Understanding the Role of Social Media Content in Brand Loyalty: A Meta-Analysis of User-Generated Content Versus Firm-Generated Content

Abstract

The enormous growth of social media has increased interest in this platform among marketers and marketing academics. However, the previous literature has not provided a clear consensus regarding the influence of social media content on consumers’ brand loyalty. The meta-analysis presented in this article integrates results from 223 independent samples, with a total of 97,709 respondents. The study synthesizes previous research to develop a conceptual framework around the dimensions of brand loyalty (cognitive, affective, and conative loyalty), user-generated and firm-generated social media content attributes, and the moderating effects of contextual characteristics and control variables. Selected content attributes (information quality, information credibility, information usefulness, positive emotions, interactivity, and self-congruity) emerged as triggers in social media for dimensions of brand loyalty. Specifically, the authors show that the impact of the attributes on the brand loyalty dimension is stronger for firm-generated content than for user-generated content for most of the relationships. The results indicate that these effects are dependent on contextual characteristics (e.g., low involvement vs. high involvement, hedonic vs. utilitarian, nondurable vs. durable, Human Development Index, and social media platform). The contributions to theory and managerial implications of these findings are discussed, and future research directions are developed.