Investigating the role of identification for social networking Facebook brand pages

Abstract

This study highlights the multiple roles of identification in a Facebook context. We differentiate and monitor the impacts of three key targets of identification, specifically, the identification with: a brand’s Facebook page, other users of this Facebook brand page, and identification at the conventional consumer-brand level. In this study, the relevance of each target was investigated with its impact on the level of loyalty to a Facebook brand page and word-of-mouth in favor of this page. Another level was examined at the broader brand level with the constructs of brand loyalty and word-of-mouth brand being integrated. The findings clearly illustrate that each target of identification has varying impacts on overall brand loyalty and word-of-mouth. Additionally, in some cases there is more of a mediated effect through loyalty and word-of-mouth towards the brand’s social networking page. Future researchers should include separate identification targets in new studies. Also, the inclusion of loyalty and word-of-mouth allows numerous managerial diagnostic benefits to be assessed.