An experiential model of consumer engagement in social media

Purpose: This study aims to propose an experiential model of consumer engagement focusing on Facebook brand pages. Building on the brand experience literature, the study synthesizes the experiential affordances of Facebook brand pages along perceptual, social, epistemic and embodied dimensions and tests their impact on consumer engagement. Design/methodology/approach: The study operationalized key variables of the proposed model at the brand page level and assembled pertinent data, using systematic content analysis, on a sample of Facebook brand pages (n = 85). Poisson regression tested the proposed model. Findings: The findings indicate that brands that facilitate greater number of experiential affordances on their Facebook brand pages generated higher levels of consumer engagement. For both brand post likes and brand post shares, the contributions of experiential affordances were significant and positive. Practical implications: The findings offer actionable managerial insights for brands seeking to implement an experiential model of consumer engagement on their fan pages. Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature by proposing and testing an experiential model of consumer engagement in the context of Facebook brand pages. To date, the experiential value of Facebook brand pages has rarely, if at all, been tested in an empirical study.