Color over content? : the impact of color temperature on brand engagement in Instagram

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Ana Rita Martins
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/29002
• topic: Social media marketing; Engagement rate; Color temperature; Instagram; Product category; Brand engagement; Marketing de redes sociais; Taxa de envolvimento; Categoria de produto; Temperatura de cor; Envolvimento de marca; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

When Social Media meets Marketing, endless possibilities become available for brands. Although the wide reach of these platforms provides a suitable channel for Marketing Managers to promote interaction with their customer base, little is known about the best practices for brands channeling their Marketing efforts to Social Media. Instagram is one of the fastest growing platforms and a highly potential one, with emphasis on visual content, known to perform better in terms of engagement. However, its usefulness for brands and the impact of image features, like color, on consumer engagement is not documented yet. This dissertation analyzes the relationship between Color Temperature and Engagement Rate on Instagram to understand if color influences engagement and, if so, which color hues perform better. To this end, 450 Instagram posts were analyzed, from brands in 3 different product categories - Women’s Fashion, Travel, and Food & Snacks. Results showed Color Temperature directly impacts the engagement as Cool and Neutral colors overperform Warm colors regarding Engagement Rate. Additionally, a moderator effect for Product Category was found as the best performing colors differ with the category of the brand. These findings suggest that Marketing and Social Media Managers should contemplate the impact of color on their Digital Content strategy, by coordinating their content with the color temperature that drives the higher engagement for the respective product category.