This research examines how firms can generate engagement on their product pages on Facebook, and whether there is a difference in how firms can generate engagement on their product pages based on users’ level of involvement with the product, and the functional and hedonic properties of products. Using the firm’s posts as a driver of engagement on its product pages on Facebook, we study the relationship between the style (i.e., formal vs. informal) and content (i.e., business related vs non-business related) of a given post submitted by a firm on its Facebook page and the level of user engagement measured as the number of positive and negative comments on the post.
The analysis was conducted on 57,000 posts from product pages of Fortune 1,000 companies. The key finding from the analysis is that in the environment of Facebook all types of products generate greater engagement from informal posts; however, in the content dimension “incongruous” posts, i.e., posts that differ from the type of content that would be expected on a given product page, generate greater engagement. The analysis has important implications for how firms should engage with customers on Facebook based on the characteristics of their product.
