"This dissertation looks at the value proposition of social media to firms. Specifically, it looks at what factors account for the empirical link between brand equity, purchase intention, and brand social media engagement intention. This study also looks into brand equity antecedents, specifically cognitive absorption and cognitive flow. In addition, this study looks at the effects of community engagement metrics on social media posts, to see to what extent brand equity, purchase intent, and/or brand social media engagement intent are the result of actual social media content or previous/other consumers engaging with the post. Using a simulated Facebook environment and survey format, 858 Mechanical Turk participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, no community metrics shown, true community engagement metrics shown, and switched community engagement metrics shown (e.g. posts with established high engagement metrics were shown with low engagement metrics and vice versa). They were then randomly assigned once more into a high or low engagement post group. Participants were then shown three Facebook posts for McDonald's, and three posts for Delta Airlines, with engagement scores and presence based on their random assignments. Brands were selected to provide the maximum variety of purchase decision involvement, and Brand Awareness, Promotional, and Engagement post categories because they corresponded with the Buying Behavior Model (Coursaris, Van Osch, Balogh, 2013; Wind, 1978). Following each post, participants were presented a survey about their social media engagement intentions, purchase intentions, brand equity, as well as cognitive absorption and flow experiences when interacting with the post. Based on these findings, this dissertation offers the following contributions. First, it empirically tests the relationship between social media-based brand engagement and purchase intention and therewith attempts to expose whether or not investments by companies in social media marketing communications are associated with a potential return on investment. Second, this study serves as a starting point for understanding antecedents of brand equity, and establishes cognitive flow as a highly likely predictor. Third, this study tests the new construct of brand social media engagement intention on a public sample. Fourth, this study draws on actual brand Facebook Page Posts that are classified according to their messaging content and objectively evaluated in terms of their impact (i.e. the evoked level of Likes, Comments, and/or Shares) before exposing them to participants to test the impact they may have on consumers' perceptions and behavioral intentions towards the brand in a natural, simulated exposure environment of Facebook. Brand communities are then actively tested to observe consumer engagement effects on a live, simulated platform, to see if consumers interact with posts based on the content, or the presence of community engagement metrics. Such results could demystify and assist in some of brand investments into practices such as purchasing engagement. If it is purely content that causes people to engage with brand posts, then companies can increase their organic value without investing in paid resources, thus increasing their ROI. Finally, active interaction was not established as an equivocal reflection of self-report metrics for engagement intention. Further understanding of the Facebook environment is still needed."--Pages ii-iii.
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