Emoticon Effects in Facebook Brand Fan Pages: The Roles of Product Type, Brand Status, and the Perceived Value of Brand Fan Pages

Companies use emoticons in the content of their brand fan pages as a means to enhance their relationships with consumers. Few studies have been conducted on how emoticons work on Facebook brand fan pages. In addition, previous research on emoticons does not provide any obvious mechanism for emoticons’ effects, and their findings also have certain limitations as a result that reveal mixed results. This study was designed to clarify the mechanism for emoticons’ effects. Two studies were conducted in total. In Study 1, we conducted a one-way ANOVA on 82 subjects recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and PROCESS macro model 4 for the mediation analysis. We confirmed that emoticons lowered the perceived functional value of brand fan pages and increased the perceived hedonic value. In addition, we found that the influence of emoticons on consumer attitudes toward brand fan page was only mediated by the hedonic value. In Study 2A, which examined the influence of product type and brand status, we conducted a 2 (emoticons) × 2 (product type) × 2 (brand status) ANOVA on 233 subjects recruited through Amazon MTurk, and contrast analysis and PROCESS macro model 6 were used for the interaction effect analysis and mediation analysis. We found that the positive effect of emoticons only occurred in utilitarian products with high brand status and hedonic products with low brand status. Study 2B, conducted using an Instagram version, yielded results identical to those of Study 2A. Finally, this study’s theoretical and practical implications are discussed.