Effect of message types on customer engagement behavior with online grocery retail brands on Instagram

Purpose Social media platform growth has prompted brands to engage with their customers on social media beyond traditional purchase contexts. This study investigates the impact of different message strategies on customer engagement behavior for online grocery retail brands on Instagram. Design/methodology/approach We collected 865 Instagram posts from three popular online grocery retail brands and manually coded their content. We then performed analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Games-Howell post-hoc analyses to examine the relationship between message strategies and customer engagement behavior. Findings The results demonstrated that transformational message strategies are most effective in generating customer engagement behavior, followed by interactional message strategies. Informational message strategies were not effective. Research limitations/implications Our study extends the Elaboration Likelihood Model in a low-involvement context by examining the elaboration efforts of customers for image-based posts on Instagram. The findings are useful for managers and practitioners of online grocery retail brands who want to create effective message strategies for generating customer engagement. Originality/value This study is one of the first to compare different message types to examine their relative importance in generating customer engagement behavior. Furthermore, rather than focusing on overarching and broad message types, this study includes message subtypes for a broad message type and provides insights on how the efficacy in generating engagement differs.