Social Engagement Mechanisms: Twitter Hashtags and their Impact on Driving Brand Engagement
(A2019-8609)

AUTHORS

Beth Lloyd, Pricewaterhousecoopers; Tahir Nisar, Southampton Business School, University of Southampton

KEYWORDS

Hashtags; Brand; Engagement

ABSTRACT

Social media platforms have invented different social engagement mechanisms to achieve various online user related control and coordination goals. For example, Twitter encourages the use of hashtags that allow tweets to be collated in a thread that can be used for following specific events and topics. This research aims to give insights into how businesses can manipulate their hashtags on Twitter to drive brand engagement. To achieve this goal, we undertook a study to identify particular aspects of hashtags and how consumers respond to them. The finding of this study is that well-known household brands achieve more success with their hashtags that portray a positive image with positive purchase intentions than non-household brands do. The implications of this study have further enhanced existing literature on how hashtags can be manipulated for desired responses in emerging new social engagement environments.