Consumer-brand engagement in OTC medication: Can pharmaceutical companies increase brand usage intentions by improving perceived social media activity?

• Autor(a) principal: Mendonça, Ana Rita de Olival
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/21452
• topic: Social media; Pharmaceutical sector; Consumer-brand engagement; Brand usage intent; Rede social; Indústria farmacêutica; Intenção de uso da marca

The rise in social media brought enormous challenges and opportunities for companies. These platforms can help increase consumer engagement and allow companies to monitor and analyse consumer generated content, using that information to enhance consumers’ brand perception. Hence, it becomes imperative for companies to be able to provide effective social media marketing communications. However, there are some sectors that are unable to do it as efficiently as others. This difficulty is reflected in the pharmaceutical sector, as consumers are less willing to follow this type of brands on social media. Hence, the purpose of this dissertation is to give an overall analysis of whether an effective social media usage by pharmaceutical companies can improve consumer engagement, and lead to brand usage intent. The aim is also to assess whether consumer involvement and average brand page participation have an impact on this relationship. The data collection and analysis have been performed through quantitative analysis, supported by a questionnaire, administered online and built based on the literature of different authors regarding the previously mentioned topics. Results showed that for the category of over-the-counter products, consumer involvement is still a predictor of consumer-brand engagement, with indirect positive effect on brand usage intent. Furthermore, this study proves a positive impact of perceived social media activity both on consumer-brand engagement and brand usage intent. This way, pharmaceutical companies must keep investing in social media channels, working on the development of content that is appealing for their target consumers.