How can a fast-moving consumer goods brand improve consumer engagement on its social networks? The case of the Unilever brand The Vegetarian Butcher in Belgium

Details

Supervisors

Schuiling, Isabelle

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Building social network brand posts that stimulate consumer engagement is increasingly valuable to marketers, though it remains quite challenging. Therefore, this master’s thesis aims at exploring some potential factors that lead to consumer engagement enhancement on a specific brand’s social networks. Thus, the contributions of this paper are threefold. First of all, it presents a description of relevant terms such as brand, digital marketing, social media marketing and consumer engagement. Second, it provides a thorough depiction of the focus brand of this dissertation, namely The Vegetarian Butcher. An analysis of engagement metrics of the brand and its competitors on both Instagram and Facebook was first performed. We observe that engagement rates are overall lower on Facebook than on Instagram, while the number of followers is significantly higher on Facebook. In addition, The Vegetarian Butcher lies in the top three of brands with the highest engagement on both social networks with comparison to competitors. Lastly, a statistical analysis of brand post content was conducted in order to find which elements are impacting The Vegetarian Butcher’s consumer engagement. Results show that remarkable facts such as news related to product launches and about the “brand’s revolution” as well as posts containing user-generated content positively influence consumer engagement. As far as Facebook is concerned, remarkable facts and at-mentions have a positive impact on consumer engagement. Upon these findings, managerial recommendations have been suggested to improve The Vegetarian Butcher’s overall consumer engagement on Instagram and Facebook.