Applying the Consumer Brand Engagement in Social Media Scale to Professional Sport: A Psychological Approach to Measuring Social Media Engagement

This research takes a psychological approach to measuring social media engagement in sport by applying the consumer brand engagement (CBE) in social media scale. We collected two samples to evaluate the psychometric properties of the CBE scale in a professional sport team context. After finding the CBE scale reliable and valid in both samples, we explored its impact on relationship quality purchase intentions, and referral intentions. We found that an increase in CBE leads to an increase in relationship quality and subsequent purchase and referral intentions. After testing an alternative model, where we replaced CBE with its three dimensions (cognitive, affective, and activational), we found that results replicate for the affective and activational dimensions. Taken together, these findings are consistent with and extend past work that studies social media from a behavioral approach via specific consumer actions (e.g., like, comment, share).