Title: Corporate Facebook posts in the UK and Greece: a content analysis

Authors: Kyriakos Riskos; Leonidas Hatzithomas; Christina Boutsouki; Yorgos Zotos

Addresses: Egnatia 46, Thessaloniki 54642, Greece ' Egnatia 156, Thessaloniki 540 06, Greece ' Campus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 541 24, Greece ' Limassol 50329, Cyprus

Abstract: Despite the proliferation of research on the value of Facebook as a marketing tool, there is limited understanding on how companies use Facebook to interact with consumers. At the same time, very little is known about consumers' response to corporate Facebook posts. The present study adopts a cross-cultural approach and investigates (a) the differences in the content of corporate Facebook posts between the UK and Greece with respect to the use of informational and emotional content, and (b) consumers' response to these posts. A content analysis of 2000 corporate Facebook posts reveals that message content is country specific. UK corporate Facebook posts focus on informational content, whereas Greek corporate Facebook posts emphasise emotional content. Our results also reveal differences in the behaviour of Facebook users in the two countries. In the UK, corporate Facebook posts with informational content collect more 'Likes' compared to posts with non-informational content, whereas corporate Facebook posts with emotional content attain more 'Likes' than non-emotional posts in Greece.

Keywords: Facebook; informational cues; emotional appeals; content analysis; cross-cultural analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2017.085656

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 2017 Vol.11 No.3, pp.233 - 251

Received: 16 Nov 2016
Accepted: 30 Dec 2016

Published online: 05 Aug 2017 *

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