Investigating the Impact of Emotional Contagion on Customer Attitude, Trust and Brand Engagement: A Social Commerce Perspective

Abstract

Social Commerce networks are a powerful platform for spreading positive and negative emotional contagion, which is affecting users from different perspectives, i.e., psychology, attitude, buying decision. Emotional contagion is the phenomenon of having a person's emotions and behaviours directly trigger similar emotions or behaviour in other people. This research proposes a model to analyze the factors influencing emotional contagion that, in turn, impact consumer's attitudes, trust, and brand engagement. This study used a survey approach using a structured questionnaire. Primary data was collected from 174 social media users who shop online. The proposed model was tested using multiple regression analysis. The results demonstrated that effective content, visual or text, triggers customers' emotional contagion, influencing customer attitude and trust leading to brand engagement. The research study's findings can be used for deciding on content strategies of advertisements pertaining to social commerce.