The antecedents of the intention to forward online company generated contents (CGC) and online user generated contents (UGC) via Facebook

Abstract

The present project investigated the relationships between brand experience and brand community engagement in online and offline settings, as well as the customers intentions to forward online company generated contents (CGC), and user generated contents (UGC). This project focused on the Islamic banking sector operating in Palestine as a targeted sample. As mentioned earlier, this doctoral thesis is based on five separate studies, which have been performed in order to shape the framework with regard to brand experience and the impact on engagement behavior through Facebook as a social media platform along with the effects on intention to forward the contents, materials, and advertisements posted by the Islamic banks. The results of this project revealed that brand experience plays a key role in mediating customer’s engagement behaviors within the online brand community. In this sense, brand experience also positively influences customer attitude and customer’s intention to forward and share online contents generated by the Islamic banks. This study also investigated the personality traits affecting customer’s engagement behaviors within online brand communities with the purpose to measure customer’s intention to forward contents generated by the Islamic banks. In this regard, the findings revealed the significant effect of personality traits on the assessment of engagement levels within online brand communities. On the other hand, this project provides a comprehensive framework for marketing and financial institutional firms, marketing and banks managers, emarketers, and decision makers to understand user’s attitude, intentions, and behaviors with regard to their engagement in social media platforms in general and the Facebook brand pages of the Islamic banks in particular. In addition, this study aims to provide marketers with valuable information about customers’ participation and engagement in brand communities.