The Organic Marketing Nexus: The Effect of Unpaid Marketing Practices on Consumer Engagement

Isaac Owusu Asante (), Yushi Jiang, Xiao Luo and Martinson Ankrah Twumasi
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Isaac Owusu Asante: School of Economics and Management, Southwest Jiaotong University, No. 111 Section 1, North Second Ring Road, Chengdu 610031, China
Yushi Jiang: School of Economics and Management, Southwest Jiaotong University, No. 111 Section 1, North Second Ring Road, Chengdu 610031, China
Xiao Luo: Yibin Research Institute, Southwest Jiaotong University, No. 432, Annex 2, West Section of Changling North Road, Lingang Economic and Technology Development Zone 1, Yibin 644000, China
Martinson Ankrah Twumasi: College of Economics, Sichuan Agricultural University, Huimin Road 211, Chengdu 611130, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-24

Abstract: Designing a digital marketing strategy that stimulates consumer engagement is vital and challenging for digital marketers. Despite previous research on this topic, little is known about the unpaid (organic) strategies of digital marketing and how they attract web traffic through consumer engagement. Based on the stimuli–organism–response model, this study examined the effects of three organic marketing practices related to electronic commerce shopping platforms, namely, search engine optimization, social media posts, and user-generated content, on consumer engagement. Covariance-based structural equation modeling was utilized to analyze 464 responses from followers of five electronic commerce firms’ Facebook fan pages. Based on the stimuli–organism–response paradigm, we found that organic marketing practices positively impact consumers’ behavioral engagement; however, consumers’ psychological engagement partially mediates these impacts. Further, consumers’ attention to social comparison of consumption dampens the positive effect of search engine optimization and psychological engagement on consumers’ behavioral engagement. The findings of this paper improve our understanding of the roles played by organic digital marketing practices in attracting consumer engagement and provide guidelines for digital marketers on how to utilize unpaid marketing strategies to attract authentic consumer engagement. This study presents a new framework in measuring the digital marketing strategies available to electronic commerce firms exploring unpaid marketing strategies.

Keywords: organic marketing; digital marketing; attention to social comparison; consumer engagement; search engine optimization; social media; user-generated content (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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