Something social, something entertaining? How digital content marketing augments consumer experience and brand loyalty

TLDR

Branded content marketing is an ongoing conversation between brands and consumers, aiming to deliver value‑rich information that cuts through noise and accelerates brand building. The study proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework explaining how branded content marketing drives brand loyalty for both high‑ and low‑product involvement brands. Using consumption value classification, the framework identifies consumers' experiential evaluation as the key mechanism linking branded content marketing to brand loyalty. For Lenovo, perceived informative, entertainment, and functional values of branded content and its YouTube channel enhance experiential evaluation and boost loyalty, while for Nescafé, entertainment, social, and functional values similarly elevate experiential evaluation and loyalty.

Abstract

Branded content marketing serves as an ongoing conversation between brands and consumers. Creating value-rich information that breaks through the noise and that can accelerate brand building has been a standing challenge for many brands. Informed by extant literature on content marketing, this study proposed a comprehensive theoretical framework that explicates the mechanism of branded content marketing in brand loyalty across both high- and low-product involvement brands. This study applied the classification of consumption values to the context of content marketing, hypothesized, and identified consumers' experiential evaluation as an underlying mechanism of content marketing accounting for brand loyalty. Specifically, for a high-product involvement brand (i.e., Lenovo), consumers' perceived informative and entertainment value of branded content, as well as the perceived functional value of the brand's YouTube channel, positively shape their experiential evaluation of the brand, which in turn, leads to greater brand loyalty. For a low-product involvement brand (i.e., Nescafé), consumers' derived entertainment and social value of branded content, as well as the functional value of its YouTube channel, jointly affect consumers' experiential evaluation, which subsequently contributes to elevated brand loyalty.