A study on the association of firm-generated content on Instagram, affective customer engagement, and positive electronic word of mouth: Evidence from food industry of Pakistan

Sammanfattning: In marketing literature, the consumer engagement concept has gained the significant attention of researchers. Based on the stimuli-organism-response (S-O-R) framework, current research proposed to analyze the association between consumers' perception of characteristics of firm-generated content (FGC) on Instagram and positive electronic word of mouth by consumers through affective consumer engagement. The quantitative research technique was employed to evaluate the hypotheses and theoretical framework, and an online survey was developed for this research. The backdrop for this study is Pakistan’s restaurant Instagram accounts due to the importance of engagement in the food sector. To test the hypotheses, SPSS software is used. From the analysis and results generated from different tools, it is found that Customer engagement is significantly affected by perceived enjoyment which they get from original Instagram post of the brands they follow. Additionally, it is found that if a firm or brand puts in effort in enhancing their content catering to better perceived enjoyment and perceived originality for improving customers’ engagement, then they are more likely to improve the WOM numbers which can bring in more followers and evidently more business.