The Brand-Generated Content Interaction of Instagram Stories and Publications: A Comparison between Retailers and Manufacturers

• Main Authors: Paloma de H. Sánchez-Cobarro, Francisco-Jose Molina-Castillo, Cristina Alcazar-Caceres
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-11-01
• Series: Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research
• Subjects: brand-generated content; social media; Instagram stories; Instagram publications; retailers; manufacturers
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/0718-1876/16/3/31

The last decade has seen a considerable increase in entertainment-oriented communication techniques. Likewise, the rise of social networks has evolved, offering different formats such as publication and stories. Hence, there has been a growing interest in knowing which strategies have the greatest social impact to help position organizations in the mind of the consumer. This research aims to analyze the different impact that stories and publications can have on the Instagram social network as a tool for generating branded content. To this end, it analyses the impact of the different Instagram stories and publications in various sectors using a methodology of structural equations with composite constructs. The results obtained, based on 800 stories and publications in four different companies (retailers and manufacturers), show that the reach of the story generally explains the interaction with Instagram stories. In contrast, in the case of publications, impressions are of greater importance in explaining the interaction with the publication. Among the main contributions of the work, we find that traditional pull communication techniques have been losing effectiveness in front of new formats of brand content generation that have been occupying the time in the relationship between users and brands.