Anthropomorphic communication and consumer behaviors in hospitality

Abstract

In the ever-evolving landscape of brand marketing, social media has become an integral part of consumer-brand relationships. Amid intense brand competition, it is of great importance to engage consumers and develop consumers’ tendency for brand evangelism behaviors through social media communication to outperform competitors. On this basis, an effective social media communication strategy has become imperative. Anthropomorphism can be an effective communication method, as it can help businesses strengthen their relationships with consumers and develop brand evangelists, which appear critical to enhancing firms’ profitability. This approach is particularly pertinent in the experience-centric sectors of the hospitality industry, such as hotels, where digitalization has transformed consumer experiences. Therefore, understanding the role of anthropomorphic communication on consumers’ behaviors (i.e., consumer engagement and brand evangelism) is essential to ensure business success and advance theoretical development, especially for the experience-oriented hospitality and tourism industry. Furthermore, most businesses will face public relation crisis at one time or another. For example, transgressions of tourism brands (i.e., misconduct by the brand, such as product failures or service failures) have been disseminated rapidly on social media. Such transgressions have caused great repercussions publicly in recent years, resulting in brand boycotts and thus negatively impacting hotel revenue. Hence, how a brand can take advantage of anthropomorphic response strategies and weaken the negative impact of brand transgressions are critical for crisis management and brand sustainability. This study attempts to address three important research questions: (1) whether brands’ social media anthropomorphic communication can increase consumer engagement and brand evangelism behaviors and why, (2) what factors strengthen this influence, and (3) which type of anthropomorphic communication is more effective in increasing customer engagement and brand evangelism and when. To answer these research questions, this study employs a multi-method integrating econometric model using online big data and experimental designs. In detail, Chapter 1 briefly introduces the background, significance, and research framework underpinning this thesis. Chapter 2 reviews the relevant theoretical literature. Chapter 3 presents studies regarding the effects of hotel brands’ anthropomorphic communication on customer social media engagement (i.e., likes, shares, or comments) using a multi-methods approach and five experimental designs. The impacts of warmth-oriented and competence-oriented anthropomorphic communication on consumer engagement and its boundary conditions (i.e., brand popularity and message-color congruence) are explored by text mining and econometric modeling techniques. Findings reveal warmth-oriented anthropomorphic communication positively influences consumer engagement behaviors, while competence-oriented communication only positively impacts likes but not on shares or comments. Brand popularity moderates the effects of anthropomorphic communication, depending on the specific metric and context. Message-color congruence was found to strengthen the positive effects of both warmth-oriented and competence-oriented anthropomorphic communication on consumer engagement, particularly in terms of likes and shares. Chapter 4 further conduct two experiments to explore (1) whether and how brand transgressions influence consumers’ brand evangelism behaviors and (2) which variation of brand anthropomorphic communication with regard to different types of brand transgressions is more effective to weaken the negative influence of the transgression events. The results reveal that moral brand transgressions lead to lower perceived psychological contract violations compared to competent brand transgressions. However, moral transgressions have a more negative impact on consumers’ brand evangelism behavior. Psychological contract violations mediate the relationship between brand transgressions and brand evangelism. Anthropomorphic responses mitigate the impact of brand transgressions on psychological contract violations and brand evangelism, but the results vary for different types of responses. Chapter 5 provides a comprehensive conclusion and discussion of the overall findings and their implications for the field of marketing and brand management. This research sheds light on which, when, and how anthropomorphic brand social media communication shapes consumer behaviors. The findings also provide marketers with theoretical insights into how to develop effective anthropomorphic communication strategies in social media environments and, ultimately, for establishing sustainable customer–brand relationships. In addition, this study offers instructive insights into research on anthropomorphism and consumer citizenship behavior. Finally, despite focusing on the tourism and hospitality context, this study emerges with the booming of social networks and consumer-generated big data, contributing to social media marketing and consumer behavior studies.