What makes people react to the posts on the brand pages of mobile social network games?

Abstract

Purpose - Mobile social network games (mSNGs) are gaining increasing popularity recently. Many of the games are marketed using the brand pages on social network services including Facebook. The purpose of this paper is to identify the characteristics of the posts on the brand pages that affect the reaction of users. Design/methodology/approach - Four independent variables were tested for their influence on user reaction: informativeness, structure, call for action, and the type of reward. In total, 439 posts on the brand pages of two mobile game companies on Facebook were manually collected. The hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis. Findings - The characteristics of the brand pages appeared to have significant impact on the users' reaction. Overall, being informative, calling for action, and providing content-related (game-related) rewards have significant and positive impact on the reaction of users. Using only texts or embedding videos or hyperlinks in the posts has either negative or no significant impact on the reaction of users. Originality/value - The literature review shows that not many empirical studies have been conducted so far about the brand pages of mSNGs. Therefore, this study contributes to the understanding of users' reaction on the brand pages for mSNGs, and how companies should manage their communication effort on the pages.