Motivations for consumer-brand engagement and consumer-based brand equity on Facebook: how important is brand gender

Purpose: In recent years, Facebook and other social media have become key players in branding activities. Yet, empirical research on consumer–brand interaction on Facebook is still needed, in particular research on consumer motivations for engaging with brands on social media. Understanding these motivations would provide brand managers a better understanding of their consumers. One of the aims of this research is to address this gap and provide additional insights to brand managers on how to adapt their approaches to increase consumers’ interaction with brands on Facebook. Moreover, we intend to understand how brand gender influences consumer motivations to engage with brands on social media. Design/methodology/approach: Specifically, we look into how brand masculinity and brand femininity - the two dimensions of brand gender influence consumer motivations for consuming and contributing to brand-related content brand on Facebook - which are generally regarded as two critical types of consumer engagement with brand pages. Another aim of this research is to investigate how the two types of consumer-brand engagement on Facebook (consuming and contributing) influence consumer-based brand equity. Ultimately, we aim to study if biological sex has an influence on the motivations for consumer brand engagement or on the relationship between consumer-brand engagement and consumer-based brand equity.