Brand to consumer emotional contagion on Facebook brand pages
(A2023-113980)

AUTHORS

Chedia Dhaoui, The University of New South Wales; Cynthia Webster, Macquarie University; Lay Peng Tan, Macquarie University

ABSTRACT

In this paper we examine emotional contagion for the same emotions and across different emotions from brands to consumers on Facebook brand pages. We investigate 1) which emotions in brand posts produce the most consumer responses in terms of emoticon reactions and emotional comments, 2) the extent to which consumers respond to emotional brand content with the same emotion, and 3) whether emotional engagement occurs across different emotions. We collected 317,357 brand posts, 83,310,772 consumer emoticon reactions and 41,181,665 consumer emotional comments using Facebook application programming interface Graph API. Our results show 1) Sadness in brand posts is highly contagious, 2) brand posts containing specific emotions elicit the same emotional reactions and comments for Love, Happiness, Surprise and Sadness but not for Anger, and 3) emotional contagion across different emotions is complicated, challenging the general premise that positive emotional cues generate favourable outcomes.