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1. Introduction
Social media represent virtual places that bring together a large number of people to interact, share and discuss ideas (Ellison et al. , 2011; Raacke and Bonds-raacke, 2008). Because of their power to connect people from different backgrounds with little-to-no upfront costs, social media are rapidly growing in popularity across the world (Keitzmann et al. , 2011). For instance, the number of active monthly users on Facebook has surpassed 1.2 billion worldwide at the end of 2013. Businesses as well are rapidly embracing social media and are experimenting with different approaches to connect with their customers (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014; Swani et al. , 2014). A case in point is Facebook, where over 30 million active pages were being operated by brands and businesses worldwide as of 2014 (TechCrunch, 2014).
Spurred by this development, scholars have begun researching how social media are being applied for marketing purposes (Michaelidou et al. , 2011; Swani et al. , 2014) and how the audience is responding to these efforts (Jahn and Kunz, 2012; Kim and Ko, 2012). The locus of this research, as far as Facebook goes, is brand pages, which represent specific sites within Facebook set up and run by businesses to serve as their official outlets for brand communications and customer interactions (De Vries et al. , 2012; Tsai and Men, 2013). Businesses utilise Facebook brand pages to create and publish branded content, formally known as brand posts, through which they connect with consumers and fans alike (Lipsman et al. , 2012). Consumers view brand posts in their newsfeeds or when they specifically visit brand pages, and may decide to respond to them by using one or more of Facebook's standard response options, i.e., like, share and comment (Lipsman et al. , 2012). Businesses seek to enhance audiences' response as a means of deepening brand awareness and cultivating long-term brand relationships (Jahn and Kunz, 2012; Kim and Ko, 2012). In particular, the audiences' action of liking, sharing and commenting on brand posts represent a form of e-WOM that strengthens the reach and impact of brand posts (De Vries et al. , 2012; Sabate et al. , 2014).
Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to analyse the characteristics of Facebook brand posts and to...