Value co-creation on social media: Examining the relationship between brand engagement and display advertising effectiveness for Chinese hotels

In recent years, hotels in China have been interested in leveraging social media platforms to facilitate interactions with and among consumers. Such brand engagement efforts on social media networks are believed to promote brands through co-creation of consumer experiences and values. This study was conducted in the context of Chinese hotels. The paper aims to identify two forms of brand engagement via social media platforms – consumer-initiated engagement and firm-initiated engagement – and to examine their effects on hotels’ display advertising effectiveness.

This study collected a comprehensive data set. First, the authors collected display advertisement data from two hotel chains in China. Second, the authors gathered the two hotels’ engagement data from Weibo. A generalized linear mixed model was used in data analysis.

The findings of the study indicate that both forms of brand engagement on social media network sites positively influence display advertising effectiveness. Moreover, for a strong brand, consumer-initiated engagement is more influential in increasing display advertising effectiveness; however, for a weak brand, firm-initiated engagement gains more clicks and conversions from advertisements.

As hotels in China continue to leverage online media platforms to reach, engage with and co-create value with potential and existing consumers, this study provides managers with insight as to how they can achieve higher advertising effectiveness by engaging with consumers on a consistent basis on social media.

This study mainly contributes to recent increasing research on engagement and value co-creation by providing a lens through which to assess the relationship between brand engagement via social media networks and online display advertising effectiveness.