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Social media and e-commerce incorporate entertainment, interaction and advertisement into e-commerce. Social exchange, coupled with payment tools, is a characteristic of WeChat, which is an important social media platform in China. The platform has a function called “moments” that is the equivalent of “Facebook timeline”, which enables users to share everyday moments on their social media timeline.
Chinese users use social media platforms, such as Weibo, RenRen and WeChat, to convey their brand love. Web-drama clips containing favourite brands are among the content that users share with their friends via social media. The joy of sharing Web-drama content showcases brand love support, agreeing with the affect theory of social exchange. This theory contends that the act of sharing information or other forms of content induces positive emotions among individuals (Chen et al., 2020). When Web-drama content is shared within a closed circle, viewers’ emotional attachment to web dramas appears in their social media timeline. The spill-over of Web-drama attachment to the advertised brand is demonstrated through mini-film advertising (Karpinska-Krakowiak and Eisend, 2020). When users share the digital content of Web dramas related to a brand, an enjoyable, playful sensation is created during the social exchange. This playful sensation resembles a real-life tickle and is thus called a “ticklish moment” in this study. The term “ticklish moments” represents the act of sharing electronic word of mouth (eWOM) within a trusted community when communicating entertainment and leisure (Amaro et al., 2020).
The primary aim of this study is to unpack how Web-drama connectedness, together with congruent content (e.g. love), influences brand love and spending, mediated by eWOM. This study illustrates how the congruency in the content of the Web drama (love) manifests love for a brand, which is hidden in the implicit advertising and embedded within Web drama. The congruent content of Web dramas in the present research is based on two teenage students falling in love while enjoying the advertised brand (McDonald’s). The logo and slogan of the advertised brand appear in the Web drama (i.e. http://alturl.com/nv3g2).
The marketing literature is replete with research on brand love and its influence on word of mouth (WOM). Research has shown that social media users who love a brand advertised in a Web drama share their love...