Signaling Warmth: How Brand Warmth and Symbolism Affect Consumers’ Online Brand Endorsements

Abstract

In their efforts to promote their brands, products and services, advertisers often enlist endorsement by other parties, such as celebrities or experts (e.g., Biswas, Biswas, and Das, 2006; Rice, Kelting, and Lutz, 2012). Increasingly, brands and organizations are also seeking endorsement by their consumers on social network sites, for instance by a like on Facebook. These endorsements can be stimulated by the endorsed brands (e.g., by raffling prices among people who like the brand's page on Facebook), but may also occur spontaneously. While externally motivated endorsements are easy to explain, the question remains why consumers decide voluntarily to endorse brands without getting something in return. Therefore, in the present chapter, we examine factors that might play a role in consumers' decisions to endorse brands on social media. More concretely, we investigate to what extent the perceived warmth of a brand and brand symbolism affect consumers' intentions to endorse a brand on social media.