Emoji, Playfulness, and Brand Engagement on Twitter

Lindsay McShane, Ethan Pancer, Maxwell Poole and Qi Deng

Journal of Interactive Marketing, 2021, vol. 53, issue C, 96-110

Abstract: Brands, both human and corporate, are increasingly communicating with their consumers using emojis. The current work examines if and how these pictographs shape online brand engagement on Twitter (i.e., likes & retweets). To do so, we first examine datasets generated by scraping the tweets of the most popular celebrity brands and most popular corporate brands (Study 1). This study demonstrates that emoji presence increases engagement with tweets, with more emoji leading to more likes and retweets. Two controlled experiments then explore the role of perceived playfulness in explaining this effect of emojis on engagement (Studies 2 and 3). We find that the effect of emojis on brand engagement varies depending on the nature of the interplay between emojis and text, and the subsequent effect of this interplay on perceived playfulness. Theoretical contributions and social media practitioner implications are also addressed.

Keywords: Emoji; Brand engagement; Social media; Playfulness; Twitter; Consumers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1094996820301031
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joinma:v:53:y:2021:i:c:p:96-110

DOI: 10.1016/j.intmar.2020.06.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Interactive Marketing is currently edited by B. T. Ratchford

More articles in Journal of Interactive Marketing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().