Promoting eco-friendly advertising on social media: the fit between appeals and tie strength

Abstract

Social media has become a popular platform for eco-friendly advertising. However, little is known about how a social media platform as a context influences the effectiveness of eco-friendly advertising. This study posits that the right match between eco-friendly advertising appeal and social media type can enhance advertising effectiveness. We initially divide social media into strong and weak tie types, where the core value of the former is to help individuals strengthen existing relationships and build closer connections with friends, and the latter helps individuals build infrequent and loose relationships with others. Two experiments are conducted to investigate the matching effect between eco-friendly ad appeal and social media type by applying two pairs of strong-weak-tie social media. The results suggest that people on strong-tie social media respond more favorably to eco-friendly advertising in concrete appeals than abstract appeals, whereas people on weak-tie social media exhibit more positive responses when abstract appeals are used. This matching effect is driven by processing fluency. These findings can help managers improve the effectiveness and efficiency of eco-friendly advertising decisions on social media.

Keywords:

• Eco-friendly advertising
• social media
• ad appeals
• tie strength
• processing fluency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.71972078 and No.72232003; Japan-China Scientific Cooperation Program between JSPS and NSFC under Grant No. JPJSBP 120227413 and No.72211540011. This work also was partially supported by Yoshida Hideo Memorial Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Jun Yan

Jun Yan is a professor of marketing at the School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. She obtained her Ph.D. in Marketing from Wuhan University, China. Her research covers social media advertising strategy, socially responsible consumption behavior, and customer relationship management. Her work has appeared in multidisciplinary academic journals, including the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Market Research, Journal of Interactive Advertising, Journal of Consumer Behavior, and Computers in Human Behavior, among others.

Jingjing Pan

Jingjing Pan is a Ph.D. student of marketing at the School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. Her research interests cover social media advertising and consumer interaction and communication in the era of mobile Internet. She has published her work in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Zhen Li

Zhen Li is an associate professor of marketing science at the Faculty of Business and Commerce, and a research fellow at the Research Institute for Socionetwork Strategies, Kansai University, Japan. He earned his Ph.D. in Commerce from Kobe University, Japan. His research interests focus on marketing science, digital marketing, consumer behavior, applied statistics, and data science. He has published several works on the above domain in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Business Research, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Advertising Research, International Journal of Consumer Studies, and Journal of Consumer Behaviour, among others.

Yaping Chang

Yaping Chang is a professor of marketing at the School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. He obtained his Ph.D. in Marketing from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. His research covers a wide range of marketing and management, including social media marketing, omnichannel marketing, intelligent marketing, and online consumer behavior. His work has appeared in multidisciplinary academic journals, including the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Internet Research, Information Technology & People, Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, and Computers in Human Behavior, among others.