Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Non-Brand-Centric Microblog On Consumers' Brand Attitude

In mobile Internet era, the social media are going beyond the owned media, earned media, paid media, and become the most important communication channel between enterprises and consumers. The official social media account then has become the key to the communication between enterprises and consumers, which attracts great attentions from academic and business fields. The interaction, relational, rapid updates and other characteristics of social media require official firm account to use different communication strategies with other media channels, especially the content strategy, which is in the core of in the communication. In addition to the brand-centric content such as sales promotion, brand promotion and other content to improve the brand attitude, sales and other brand equities, the official enterprise account also need to post the non-brand-centric knowledge,entertainment and other content to induce consumer interactions and enhance brand-consumer relations. Although current studies found the existence and extensive distribution of non-brand-centric content, but the research and exploration of this kind of content is very limited. At present, few studies are devoted to non-brand-centric content as the research object, and the composition of such content and the factors affecting its release is not clear yet. In addition, the previous research mainly explores its impact on interaction and relationship, and there is a lack of research to explore its influence on brand attitude and other brand equities, especially the influence mechanism on brand attitude.In order to understand the non-brand-centric content deeper and to explore the influence mechanism of non-brand-centric content on brand attitude, this paper took non-brand-centric microblog as the research object and conducted research on non-brand-centric microblog based on theories including elaboration likelihood model(ELM), use and gratification,continuous use, and research methods including netnography, grounded theory, content analysis, experiment and questionnaire. The main research contents, research results and research implications are as follows:First, this paper introduced the concept of non-brand-centric microblog,proposed non-brand-centric microblog classification framework and the conceptual framework on how non-brand-centric microblog impact users'reactions.This paper defined the content posted by the corporate official microblog account as non-brand-centric content if the brand is just a supporting prop in the content or the content does not contain the brand information. Then, based on the sample microblogs from 316 domestic and foreign Sina official firm accounts in two years, the non-brand-centric microblog is divided into four categories: information providing,entertainment, emotion expression and interaction guidance. Further, based on the grounded analysis of non-brand-centric microblog and its comments, it is found that non-brand-centric microblog can provide consumers with utilitarian and experiential benefits, can provide corporates and consumers with dialogue opportunities, which on the one hand aroused consumers'attention and satisfaction, prompting consumers to post non-brand comments,on the other hand aroused consumers' association with the brand and evaluation on the brand, prompting consumers to post brand comments. This study makes up for the lack of classification of non-brand-centric microblog,and the lack of systematicness and completeness of related classifications in existing research. At the same time, different from previous research that focuses on the amount of interaction, this study qualitatively explored the impact of non-brand-centric microblog on the consumers in the perspective of the content of interaction. These lay a theoretical foundation for deeper investigation of non-brand-centric microblog in the futrue.Second, this paper proposes an influence factors model on the post of non-brand-centric microblog.Empirical study found that the post of non-brand-centric microblog is influenced by all the three aspects including the account performance, brand value, and brand types, and the incluence factors for different types of non-brand-centric microblog are different. In particular, corporations with longer registration time and higher update frequency more inclined to post information providing non-brand-centric microblog; B2C service corporations with higher update frequency more inclined to post entertainment non-brand-centric microblog; domestic corporations more inclined to post emotion expression non-brand-centric microblog;corporations with more fans tend to post interaction guidance non-brand-centric microblog. The existing research indicates that the motivation of the non-brand-centric microblog are interaction and brand-consumer relationship, this study further proposes the specific factors that affect the post of non-brand-centric microblog. The results of the study indirectly reflect the importance of subdividing non-brand-centric microblog.Thirdly, this paper proposes the mechanism model of the impact of non-brand-centric microblog on brand attitude.Based on the netnography and experimental data, this paper studies the impact of non-brand-centric microblog on brand attitude from two levels,interaction reaction and psychological reaction. According to the content analysis of Mazda's enterprise microblog, it is found that there is no significant difference in brand attitude, purchase intention and microblog attitude between non-brand-centric and brand-centric group. However, the discrimination between the positive and negative dimensions of attitude reveals that the positive impact of non-brand-centric microblog on positive attitude is lower than that of the brand-centric microblog, whereas the negative impact of non-band-centric microblog on negative attitude of the brand is also lower, reflecting that the non-brand-centric microblog triggered less positive and negative brand information processing than the brand-centric microblog.Based on the above research results, the stimulus-organism-response model in social commerce, the ELM, further experimental study found that non-brand-centric microblog and brand-centric microblog both improved brand attitude, and their effects has no significant difference; However, the influence mechanism of non-brand-centric microblog is different from that of brand-centric microblog. Non-brand-centric microblog impact brand attitude through the mechanism of 'microblog content attitude ? microblog account attitude ? brand attitude. Brand-centric microblog impact brand attitude through the mechanism of 'microblog content attitude + brand argument quality ? brand attitude'. The result that two types of microblogs have no significant differences in the impact effect on brand attitude is consistent with previous studies, but the findings further reveal the underlying mechanism of this phenomenon. This study divides microblog attitude into microblog content attitude and microblog account attitude, and highlights the importance of microblog attitude, and enlarges the application of ELM.Finally, this paper proposes the mechanism model of the influence of non-brand-centric microblog ratio on brand attitude.Based on the above research results, ELM, use and satisfaction theory,salesman trust theory, using questionnaire method, this paper investigated how non-brand-centric microblog ratio influence brand atttitude. It is found that non-brand-centric microblog ratio impacts brand attitude through the brand argument; at the same time, non-brand-centric microblog ratio impacts account satisfaction through social, entertainment and economic benefits, and impacts account trust through persuasion intent and likeability. Account satisfaction and account trust can directly affect brand attitude, and can also affect the brand attitude through account attitude; In addition, the account satisfaction influences the continuous attention intention. The continuous attention intention impacts the attention willing to pay on the enterprise microblog when browsing the news feeds of microblog, and then affects the perception of entertainment, likability and brand argument quality. These results reflect the importance of non-brand-centric microblog in improving the continuous attention intention and then indirectly improving brand attitude. This study shed light on future research which aims to find the mechanism of attitude change under long term impact from firm-generated content in social media.