Exploring the effect of user engagement in online brand communities: Evidence from Twitter

Social media such as forums, blogs and microblogs has been increasingly used for public information sharing and opinions exchange nowadays. It has changed the way how online community interacts and somehow has led to a new trend of engagement for online retailers especially on microblogging websites such as Twitter. In this study, we investigated the impact of online retailers' engagement with the online brand communities on users' perception of brand image and service. Firstly, we analysed the overall sentiment trends of different brands and the patterns of engagement between companies and customers using the collected tweets posted on a popular social media platform, Twitter. Then, we studied how different types of engagements affect customer sentiments. Our analysis shows that engagement has an effect on sentiments that associate with brand image, perception and customer service of the online retailers. Our findings indicate that the level, length, type and attitude of retailers' engagement with social media users have a significant impact on their sentiments. Based on our results, we derived several important managerial and practical implications. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.