Predicting Engagement Generated by Digital Interactions: An Abstract

Abstract

This research aims to estimate a prediction model for understanding how the engagement occurs considering a digital and emotional context for the brand. Throughout the following sections the theoretical foundations and methodology to be followed is displayed. Management and brand building have become years, one of the most important marketing topics, this mainly because buying motives are becoming less utilitarian and have become more hedonic. Therefore, the selection of the product to buy comes not only from the functional benefits but also from the intangible benefits that are normally associated with the brand, such as emotions, social and self-expression. The information was collected between April and May 2018. The sampling method was convenience that implies a non-probability sampling. 222 students from the Faculty of Economics and Business. Students receive a participation incentive to cooperate with the investigation. The sample was composed of 52% women and 48% men, whose age ranges between 18 and 23 years. PLS structural equation modeling was employed for testing the model. According with the statistical model, we can conclude that digital interaction, loyalty and brand attachment generated by marketing strategies are predictors of engagement. The inner model suggests that digital interaction has the strongest effect on brand attachment (0.531) followed by loyalty on engagement (0.525) and Digital interaction on loyalty (0.480). The hypothesized path relationship between constructs is statistically significant (bootstrapping) but in case of brand love and engagement, the relationship is negative. Thus, we can conclude that digital interaction, brand attachment and loyalty are moderately strong predictors of engagement; and digital interaction is moderately strong predictor of brand attachment and loyalty. According with the hypothesis stated prior, we could accept all of them. We test the relationship between brand love and engagement and the result shows that there is not a direct relationship in this model. However, brand love is highly explained by digital interactions, brand attachment and loyalty.