Something Borrowed, Something New: How Food Brands Leverage Br-UGC on Instagram

Below is a table of contents designed to help navigate this website efficiently. The literature review section discusses past research on UGC, the gaps in the literature, and this study's research questions and hypotheses. The methodology section describes this study's research instrument and procedure. The key findings page highlights the most notable discoveries that were uncovered. The following page features programs equipped for analyzing social media posts easily. The conclusion summarizes the study as a whole, and discusses limitations while offering advice for future research. The reference page compiles all of the sources used to inform this study. The author's note page provides more information about the primary researcher for this study. A button located at the end of each page on this site will lead to the following page and navigate through the research in a linear fashion.

Though this study's internal and external validity may have been impacted by the population of the sample and certain components in the design of the codebook, the intercoder reliability index is 100% (1.00), which indicates that this research provides acceptable reliability.

This study suggests most consumers do not indicate they have envious feelings about a brand’s products or services in the comment sections of Br–UGC. Additionally, food brands prefer to share information-focused Br–UGC on their social media more often than entertainment-focused Br–UGC. This study also indicates that food brands do not predominantly feature UGC with an overt brand focus and individuals with positive facial expressions. Despite past research demonstrating how these two characteristics receive positive feedback from audiences when featured separately, brands do not frequently share content that incorporates both. Furthermore, results from this study suggest that there are considerable differences in audience engagement with UGC utilized on food brands’ Instagram profiles depending on whether the posts are organic or sponsored.

Click below to read a literature review to learn more about existing research on this topic: