Social media horsepower: How content and emotions accelerate luxury car brand engagement

– This research aims to look at the effects of content and emotions on X (formerly known as Twitter) users’ engagement with luxury car brands. Marketer-generated data (MGC) on X by two leading luxury car brands were examined. Data was collected and pre-processed to extract context-specific content topics, sentiments, and emojis using automated tools i.e., Tweet scarper (Vicinitas), ChatGPT, and Python. Hierarchical regression analyses were employed to test hypotheses, while word clouds were used to gain more insights. Ten context-specific content topics in the automotive industry were revealed. Four of them, together with emojis, significantly impact favorites or retweets. Both brands apply slightly different content strategies to draw engagement. More insights about positive antecedents i.e., hashtags and three content topics are presented. The results guide luxury car brand managers and marketers to pay attention to content topics, that are specific to the industry, and guide them to better tweet based on suitable content characteristics as well as emotional features, which lead to more brand engagement. Few studies have attempted to observe the influences of context-specific content topics together with emotions on brand engagement in the automotive industry. The discovered topics could be applied to explore the content strategies of other luxury car brands and their effectiveness. • The paper explores how social media shapes luxury automotive brand engagement. • It highlights the importance of tailored content strategies for effective customer engagement for the automotive industry. • The study emphasizes that SM post characteristics significantly influence brand engagement. • Both brands should adjust their content strategies, focusing more on topics like ‘Performance and Technology’ and tweeting more on weekends. • Brands should carefully manage their emoji usage to optimize engagement.