceived to be appropriate for familiar brands and inappropriate for unfamiliar ones.
Disciplines :
Marketing
Author, co-author :
Gretry, Anaïs ;  Université de Liège > HEC-Ecole de gestion : UER > UER Management
Horváth, Csilla
Belei, Nina
van Riel, Allard
Language :
English
Title :
“Don't pretend to be my friend!” When an informal brand communication style backfires on social media
Publication date :
01 February 2017
Journal title :
Journal of Business Research
ISSN :
0148-2963
eISSN :
1873-7978
Publisher :
Elsevier Science
Volume :
74
Pages :
77–89
Peer reviewed :
Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi
Available on ORBi :
since 02 February 2017

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