Balanced social media engagement and firm performance in consumer goods industry

Purpose This paper investigates the spillover effect of firms’ social media engagement with investors on consumption market performance and examines the impact of balanced/imbalanced social media stakeholder engagement strategies on firms’ consumption market performance. Design/methodology/approach The study employs multi-source secondary data covering 3,856 quarterly observations of 188 firms in the Chinese retail industry over six years (2015–2020). Polynomial regression analysis and response surface methodology are used to test the hypotheses. Findings The study reveals that firms’ social media engagement with investors has a positive spillover effect on consumption market performance. Additionally, the authors find that a balanced social media engagement strategy, which allocates resources evenly between consumers and investors, is more likely to optimize firm performance than an imbalanced strategy. Originality/value The research reveals cross-stakeholder spillover effects of social media engagement, introduces balanced/imbalanced engagement strategy concepts and extends the balanced marketing perspective to the social media context, providing guidance for firms to optimize their social media strategies.