EXPRESS: From Owning to Connecting: Understanding and Leveraging the Effect of Internet Meme Marketing

Internet meme marketing is a digital marketing practice in which marketers leverage internet memes to promote their brand or product. Despite its growing adoption in brand communications, academic understanding of meme marketing remains in its infancy. In this research, we theoretically develop and empirically test how, why, and when meme marketing is effective. We find that meme marketing enhances digital advertising effectiveness by fostering shared psychological ownership of the marketing message and subsequently a strengthened self–brand connection. In addition, the effectiveness of meme marketing diminishes when the leveraged memes are not in their maturity (i.e., during the introduction, growth, or decline stages) or when applied to promote niche products. Six studies—including a large-scale secondary data analysis (N = 900,139 posts), a field experiment (N = 423,565 impressions), and four controlled experiments (N = 3,958 participants)—provide robust and converging evidence for these propositions. The effectiveness of meme marketing is demonstrated across both behavioral outcomes (e.g., likes, click-through rates, conversion rates) and attitudinal responses (e.g., purchase intention, likelihood to like). This research advances theoretical understanding of meme marketing and offers actionable insights for practitioners seeking to leverage internet memes in their brand digital marketing communications.