Variations in the diffusion of social media content across different cultures: A communicative ecology perspective

Along with traditional marketing channels, social media outlets are integrated into firms’ marketing mix. Social media has changed the dynamics of interactions between organizations and their consumers by fostering an online relationship. These dynamic channels are challenging the belief in the effectiveness of traditional unidirectional marketing. This study uses communicative ecology theory to explore the diffusion of social media content within the communicative ecology framework to improve the existing theoretical understanding of the dimensions of social networking services. Additionally, the study examines the moderating effect of culture on the diffusion of social media content within the communicative ecology framework. We analyzed 1,787 posts to firms’ Facebook brand fan pages for 5 different brands of a single product category in 3 different countries. Ordinary least squares and hierarchical moderated regression was used to test the hypotheses. The current study extends the information system success-related dimensions by finding that the volume of moderator posts to a brand fan page on Facebook is the most important predictor of consumer engagement in the United Kingdom, the day of the post is a highly significant predictor in the United States and the time of the post is a substantial predictor of enhanced customer engagement in Australia. Practical implications for managers are also discussed.