The More They Engage, the More They Consume: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Brand's Owned Social Media User Engagement on Sales

Abstract

Brand's owned social media (OSM) user engagement has become an influential concept in marketing. The phrase refers to user responses—such as likes, comments, shares, and favorites—to content on brand-controlled platforms, forums, or channels. However, as yet, there is no consensus among scholars about the impact of brand's OSM user engagement on sales. This study is a meta-analysis of 1240 effect size data from 40 publications with a sample size of 1,880,154. The findings show that OSM user engagement has a positive effect on sales. Moderation analysis indicates that this effect depends on factors such as the OSM content, firm-related characteristics (brand type: hedonic vs. utilitarian; product type: service vs. product; product life cycle: new vs. mature products), and social media-related characteristics (platform type: microblogs vs. social networks; platform advertising). Our results reveal that the impact of brand's OSM user engagement on sales is more pronounced and effective for hedonic brands (vs. utilitarian brands), in new products (vs. mature products), in microblogs (vs. social networks), and in the absence of platform advertising (vs. presence of platform advertising). These results provide novel insights into the relationships between brand's OSM user engagement, sales, and other key variables and offer avenues to assist marketers in effectively managing their social media marketing initiatives.