Value co-creation on social media: examining the relationship between brand engagement and display advertising effectiveness for Chinese hotels

Purpose In recent years, hotels in China have been interested in leveraging social media platforms to facilitate interactions with and among consumers. Such brand engagement efforts on social media networks are believed to promote brands through co-creation of consumer experiences and values. This study was conducted in the context of Chinese hotels, and aimed to identify two forms of brand engagement via social media platforms—consumer-initiated engagement and firm-initiated engagement, and examines their effects on hotels’ display advertising effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach This study collected a comprehensive dataset. First, we collected display advertisement data from two hotel chains in China. Second, we gathered the two hotels’ engagement data from Weibo. A generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) was used in the data analysis. Findings The findings of the study indicate that both forms of brand engagement on social media network sites positively influences display advertising effectiveness....