Meme marketing on social media: the role of informational cues of brand memes in shaping consumers' brand relationship

Purpose: The proliferation of digital communication on social media provides new opportunities for businesses to take advantage of Internet memes to boost customer engagement. Academic literature on digital communications mostly focuses on popular forms such as selfies, branded posts, and branded emoticons. Less attention has been paid to brand memes and their implications for brand management. Based on the cue utilization theory, this research aims to investigate the informational cues of brand memes foster brand partnerships. Design/methodology/approach: The structural equation modeling and importance-performance matrix analysis were used to empirically validate the research hypotheses with 595 respondents to an online survey. Findings: Three informational cues of brand memes (i.e. comprehensibility, novelty, and meme-brand congruity) stimulated consumers' attitudes, which in turn impacted consumer-brand relationships. Another brand meme informational cue, sarcasm, negatively moderated the relationships between the three informational cues and consumer-brand relationships. Originality/value: Our findings indicate that a brand can engage consumers in conversations on social media and foster long-term consumer-brand relationships through brand memes.