Analyses of social media engagement of sustainable food brands

This research investigates how sustainability-related message factors alongside moderating variables (content characteristics and country of operation) leverage engagement on online posts created by brands. It also explores consumer responses to gauge the effectiveness of sustainability messages and their reception by consumers. It addresses five research questions. The first four deal with the factors that influence post engagement, while the last question focuses on how consumers perceive these messages. Informed by the marketing literature on social media, sustainability, and engagement, a theoretical model is developed. Guided by the model, this research examines the influence of factors on post engagement using quantitative and qualitative content analyses. A dataset of 3,149 posts (of five food brands, two social media platforms, and three countries) was used for investigation. Next, it examines how brands’ sustainability messages are perceived by consumers by analysing 5,810 comments. This research finds that certain sustainability-related message factors (value-driven attribution) generate significantly positive engagement in food brands’ posts, whereas some message factors (triple bottom line, informativeness, egoistic-driven and healthfulness) are linked to significantly negative engagement. Country of operation plays a moderating role. On the other hand, content characteristics are only moderated by vividness, not message appeal. Various contextual differences for platform, brand and period also cause positive or negative changes in the engagement relationship. Furthermore, insights from consumers show varying perspectives, including compliance and resistance to sustainability messages across brands, sustainability efforts, and products. Overall, this research provides a conceptual model based on post engagement to teach brands how to leverage engagement on social media towards their sustainability messages. The model was applied to global food brands. It is found to improve post engagement including a stronger connection between consumers and brands, increased awareness of brands’ sustainability efforts, and the potential for a wider reach and influence on consumers.