Social Media Analytics in Retail: Exploring Consumer Engagement on Facebook

This study is to investigate the relationship between retailers’ Facebook activities (e.g., type of post they use, time they upload) and the resulting consumer engagement behavior on the Facebook fan pages. A total of 2,695 postings on Facebook fan pages for Macy’s, Target, Anthropologie, and Gap were collected. A three-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and series of ANOVAs were conducted to examine how content type, publisher type and timeframe affect consumer engagement on Facebook fan pages. Posting photos or videos attracted more engagement than status posts did. Results showed that marketer-generated content (MGC) was more effective in engaging users than user-generated content (UGC). This exploratory study provides retailers with effective strategies to enhance consumer engagement on their Facebook fan pages.

Keywords: Social media; Consumer engagement; Facebook; Social media analytics; Retailer; Marketing