Analyzing the Rise of Video Content Marketing Strategies to Improve the Brand Engagement and the High Sales Rate

Abstract

Now-a-days, where the trend of online interactions among consumers and brands is on the increase, video content marketing, or VCM for short, has been recognized as a powerful strategy that promotes brand engagement and sells more. However, based on recent interest from practitioners, related research in the academic sphere is still scarce. We conceptualize VCM as the development and distribution of involving, informative, and aesthetically pleasing branded video content on digital media platforms in order to create positive consumer involvement, trust, and relationship-building rather than making impulse purchases. Therefore, we present a conceptual framework that identifies several key consumer-based antecedents to VCM, including uses-and-gratifications (U&G) informed functional, hedonic, and authenticity-driven motives for viewing video content. Intra-interaction outcomes of VCM at the first tier include cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement to take advantage of brand-related sense-making, identification, and citizenship behaviors. These relationships work their way back up and correspond to extra-interaction outcomes of brand trust and attitudes at the second tier, feeding into value-based third-tier outcomes of consumer as well as firm brand equity. We end by formulating a set of Fundamental Propositions regarding VCM and outline the most important implications that have arisen from our analysis.