Developing brand advocacy through brand activities on Facebook

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how brands’ social media activities (credible content delivery, co-creation and responsiveness) impact brand advocacy. The paper also examines the influence of brand advocacy on purchase intentions of brand advocates and the moderating effect of the amount of time spent on Facebook on the relationship between brand advocacy and purchase intentions. Finally, the moderating effect of brand type (goods vs services) on the relationship between brands’ activities and brand advocacy is explored. Design/methodology/approach US adults who use Facebook as their primary social media platform participated in a survey via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The three brand activities are positively related to users’ advocacy of brands toward other users. Brand advocacy also positively influences purchase intentions of brand advocates. The amount of time spent on Facebook moderates the relationship between brand advocacy and purchase intentions. The brand type moderates the relationship between co-creation and brand advocacy. Originality/value This study differs from the existing research, which has typically used a user-oriented perspective (e.g. impact of user motivations) to explain brand advocacy and has not considered the outcome of brand advocacy on the brand advocates’ purchase intentions.