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

Key Findings

This study concentrated on analyzing content on food brands’ Instagram profiles to understand how they utilize UGC to better their social media marketing strategies. Respectively, chains and small-businesses across the U.S. were selected for investigation regarding these practices. Several key findings uncovered in this study provided further insight as to how food brands leverage brand-related user-generated content (Br–UGC) on their Instagram profiles, and their consumers’ response to their actions.

To read the full results, discussion, and limitations report, click here.

Figure 1: Number of Comments Per Post According to Brand Size

Number of Comments Limitation

Since the samples from small-businesses had less than 50 comments per post, the lower-value coding categories had the most prevalent results for the concept categories in the comment level of analysis. This explains why Figure 1 shows a high amount of small-businesses' posts coded with less than 50 comments per post. This finding indicates that chains receive more comments than small-businesses do. However, since the ranges for the comment level of analysis were not broadened properly in the codebook, results skewed to favor the lower-value coding options for comments.

Most consumers do not indicate they have envious feelings related to a brand’s products or services in the comment sections of Br–UGC.

Past research suggests that Br–UGC can elicit envious feelings within consumers as they may be more likely to purchase it to satisfy their envious feelings towards any individuals engaging with the product or service in the content (Yu & Ko, 2021). Of the 200 Instagram posts examined, little to no desire of brands' products or services were present in 85.58% (n=89) of posts with less than 50 comments, as shown in Table 1, which represents the relationship between the number of comments on each post and the amount of desire expressed in the comment sections. However, moderate desire to try brands’ products or services were present in 66.67% (n=24) of posts with 101–300 comments, and 60.47% (n=26) of posts with more than 300 comments expressed moderate desire as well. Such results do not support H1, which predicted food brands that utilize UGC on their Instagram accounts moderately generate consumer envy-specific comments.

Table 1: Cross-tabulation Table of Number of Comments and Expression of Desire

Discussion

These insights did not align with findings from Yu and Ko’s (2021) study in which they demonstrated that envy produced from ad strategies can also generate positive effects regarding purchase intentions for products and ad attitudes. Consequently, this may be because half of the sample consisted of posts on small-businesses’ accounts, which generally receive less comments than chain businesses. Since the ranges for the comment level of analysis were not broadened properly in the codebook, the results skewed to indicate there is a low frequency of envy-specific comments under Br–UGC on food brands’ Instagram profiles.

Food brands prefer to share information-focused Br–UGC on their social media more often than entertainment-focused Br–UGC.

Table 2: Cross-tabulation Table of Brand Size and UGC Focus

Past studies indicate that information and entertainment are the top two motivators for online users to be exposed to UGC (Knoll & Proksch, 2017). To analyze if food brands utilize entertainment-focused Br–UGC more than information-focused Br–UGC on their Instagrams, cross-tabulation analyses were generated to evaluate which is more prevalent. As shown in Table 2, which focuses on the relationship between the selected post’s brand size and the UGC focus, 46.00% (n=46) of posts from chain businesses’ accounts were information focused, 12.00% (n=12) were entertainment focused, and 42.00% (n=42) were both entertainment and information focused. Additionally, 87.00% (n=87) of posts from small-businesses' accounts were information focused, 8.00% (n=8) were entertainment, and 5.00% (n=5) were both. Thus, these results do not support H2, which predicted food brands utilize UGC that are entertainment-focused more often on their Instagram accounts compared to information-focused UGC.

Discussion

Small-businesses prefer to share information-focused UGC more than entertainment-focused UGC, while chain businesses prefer to share both information-focused content as well as UGC that incorporates both information and entertainment elements. These findings may indicate that food brands would rather focus on sharing content that provides more information about their products, services, or brand. They prefer to share entertainment content only if it can also supply information about their specialties. Consequently, they do not share content that only serves as entertainment for their audience because they want to optimize their platform to promote their brand as much as possible.

Image 1: @panerabread on Instagram

Text-Based Br–UGC Trend

An interesting trend observed in this study was the sharing of text-based Br–UGC with a background picture featuring either the brand’s logo or products on chain brands’ accounts. Specifically, these posts were often coded as both entertainment and information-focused Br–UGC since they would tell a story or a joke while sharing information about the brand. For example, Image 1 shares a story of a customer’s experience at Panera Bread while providing information about the brand’s culture. Content such as this aligns with Taecharungroj’s (2017) key findings that conceptualize the importance of establishing relationships between brands and consumers online, and displaying the significance of these connections to gain consumers’ trust, engagement, and business.

Food brands do not predominantly share overt brand-focused UGC featuring individuals that have positive facial expressions.

Past research demonstrates that overt brand focused photos – content that distinctly features brands’ products, services or logo – generate the most engagement (Geurin & Burch, 2017), and that brand attitude is positively impacted by happy facial expressions featured in Br–UGC (Nanne, Antheunis & Noort, 2021). Of the posts examined, 14.55% (n=16) of content with overt brand or product focus featured individuals who were smiling, 8.18% (n=9) featured individuals with neutral facial expressions, and 75.45% (n=83) did not feature any facial expressions. Additionally, 28.79% (n=19) of posts with covert brand or product focus – posts that did not distinctly display brands’ products, services or logo – featured individuals who were smiling, 16.67% (n=11) featured individuals with neutral facial expressions, and 46.97% (n=31) did not feature any facial expressions. Consequently, results do not support H3, which predicted food brands primarily utilize UGC that are overtly brand-focused featuring individuals with happy facial expressions to positively influence consumers.

Table 3: Cross-tabulation Table of Brand/Product Focus and Facial Expressions

Figure 2: Brand/Product Focus in Br-UGC

Discussion

Most Br–UGC that food brands shared did not feature any type of facial expression. In most posts, the user was either eating or drinking the brand’s products, they may have a mask on, or was only partially visible or not at all present. These findings also indicate that food brands prefer to share overtly brand-focused UGC on their social media rather than UGC that are covertly brand-focused, as shown in Figure 2. Brands choose to share overt brand focused photos more than covert-focused photos to boost consumer engagement, as demonstrated in Geurin and Burch’s (2017) study, which indicated UGC that features brands’ visual presence encourages consumers to interact with the content because the content provides consumers a sense of familiarity and trust. However, there is no indication that positive facial expressions featured in these posts contribute to the increased participation from consumers.

There are considerable differences in audience engagement with UGC utilized on food brands’ Instagram profiles depending on whether the posts are organic or sponsored

Past studies suggest consumers react differently to UGC depending on whether it is organic, unpaid content or sponsored, paid content (Kim & Song, 2018). It has been demonstrated that organic Br–UGC generates more positive reactions compared to sponsored UGC, as there are less presumptions of manipulative intent (Kim & Song, 2018). Of the 200 posts analyzed, 94.50% (n=189) were organic and 5.50% (n=11) were sponsored, as shown in Figure 3. This indicates that food brands prefer to share organic Br–UGC more than sponsored Br–UGC on their social media. Moreover, results collected from this study supports H4, which predicted 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.

Figure 3: UGC Type

Positive & Negative Emojis

Table 4: Cross-tabulation Table of UGC Type and Positive Emojis

As shown in Table 4, which demonstrates the relationship between UGC type and the amount of positive emojis present in the comment sections of the selected posts, 56.61% (n=107) of organic posts had positive emojis present in 1–5 comments whereas 27.27% (n=3) of sponsored posts had positive emojis present in 1–5 comments. Additionally, 72.73% (n=8) of sponsored posts had positive emojis present in 6-11 comments, whereas for organic posts only 19.05% (n=36).

Table 5: Cross-tabulation Table of UGC Type and Negative Emojis

According to Table 5, which demonstrates the relationship between UGC type and the amount of negative emojis present, 69.31% (n=131) of organic posts had no negative emojis present in the comment section, whereas 45.45% (n=5) of sponsored posts had no negative emojis. There were no negative emojis present in more than 11 comments in any of the selected posts. However, 30.16% (n=57) of organic posts had negative emojis present in 1–5 comments compared to 54.55% (n=6) of sponsored posts.

Expression of Desire

Table 6: Cross-tabulation Table of UGC Type and Expression of Desire

As shown in Table 6, which demonstrates the relationship between UGC type and the amount of desire expressed in the comment sections, 56.08% (n=106) of organic posts featured little to no desire for the brand’s products or services in the comment section, whereas 36.36% (n=4) of sponsored posts featured little to no desire. It was also found that 32.80% (n=62) of organic posts featured moderate desire to try the brand’s products or services, whereas it was present in 54.55% (n=6) of sponsored posts.

Discussion

This study demonstrated that consumers react differently to UGC depending on if it is organic or sponsored, which aligns with findings that were suggested in Kim and Song’s (2018) study on Br–UGC effectiveness. Sponsored posts receive comments with more positive emojis than organic posts. This finding does not align with Kim and Song’s (2018) research, which demonstrated that organic content generated more positive customer reactions compared to promotional content. Additionally, these findings indicate that organic posts receive less negative emojis in the comment section than sponsored posts. These results resonate with findings present in Kim and Song’s (2018) study which suggested that there may be an emotional undercurrent that significantly influences consumers’ perceptions of UGC. Moreover, consumers are more favorable to organic Br–UGC than sponsored posts because there are less presumptions of manipulative intent associated with organic content compared to sponsored content. Consumers find organic posts to be more genuine whereas sponsored posts may be perceived as inauthentic since the creators of sponsored posts are often paid by the brand to promote their products. Consequently, these results may have been influenced by the imbalanced sample sizes between organic and sponsored posts, as there were more organic posts selected than sponsored posts.

Limitations

This study contains considerable limitations that may affect both the internal and external validity of the findings. First, the range of the coding categories for the concept categories designed for the comment level of analysis did not adequately represent the characteristics of the comment sections for posts on small-businesses’ accounts, thus hindering the internal validity. On average, the randomly selected posts that were chosen for analysis had less than five comments. Consequently, the majority of the posts were assigned the lower-valued coding categories because their ranges were too broad. This significantly skewed the overall results to favor the lower-valued coding categories and does not accurately reflect the comment sections for small-businesses. Second, since this study only analyzed the first 20 comments generated by the Export Comments program for each selected post, it did not take into account that the selected comments may contain those posted by the food brands themselves. Therefore, it was challenging to code for the comment level of analysis for each post if there were an abundance of comments from the food brand. Third, since the sample consisted of only U.S. companies for the small-business portion of the sample, the external validity of this study is restricted because the results cannot be generalized worldwide. Finally, due to this study’s small sample size, the findings uncovered cannot demonstrate the population as a whole regarding the practice of utilizing Br–UGC on food brands’ Instagram accounts.

Click below to learn about programs that analyze social media posts:

Programs for Analyzing Social Media

This study was administered in 2021-22 as a component of Endicott College's Senior Thesis requirement for undergraduate students. This research pertains to education, theories, concepts, and practices within the communication field. Please provide any feedback, queries, or recommendations to mhale245@mail.endicott.edu.

Home Literature Review Research Programs for Analyzing Social Media Conclusion References Author's Note

Page updated

Report abuse