Impression management through social media: impact on the market performance of musicians’ human brands
Journal of Product & Brand Management
ISSN: 1061-0421
Article publication date: 14 February 2024
Issue publication date: 10 April 2024
Abstract
Purpose
Human brands in the music industry use self-presentation tactics on social media to manage audience impressions. This practice has led to many posts asking followers to adopt behaviors favoring the human brand. However, its effectiveness in leveraging relevant performance metrics for musicians outside social media, such as popularity in specialized media, music sales and number of contracted concerts, needs further exploration. This study aims to reveal the effect of impression management tactics conveyed on social media on the market performance of musicians’ human brands.
Design/methodology/approach
Secondary data research classifies 5,940 social media posts from 11 music artists into self-presentation tactics (self-promotion, exemplification, supplication and ingratiation). It shows their predictions on three market performance metrics in an annual balanced panel study.
Findings
Impression management tactics via posts on social media are mostly self-promotion, improving the musicians’ market performance by increasing the number of contracted concerts. Conversely, ingratiation generated the most positive effect on the musician’s popularity but reduced music sales. Besides lowering the musicians’ popularity, exemplification also reduced the number of contracted concerts, while the supplication had no significant effect.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the research is the first to use social media postings of musicians’ official human brand profiles based on self-presentation typologies as a complete impression management tool. Furthermore, it is the first to test the effects of these posts on market performance metrics (i.e. outside of social media) in a longitudinal study.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: This study was supported by Capes Foundation and University of Brasilia, Faculty of Economics, Administration, Accounting and Public Policy Management and Graduate Program in Management.
Citation
Porto, R.B., Borges, C.P. and Dubois, P.G. (2024), "Impression management through social media: impact on the market performance of musicians’ human brands", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 345-356. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-05-2023-4510
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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