Social Media Use by Dutch Supermarket Chains

Social media use by Dutch supermarket chains

A digital marketing analysis on brand loyalty

Thomas Dijkman 11026057 August 21st, 2018

Supervisor: Dick Heinhuis 2nd Examiner: Tom van Engers Bachelor thesis Information Science Faculty of Science University of Amsterdam ABSTRACT

Social media have grown from being entertaining communication platforms into powerful business tools for marketing, promotion and customer service. Consequently, businesses have had to make changes in their marketing strategies to take advantage of the opportunities created by this new social ecosystem. Brand loyalty, which is one of the main goals of marketing efforts, is influenced by social media through different factors like trust and feelings of community. This thesis assesses the efforts made by Dutch supermarket chains on social media to test the effect of social media on their perceived brand loyalty. The factors that stimulate brand loyalty that were found in an extensive literature review were challenged through field research to test their effect on Dutch supermarket brands. The findings of this research show that there is no significant effect of social media efforts on brand loyalty in the case of Dutch supermarket chains. On the contrary, present research confirms that there are unexplored opportunities for Dutch supermarket chains to use social media to increase brand loyalty. From these findings, a general discussion and conclusion are offered, as well as directions for further research.

Table of contents

1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 5 1.1 Research objectives……………………………………………………………………………………… 6 1.2 Relevance……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 6 1.2.1 Academic relevance………………………………………………………………………………. 6 1.2.2 Managerial relevance…………………………………………………………………………….. 7 1.3 Research question and subquestions………………………………………………………………. 8 1.4 The Dutch supermarket industry……………………………………………………………………. 8 1.4.1 The Dutch online grocery industry…………………………………………………………. 8 1.5 Social media use in the Netherlands……………………………………………………………….. 9

2 Literature review………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 10 2.1 Social media…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 10 2.2 Marketing…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 11 2.3 Brand…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 11 2.4 Brand loyalty………………………………………………………………………………………………… 12 2.4.1 Factors for brand loyalty……………………………………………………………………….. 13 2.5 Social media and brand loyalty………………………………………………………………………. 16 2.5.1 Factors for brand loyalty created by social media…………………………………….. 17 2.6 Comparison………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 19 2.7 Hypotheses…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 20

3 Methodology………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 20 3.1 Supermarket chains………………………………………………………………………………………. 20 3.2 Social media platforms………………………………………………………………………………….. 21 3.3 Research procedures……………………………………………………………………………………… 21 3.3.1 Opening questionnaire………………………………………………………………………….. 21 3.3.2 Test groups………………………………………………………………………………………….. 22 3.3.3 Data processing……………………………………………………………………………………. 22

4 Results…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 22 4.1 Opening questionnaire………………………………………………………………………………….. 22 4.2 Test groups…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 24 4.3 Findings per brand……………………………………………………………………………………….. 24 4.3.1 Albert Heijn…………………………………………………………………………………………. 24 4.3.2 Jumbo…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 25 4.3.3 PLUS…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 25 4.3.4 DEEN………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 25 4.3.5 Lidl……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 26 4.3.6 Picnic………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 26 4.4 Brand loyalty factors and hypotheses testing…………………………………………………… 26

5 Conclusions………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 28 5.1 General discussion………………………………………………………………………………………… 28 5.2 Academic contribution and managerial implications………………………………………… 29 5.3 Limitations and further research……………………………………………………………………. 29 5.3.1 Limitations and reflection……………………………………………………………………… 29

5.3.2 Directions for further research………………………………………………………………. 30

References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 31

Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 38 Appendix 1: Background information supermarket chains……………………………………….. 38 Appendix 2: Social media following per brand…………………………………………………………. 39 Appendix 3: Questionnaire 1…………………………………………………………………………………. 40 Appendix 4: Questionnaire 2…………………………………………………………………………………. 42 Appendix 5: Brand loyalty factors and related questions………………………………………….. 44 Appendix 6: Combined questions to factor……………………………………………………………… 45

1. INTRODUCTION

In recent years, social media have grown from being entertaining communication platforms into powerful business tools for marketing, promotion and customer service. This disruptive change in the marketing field has brought a new aspect to brand image, brand-customer relationships and brand loyalty. Businesses have had to make changes in their policies and strategies to not only survive this new disruptive trend, but also to leverage its opportunities. Social media have opened up new ways of communication with and between consumers, of a kind which was never before apparent (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). Data gathering from these platforms has created opportunities for customized and personalized advertising which is beneficial for both seller and buyer. The seller has a higher chance of successfully reaching the target audience thanks to data categorization, while the consumer is faced with less irrelevant advertisements and therefore gets more value from the ads they are shown. Social media also generate free promotion by shares and likes, also known as ‘electronic word-of-mouth’ (eWOM). According to Blackshaw and Nazzaro (2004, p.3), “web-enabled word-of-mouth behavior … now includes the ability to post and send photos, video clips, audio clips and instant text messages”. Users of platforms like Facebook spread the word without you asking them by sharing your message, picture, video or blog with their friends. This concept is supported by social proof, where we assume that something our friends promote or like is also something we would like ourselves, with possible effects of free distribution of your content. The idea of social proof through word-of-mouth distribution has been known for longer in traditional marketing, but in the case of eWOM, a new dimension or layer should be added. All in all, the rise of social media has created a new ecosystem for marketeers and businesses which is yet to be fully explored and taken advantage of.

Het Grote Content Marketing Onderzoek 2017 [The Big Contentmarketing Research 2017] shows that many marketeers and their businesses are struggling to deal with this new social environment. For example, half of the organizations in this research outsourced their content marketing. Also, only half of the organizations were working on community management, which involves fostering the network around the organization or the brand. Both of these findings show the lack of efficiency in business-use social media, resulting in brands not achieving the aspired brand image creation at adequate levels. The research also shows that many businesses are struggling with the engagement rates of their content and how to measure the effect of their efforts (Nederlands Platform Content, 2017), which has resulted in a critical point of view from the business world on the low return-of-investments (ROI) of their online efforts. A paper by Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden (2011) also explained that businesses are treating each platform as a separate entity, where social media should be seen as a connected ecosystem.

According to marketing agency ANCHOVY (2017), social media should be just as important in marketing strategies as traditional tools such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. This because, on top of general ‘findability’ online, it is important to create an identity that differentiates your company from competitors, a good impression also helps build consumer trust. In this statement, transparency and social media presence are highlighted as key factors towards getting a consumer’s attention and building trust. Edelman (2010) concludes that large proportions of marketing budgets are being spent on the ‘consider’ and ‘buy’ stages of the consumer’s ‘purchase-cycle’, whilst the ‘evaluation’ and ‘after-purchase’ stages showed to allow for more

5 influence by social media marketing. Therefore, the efforts of marketeers should focus on the entire cycle, more so than we are used to in traditional marketing like TV advertising which mainly focusses on the persuasion of consumers. Marketing nowadays should be seen as a creative field where marketeers make efforts to capture consumers by getting their attention through advertising, enhancing experiences in stores and fostering online relationships on social media both for promotional use as well as customer support.

1.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

A study by Tont (2014) has analyzed high-street fashion brands Zara, H&M and River Island on how they have been using social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, to develop customer relationships between the brand and its customers. Hudson and Thal acknowledge the impact of social media on consumer decision processes in their 2013 study and highlight the implications for this change on the tourism industry. Knox and Walker (2001) researched the grocery business on ‘offline’ brand loyalty giving guidelines as to how to manage brand loyalty. Although the research by Tont and Hudson and Thal are examples of much needed research in the social media marketing field, little to no research on the combination of social media and brand loyalty has been done in the grocery industry. Therefore, this thesis will focus on the effects of social media use in marketing strategies for Dutch supermarket chains.

The ultimate goal of this research is to shine a light on the relationship between a retailer’s social media efforts and the level of brand loyalty their customers express. The results of this study will either acknowledge that heavy emphasis on social media marketing is useful for Dutch supermarket chains, or that this industry is not significantly impacted by social media marketing.

This thesis will begin by elaborating on the concept of brand loyalty, alongside an analysis of research on social media and the current supermarket industry in the Netherlands. To frame the concept of brand loyalty, antecedents of brand loyalty will be extracted from previous research. These factors will then be used to formulate hypotheses followed by research on the relationship between brand loyalty and social media. The presented factors which influence and foster brand loyalty both online and offline will be tested with the goal of framing the effect of social media efforts on brand loyalty in the case of Dutch supermarket chains. Finally, the hypotheses will be tested, which will lead to conclusions and implications.

1.2 RELEVANCE

1.2.1 Academic relevance

This thesis will extend previous research on social media marketing by focusing on a different industry which has not yet been evaluated extensively on this aspect but is utmost important for the Dutch economy. The grocery industry differs from markets like fashion and tourism due to its high level of substitutability, consumers can buy most of their groceries in any of the market players’ stores. The different supermarkets offer a lot of similar products which makes it hard to differentiate from the competition on the product side. Although there are differences in the price and quality of products between the different stores, many basic goods are comparable. Consumers don’t mind buying their cereal from store A or store B if prices are comparable, unlike tourism where few hotels will be offered at the same price on different

6 websites. This thesis will also contribute towards the general research on social media and brand loyalty, bringing new and updated perspectives on these concepts to academics.

1.2.2 Managerial relevance

The findings of this research will support more effective and natural implementation of social media by Dutch supermarket chains. If a relationship is found between social media use and brand loyalty, this thesis will be of value to supermarket chains by providing facts about their industry and the effects of their social media efforts. Otherwise, if the two are not related, supermarket chains will have proof to redirect their marketing strategies elsewhere or to revise their social media strategy.

It is important to study this industry because of the stable growth and size of the market. Ever since the last economic crisis in the Netherlands that ended in 2009, the supermarket industry has shown growth in number of stores and sales (Distrifood, 2018). Since then, supermarkets have seen increased consumer trust in the Dutch economy which for them reflected in increased sales. These sales increases are acknowledged in the Retail Fabulous 40 list put together annually by Capitalmind, listing the 40 Dutch retailers with the highest growth in revenue. In the 2016 research, supermarkets accounted for 25% of the companies listed (Capitalmind, 2016). Growth is shown especially in the fresh produce products, also nicknamed ‘aardappel groente fruit’ (or AGF) [Potatoes, greens and fruit] (Distrifood, 2017). This observation is in line with a general increased focus on healthy nourishment in the Netherlands. Many supermarket chains have caught up with this trend and have been focusing promotion on these products. Also, with the introduction of online grocery shopping, stores which offer an in-store experience that is ‘more than just a store’ are performing better than normal stores focused solely on sales (Distrifood, 2017). Here we should think of in-store tastings, store-exclusive products etc. A last point worth noting is that the Dutch consumer is spending more hard cash on groceries, raising the sales-per-customer and making each customer more valuable for the businesses (LevensmiddelenKrant, 2018). According to research by Rabobank, especially stores which are focused on food retail are experiencing this growth in sales-per-customer (van de Hei, 2017). All these factors have become apparent over the last few years, resulting in a general redirection of attention in retail towards the grocery industry. With the great amount of players in the Dutch grocery industry and the immense sales realized by these players, this industry is one of the country’s largest.

Looking at the impact of brand loyalty, several studies (e.g. Knox & Walker, 2001; Reichheld, 1996; Reichheld & Sasser, 1990; van Birgelen et al., 1997) have acknowledged that it is more cost-efficient to retain existing customers than to try and mobilize new consumers to become customers of a business. Therefore, having a loyal customer base is beneficial for every business. Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden (2011) stated that social media have the power to combine brand affinity and sales conversion on one set of platforms, which means that social media should be seen as a business tool. Therefore, the insights offered by this research will shine a light on this important factor in business performance.

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTION AND SUBQUESTIONS

The main research question answered in this thesis is as follows:

What is the relationship between social media use and brand loyalty in the case of Dutch supermarket chains?

To answer this question, two sub questions are to be answered: - What are the antecedents of brand loyalty? - What are the factors that can create brand loyalty through social media?

Before these questions can be answered through research, it is important to define the context of the topics at hand. To set the scene for this research thesis, an overview of the Dutch supermarket industry and social media use in the Netherlands is offered. For the sake of readability, online grocery seller Picnic was also named a ‘supermarket chain’ even though the business does not have multiple selling points, nor do they own brick-and-mortar stores.

1.4 THE DUTCH SUPERMARKET INDUSTRY

The Dutch grocery industry is one of the country’s largest markets, with a total market capacity of 35,53 billion euro (Growth from Knowledge, 2017). On a daily basis, supermarkets in the Netherlands amass around four million total visitors (Centraal Bureau Levensmiddelenhandel, n.d.). The industry is also highly competitive, with Albert Heijn and Jumbo currently ruling the national market with market shares of 35,3% and 18,7% respectively (Distrifood, 2018; Distrifood, 2018). Locally, smaller chains like Coop and PLUS, both part of purchasing organization Superunie which holds 29,1% total market share, have a lot of stores in their area of operation which consumers have become familiar with. Discounters Aldi (7%) and Lidl (10,3%) are also big players because of their different pricing levels attracting a different customer base. According to Statistics Netherlands [Dutch: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek or CBS], Dutch consumers have a great amount of options for which supermarket they want to shop at, with a national average of more than ten supermarkets within three kilometers distance from anywhere in the country in 2016 (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2017). The average distance to the nearest supermarket was less than a kilometer in 2016. Due to this high density of supermarkets, consumers are often tempted to regularly visit multiple stores in their area. This has raised the importance of brand loyalty for these businesses because sales retention offers stability and growth opportunities to the stores.

1.4.1 THE DUTCH ONLINE GROCERY INDUSTRY

The total Dutch online grocery business surpassed one billion euro in sales for the first time in 2017, with online sales taking up 2,9% of the total 35,53 billion euro grocery market (Growth from Knowledge or GfK, 2017). Recent numbers from GfK show that online sales are now at 3,3% of total grocery sales (Foodmagazine, 2018). Bankers from ABN AMRO expect the online sales to rise to 9% of the market by 2025 due to the convenience that online shopping offers to the consumer, stating that “convenience seems to be the new form of [consumer] loyalty” (ABN AMRO Insights, n.d.). In the United States, this has been shown by Amazon, which has disrupted the retail industry mainly by increasing consumer convenience.

Recently, the Dutch industry was introduced to Picnic, a fully online supermarket. The Dutch business, which started in 2015, has made use of the lack of emphasis Dutch supermarket chains have put on e-commerce. Albert Heijn and Jumbo are active in e-commerce, with current online market shares of 58% and 22% respectively (Foodpersonality, 2018). These big chains are forced to increasingly focus on online sales due to the rise of businesses like Picnic, in order to maintain market power and not lose customers to the ‘new alternative’ (ABN AMRO Insights, 2016). The Dutch online grocery business has yet to become profitable but is certainly becoming more and more important with expectations of further growth. For physical stores, this puts greater emphasis on providing an experience and services in the store to maintain the perceived value of a customer’s visit (Rabobank, 2018). Consumers more often need to be convinced to go out to a physical store, now that they’re groceries can easily be ordered online.

1.5 SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN THE NETHERLANDS

The Netherlands has Europe’s highest internet penetration rate, with 98% of Dutch households connected to the Internet (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2018). Of these 16,5 million people, 64% were active social media users as of January 2018 (Statista, 2018) which ranks the country tenth in Europe. This means that the total online population in the Netherlands is to be estimated around 10,5 million people.

Research agency Newcom has been conducting the largest annual research on social media use in the Netherlands since 2010. Their research looks at the different social media platforms and how much they are used. The 2018 research included almost 6800 participants, the results are summarized in Table 1 and Figure 1.

Platform Total users in the Netherlands Total daily users in the Netherlands (2018) in millions (2018) in millions WhatsApp 11,5 8,3 Facebook 10,8 7,6 YouTube 8,0 2,2 LinkedIn 4,4 0,5 Instagram 4,1 2,1

Table 1: Social media use in the Netherlands in 2018

WhatsApp and Facebook are the biggest platforms in the current Dutch social media environment. Instagram, although significantly smaller in total user amounts than other platforms, has a daily active user rate of over 50%, and is growing rapidly with a 28% growth in Dutch users between 2017 and 2018 (Newcom, 2017; Newcom, 2018). Therefore, Instagram is currently seen as one of the ‘places to be’ as a business on social media. Figure 1 is from the 2018 Newcom report and shows the percentage of participants which use each social platform. This gives an overview of Instagram’s growth and the current dominance by WhatsApp and Facebook.

Figure 1: Gebruik totaal van social media [Total use of social media]. Reprinted from “Nationaal Social Media Onderzoek 2018” by Newcom, 2018.

Research from 2017 showed that at the time, 65% of Dutch businesses were using social media for their business. This was much higher than the European average which was estimated around 45% (Eurostat, 2017). Dutch businesses are aware that social media are becoming essential for their marketing strategies and were early in the adaptation of these new channels. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others have developed extensive tools for businesses to use in order to leverage the attention of a widespread population on social media.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

This literature review will define the concepts of social media, marketing, brand and brand loyalty before further elaborating on their relationships. Then, factors that influence brand loyalty will be defined for both natural ‘offline’ relationships as well as relationships on social media. These factors will later be used as a foundation for the hypotheses of present research.

2.1 SOCIAL MEDIA

It is important to understand the definition of ‘social media’ before researching this phenomenon. Kaplan and Haenlein define social media as “a group of applications that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (2010, p.3) in their study on the opportunities and challenges of this new ecosystem. Blackshaw and Nazzaro describe their equivalent to the term social media named ‘Consumer-Generated Media’ as “a variety of new sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers intent on educating each other about products, brands, services, personalities and issues” (Blackshaw & Nazzaro, 2004, p.2). Social media platforms are the home of interactive and online conversations, diaries, photobooks and drawing boards where anyone with an Internet connection can share their thoughts, ideas, creations and opinions with the world. Interaction with companies, consumers, relatives, friends, colleagues etc. allows for endless possibilities where we can learn and discover new perspectives and ideas as well as maintain relationships with people or business entities that bring value to our lives. Social media encompass a highly dynamic field of entertainment and entrepreneurship, unlike anything we’ve seen before. The power lies mainly in the low threshold of entry, just an Internet connection is enough, and the ease of making connections with people of all kinds and from anywhere in the world. With the

10 rise of mobile connected devices such as the smartphone and smartwatch and widespread Internet connection, we can now check-in, post, chat and like anywhere at any time.

As Tont stated in her 2014 study, “… social media allow brands and consumers to connect on a more intimate level humanizing the communication and by satisfying the functional and emotional needs of the consumers” (p.2). Her research found that there is a direct relationship between social media marketing and the level of intimacy and trust between the investigated fashion brands and their consumers. On top of that, Internet-based social media have allowed consumers to talk to each other directly to discuss the products they bought and the companies that made these products. It is essentially a magnified form of word-of-mouth. Social media influence consumer behavior because consumers trust each other’s opinion (Blackshaw & Nazzaro, 2004) and should therefore get adequate attention from marketing managers, who often neglect the importance of this new environment (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). In their research, Mangold and Faulds also highlighted the flipside of this development, the lack of control (Mangold & Faulds, 2009; Vollmer & Precourt, 2008). In traditional marketing, companies have more control over the content and timing of conversation about their products and services (Blackshaw & Nazzaro, 2004). Within the social media ecosystem, marketing managers must find a way to shape the conversations online to align with the business’ vision (Mangold & Faulds, 2009).

2.2 MARKETING

In his world renowned book The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith laid the foundation for what is known as the ‘marketing’ concept, the idea that firms should analyze the needs of consumers and find ways to satisfy them more effectively than their competition (NetMBA, n.d.). Marketing nowadays is a creative field where marketeers make efforts to capture consumers by getting their attention through advertising, enhancing experiences in stores and fostering online relationships on social media both for promotional use and customer support. As it is defined by Divol, Edelman and Sarrazin (2012), “marketing’s primary goal is to reach consumers at the moments … that influence their purchasing behavior”. They go on to state that “[s]ocial media is a unique component of the consumer decision journey: it’s the only form of marketing that can touch consumers at each and every stage, from when they’re pondering brands and products right through the period after a purchase, as their experience influences the brands they prefer and their potential advocacy influences others”.

2.3 BRAND

Closely related to marketing are brand and brand loyalty. Brand is defined as “the symbolic embodiment of all the information connected with a product or service” by Gallaugher (2011, p.32). Kotler and Armstrong define this phenomenon as “a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors” (Kotler & Armstrong, 2010, p.260). These definitions form the general consensus that ‘brand’ by itself is the full picture of a business in the eyes of the consumer, everything the consumer knows about the business. This picture is influenceable by the business itself. It is the way the business presents itself in the field, how it wants to be identified by the public, derived from the decisions made on positioning in the marketing strategy. The consumer can feel attracted to the business by the

11 reflection of their own personality in the brand, which can draw their buying initiative to said business, this is how businesses can capture consumers.

2.4 BRAND LOYALTY

Brand loyalty has everything to do with the incentivized repetition of sales by one consumer of the same brand of products or services. First introduced by Jacoby and Chestnut (1978), it is now recognized by the American Marketing Association (AMA) and the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) as “the situation in which a consumer generally buys the same manufacturer-originated product or service repeatedly over time rather than buying from multiple suppliers within the category” (AMA, n.d.). This definition around the rebuying of products from the same seller is in line with generally accepted work by Oliver (1999). Kim, Morris and Swait (2008) describe brand loyalty as the comfort to buy a brand’s products or services caused by credibility achieved through past experiences. Keller gives a more psychological definition stating that brand loyalty is the symbolization of “the consumer’s ultimate relationship and level of identification with a brand” (2008, p.121). It gives a sense of a customer’s commitment to maintain their relationship with a brand over an extensive time period (Theng So, Grant Parsons, & Yap, 2013). These definitions create the concept of loyalty that each brand pursues, the preference of their products or services over comparable suppliers. It is to be seen as the key to success in the highly competitive field of grocery sales. If you can capture a consumer’s devotion to your brand, they will be more likely to visit your stores than other chains. This loyalty, the general belief that you offer good quality products and services at a reasonable price, is what makes them walk the extra block to visit your store. Kotler and Armstrong point out that it is customer delight which business should seek for, which is a state of perfect brand loyalty. A single negative experience can have big impact on the level of brand loyalty and erase this delight (Kotler & Armstrong, 2010). Knox and Walker (2001) add to this notion by saying that simple things as out-of-stock occurrences can cause loyal customers to switch brands. Adequate business performance and trustworthiness are therefore vital for a brand to gain loyal customers.

According to Gounaris and Stathakopoulos (2004), brands can gain competitive advantage through brand loyalty because it offers stability and increases return-of-investment per customer through sales repetition. Strong brand loyalty gives business the freedom to expand because they have a consistent customer base.

Court et al. (2009) distinguish two different types of loyalists, active loyalists and passive loyalists, of which the latter only buy a brand repeatedly because they are used to buying it. They are not committed to a brand and might therefore be open for impulses from competitors. In the grocery industry, where most products are Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and are generally comparable and offered in almost all stores, capturing the attention of these passive loyalists could play a big role. More importantly, marketeers should make efforts to turn them into active loyalists, who not only buy repetitively from their brand but also spread their positive experiences.

A paper by Knox and Walker (2001) on the grocery industry refers to other studies (e.g. DeBruicker, 1979; Kassarjian and Kassarjian, 1979) by proposing that “consumer devotion to a particular brand will be fragile and short-lived …” (Knox & Walker, 2001, p.1) in the FMCG market because of the comparability and substitutability of the products between the different

12 brands. Their message is that brand loyalty is hard to achieve in this business. However, accepting this belief would be a mistake, since this statement was made before the rise and without the consideration of social media as a communication and brand relationship channel. The paper lists unavailability of customer data as one of the difficulties. Contrary to the paper, collecting useful data from grocery shoppers is not expensive and difficult anymore with the introduction of for instance Point-of-Sales (POS) systems, let alone the tools on social media that track consumer behavior online.

2.4.1 FACTORS FOR BRAND LOYALTY

To frame the concept of brand loyalty in a way fit for this research, the antecedents of brand loyalty have to be assessed and formulated. It is important to know what exactly it is that increases loyalty from consumers towards a brand, what factors play a role in this phenomenon.

Gounaris and Stathakopoulos (2003) researched the antecedents and consequences of brand loyalty in the Greek whiskey market. Their findings suggest that brand loyalty formation is influenced by the consumer’s social environment, brand image and, at a lower level of loyalty, by pure buying habit. The influence of social environment can be linked to the notion of social proof where we assess the behavior of others, especially ‘similar’ others and relatives, to determine appropriate behavior for ourselves (Cialdini et al., 1999).

Kim, Morris and Swait (2008) define five antecedents of brand loyalty: brand credibility, affective brand conviction, cognitive brand conviction, attitude strength and brand commitment. Brand commitment is seen as behavioral intention build up by affective and cognitive conviction. This intention is a direct antecedent of brand loyalty (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) and has been described as an essential condition of brand loyalty (Knox & Walker, 2001; Bloemer & Kasper, 1995). The research also confirmed that the higher the level of attitude strength, which encompasses the intensity and extremity of someone’s attitude towards a brand, the stronger the brand commitment. Then again, this commitment leads to increased feelings of brand loyalty. Furthermore, Kim, Morris and Swait refer to Bower and Forgas (2001) to explain that cognitive and affective conviction influence brand loyalty, writing that “[t]he mood and social memory literature further implies a critical role of emotion in brand loyalty formation …” (Kim, Morris, & Swait, 2008, p.102).

Several studies have concluded that trust is another big factor in relationship commitment and therefore in brand loyalty formation (Garbarino & Johnson, 1999; Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Berry, 1995; Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001), in which trust is defined as “confidence in the partner’s reliability and integrity” (Morgan & Hunt, 1994, p.23). Garbarino and Johnson see trust as “customer confidence in the quality and reliability of the services offered by the organization” (1999, p.5). These definitions of trust are also applicable in business-consumer relationships in the grocery industry, where consumers rely on the business to deliver good quality products which are safe for consumption. Over time, consumers will use their past experiences with the business to decide if they trust the business enough to buy their products again. Closely related to the concept of trust is brand credibility, which is also concerned with the trustworthiness and perceived quality of a brand (Erdem & Swait, 1998). In short, the concepts of trust and credibility in the case of brand commitment have to do with the believe that a brand will deliver as promised and play an essential role in the formation of brand loyalty.

The results of the Kim, Morris and Swait research confirm the interconnectivity of the five proposed antecedents as well as the importance of each in the formation of true brand loyalty. They conclude that brand credibility often leads to affective and cognitive conviction, which may influence attitude strength. As described, attitude strength has effect on brand commitment, which leads to true brand loyalty.

In their research on a play theatre in New York City, Garbarino and Johnson (1999) differentiate between strong and weak business-consumer relationships. They conclude that future buying intention in weak relationships is mainly influenced by overall satisfaction, whereas strong relationships see buying intention grow through trust and commitment to the brand to deliver quality plays in the future.

According to Smith and Swinyard (1982), effective advertising can strengthen brand loyalty by establishing source credibility and setting up a predisposition for a favorable usage experience. Deighton (1984) concluded from research on advertising efforts by Ford that advertising should be seen as a frame for the products’ usage experience, which is directly related to the formation of brand loyalty. Erdem and Swait (1998) state that “[if] the usage experience is consistent with the firm’s product claims, the credibility of the brand … increases” (Erdem & Swait, 1998, p.23). This aspect of brand-consumer relationship is reflected in transparency and honesty from the brand about their products or services.

Kotler and Armstrong (2010) use the example of web seller Zappos, a company which has held on to their belief in great customer experience and customer service which might be one of the reasons Amazon decided to acquire the company in 2009. By providing these qualities to the consumer, Zappos has created brand loyalty which has resulted in notable sales increases. Furthermore, Kotler and Armstrong propose that high customer satisfaction through past experiences with the business leads to increased customer loyalty. This positive relationship has been confirmed by several other researchers (e.g. Bloemer & Kasper, 1995; Garbarino & Johnson, 1999; Kraft, Granbois, & Summers, 1973; Newman & Werbel, 1973; LaBarbera & Mazursky, 1983; Garfein, 1987; Kasper, 1988; Burmann, 1991; Bloemer & Lemmink, 1992).

Kotler and Armstrong’s book Principles of Marketing (2010) also points out that the current ‘price wars’ in retail will not be beneficial in the future. By dropping prices, short-term sales increases may occur but sales margins will go down. Therefore, less money will be available to invest in the quality of goods and services, eventually lowering the added value for the consumer. Dropping prices is therefore not creating loyalty and should be reconsidered in any brand’s growth strategy. The flipside of this is seen in reward programs, where benefits are offered to customers to increase sales retention. To add to this idea, the researchers propose intelligent customer-data use for personalization to increase the personal added value for the customer, which can lead to higher customer loyalty.

The extracted antecedents of brand loyalty from previous research are summarized in Table 2.

Study / studies Findings Factor / factors Gounaris and Stathakopoulos (2003) Brand loyalty formation is influenced by Social environment; social environments (social proof), brand Brand image; image and habit Habit

Kim, Morris and Swait (2008) Brand loyalty is explained by five Credibility; antecedents: brand credibility, affective Conviction; brand conviction, cognitive brand conviction, Affection; attitude strength, brand commitment Attitude; Commitment Fishbein and Ajzen (1975); Brand commitment is a direct and necessary Commitment Knox and Walker (2001); antecedent of brand loyalty Bloemer and Kasper (1995)

Bloemer and Kasper (1995); Brand loyalty is formed based on consumer Satisfaction Garbarino and Johnson (1999) satisfaction Kraft, Granbois and Summers (1973); Newman and Werbel (1973); Brand loyalty is positively influenced by LaBarbera and Mazursky (1983); consumer satisfaction Garfein (1987); Kasper (1988); Burmann (1991); Bloemer and Lemmink (1992); Kotler and Armstrong (2010)

Garbarino and Johnson (1999); Trust plays a big (or even essential) role in Trust Morgan and Hunt (1994); relationship and brand loyalty formation Berry (1995); Chaudhuri and Holbrook (2001)

Smith and Swinyard (1982); Advertising can strengthen brand loyalty by Advertising; Deighton (1984); establishing source credibility and setting up Credibility; Erdem and Swait (1998) a predisposition for a favorable usage Usage experience experience

If the usage experience is as promised, brand credibility rises

Usage experience has direct influence on brand loyalty

Kotler and Armstrong (2010) Great customer experience and customer Customer experience; service lead to increased brand loyalty Customer service

Intelligent customer-data use in Personalization personalization can lead to higher customer loyalty

Table 2: Overview of previous studies, findings and factors which influence brand loyalty

Figure 2 shows the brand loyalty factors and their interconnectivity. Trust, consumer satisfaction, brand credibility and brand commitment are shown to be the most important antecedents, based on the findings of previous research. Usage experience has a direct positive relationship with brand loyalty, as well as a positive relationship with brand credibility.

Figure 2: Overview of brand loyalty factors as found in ‘offline’ research

2.5 SOCIAL MEDIA AND BRAND LOYALTY

In his 1995 study, Berry gave the opening of lines of communication as a tip as to how businesses can demonstrate their trustworthiness (Berry, 1995). His explanation is that open communication gives the consumer a sense of familiarity which reflects in their trust in the company’s products or services. This idea is exactly what we see nowadays on social media platforms, where businesses are engaging with the consumer to build or foster relationships with their (potential) customer base. In line with the comments on honesty and transparency we can derive from Erdem and Swait (1998), social media are also used by businesses to stay close to the consumer through honesty and transparency. Consumers expect companies to be transparent and honest about their products and services, brands that don’t deliver as promised are often called out for their actions on social media with consequences on their brand credibility.

Talking about consumer-consumer relationships, social media have become important hosts for online communities. A brand community, “[a] specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001, p.1), was originally based on geographical location. With the general acceptance and increase of use of social media, this dynamic has changed into the creation of social media based brand communities (Laroche, Habibi, & Richard, 2013). Building communities around your products or services can incentivize buyers to talk to each other. As noted before, users of products and services value each other’s opinion highly and trust the help offered by experienced users (Divol, Edelman, & Sarrazin, 2012). Having a page, forum or even a hashtag (in the case of Twitter and Instagram) for your brand can create an ecosystem where consumers form part of your customer service. Monitoring and listening to the content in these communities can be of great value to the business, the way people talk to each other about your product or service is one of the purest forms of feedback a brand can wish for.

According to Staal (2018), some of the benefits and potential strengths of online communities – in this case Facebook’s Groups platform – are the overview of the target audience, co-creation between consumers of different uses of your products or services, word-of-mouth advertising

16 and ultimately higher customer retention, loyalty and sales. These outcomes, which are valuable for businesses, are caused by the network of interaction that the community facilitates. The network increases the perceived brand value for the members, which is why they stick around and why businesses should, according to Staal, facilitate these communities.

2.5.1 FACTORS FOR BRAND LOYALTY CREATED BY SOCIAL MEDIA

To research the effect of social media on brand loyalty, it is important to define the antecedents of brand loyalty caused by social media efforts. The most important factors that come forward are brand trust and feelings of community.

Multiple studies have proposed or confirmed that consumer trust gained through social media increases brand loyalty (e.g. Kim & Ko, 2010; Cheung, Lee, & Jin, 2011; Chiu, Huang, & Yen, 2010; Harris & Goode, 2004; Kim, Chung, & Lee, 2011; Laroche, Habibi, & Richard, 2013). Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013) found that brand trust “has a fully mediating role in converting the effects of enhanced relationships in [the online] brand community to brand loyalty” (Laroche, Habibi, & Richard, 2013, p.1). In their 2013 research on online brand communities, they argue that “… online communities, as a social structure, have positive effects on trust and loyalty” (p.3). They conclude that “social media can enhance brand trust and loyalty by improving customer relationship with the brand, other consumers, the company and the products” (p.5). They end their observations by noting that the consumer-consumer relationship has the most significant impact on brand trust, which emphasizes the importance of user-generated content in a brand’s online community. Furthermore, Balakrishnan, Dahnil and Yi stated that “[online] [c]ommunity commitment is confirmed to have a … positive effect on brand loyalty” (p.3) in their 2014 research on social media marketing. Research outlines from Cheung, Lee and Jin (2011) suggests that when consumers trust your products, services and your ability to deliver as promised, they will be more likely to stick with your brand. This also creates a mental form of ‘switching costs’ (Gallaugher, 2011), where consumers stick with one service or product provider because they’ve built up advantages or preference over time. Apart from loyalty programs, which boost sales retention, this mental sign of security gives a brand advantage over the competition.

The construct of brand trust through online efforts has been explained in different ways. Kim and Ko focused on entertainment as a mediating factor, concluding that “entertainment has a significant positive effect on … trust” (2010). They go on to state that brands should focus on providing entertainment for their customers which adds value to the relationship they have with the brand. Their research on the luxury fashion industry connected trust to purchase intention, showing a positive relationship. Thus, through building entertaining relationships online, sales intention should increase.

Brodie et al. (2011) found that true engagement from the consumer leads to increased trust and commitment. Engagement here is defined as “specific interactive experiences between consumer and the brand …” (Brodie et al., 2011, p.1). From a business use perspective, this engagement can be initiated on social media. The conversations, replies and likes on social media platforms are a form of engagement which make the consumer feel more personally attached to the brand. According to the researchers, “[e]ngaged consumers exhibit enhanced consumer loyalty, … trust and commitment” (Brodie et al., 2011, p.1). Moreover, according to research by Divol, Edelman and Sarrazin (2012), brands can use social media to increase

17 engagement and foster loyalty after the purchase is made. In their vision, the post-buy stage is where brands can and should try to turn buyers into brand advocates, giving customers extra attention to stimulate them to talk positively about the brand.

Kim, Chung and Lee (2011) researched the online tourism industry and noted that customer satisfaction also positively influenced trust, which proved to be one of the key antecedents of customer loyalty in this market. They match this effect with increased purchase intention, leading to increased business performance.

Research by Erdoğmuş and Çiçek (2012) on the effects of social media marketing on brand loyalty proved that brand loyalty is positively affected by social media efforts when the brand offers discounts, distributes relevant content for the consumer, applies viral trends in their content and when the brand is active on multiple platforms. They go on by stating that brand loyalty can be built through social media by “networking, conversation and community building” (p.4) in refence to research by McKee (2010). Dobele, Toleman and Beverland (2005) also noted that viral marketing can only be successful if it creates value for the consumer, making it worth sharing the content with their friends and connections. Brands should therefore be cautious with jumping on new trends if it is not relevant to their brand image or their following.

Study / studies Findings Factor / factors Kim and Ko (2010); Increased brand trust leads to increased Trust Cheung, Lee and Jin (2011); brand loyalty Chiu, Huang and Yen (2010); Harris and Goode (2004); Kim, Chung and Lee (2011); Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013)

Kim and Ko (2010) Entertainment has positive effects on trust Entertainment

Brodie et al. (2011) Engagement leads to increased trust, Engagement commitment and loyalty

Kim, Chung and Lee (2011) Customer satisfaction positively influences Customer brand trust satisfaction

Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013); Online communities have positive effects on Community Balakrishnan, Dahnil and Yi (2014); brand trust and brand loyalty McKee (2010)

Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013) Trust has a mediating role in converting Trust relationships in the online community into brand loyalty

Erdoğmuş and Çiçek (2012); Brand loyalty is positively affected by Discounts; Dobele, Toleman and Beverland (2005) discounts, relevant content, viral trends and Relevancy; multi-platform presence Virality; Multi-platform

Table 3: Overview of previous research findings and brand loyalty factors in the case of social media

Figure 3 shows the antecedents of brand loyalty as found in previous social media research. Trust was found to be the most supported factor in literature, followed by feelings of community and community leverage.

Figure 3: Overview of brand loyalty factors in social media research

2.6 COMPARISON

When comparing the factors for brand loyalty found in ‘offline’ research to the derived ‘online’ factors, similarities are found. One factor that comes forward as crucial is trust, which in both cases leads to brand relationship commitment and therefore both directly and indirectly to increased brand loyalty. It plays an essential role in brand-consumer relationship formation and is seen as helpful in the conversion of online communities into loyalty. The satisfaction consumers experience from past transactions or interactions with the brand is also noted as a positive influence of loyalty. Both sides also acknowledge the importance of the engagement and commitment that has to be present from both parties in the brand-consumer relationship for value to be created. The ‘offline’ factors also encompass the importance of social environments and brand image in the creation of brand credibility. In the online world, these factors could be compared to the community aspect of social media. In online communities, trust is gained through the experience of others and the connections that community members take part in.

The ‘online’ factors extend the factor set by adding entertainment and virality. These factors, which have to do with the level of amusement social media users experience from following the business, are to be considered in social media marketing strategies because consumers generally seek for entertainment when using social media. In the new ecosystem of personalized advertising, relevancy is also crucial. Instead of talking to the masses all at the same time, marketeers now have to consider every ‘follower’ as individuals with different preferences and sales opportunities. Therefore, the comments made about data use for personalization by Kotler and Armstrong (2010) can also be applied to the digital space, where personal data can be gathered to create consumer ‘identities’ which allow for customized advertising to take place.

Figure 4 shows a final overview containing the factors derived from both the classic ‘offline’ literature and ‘online’ research on brand loyalty.

Figure 4: Overview of brand loyalty factors

2.7 HYPOTHESES

Based on findings from previous research and the abovementioned factors for brand loyalty, both ‘offline’ and ‘online’, the following hypotheses are outlined:

H1: Social media efforts by Dutch supermarket chains significantly increase consumer engagement

H2: Social media efforts by Dutch supermarket chains significantly increase brand trust

H3: Increased feelings of community experienced by consumers significantly increase brand trust

H4: Increased trust in Dutch supermarket chains significantly stimulates feelings of brand commitment

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 SUPERMARKET CHAINS

The supermarket chains that were explored in this research are Albert Heijn, Jumbo, PLUS, DEEN, Lidl and Picnic. Albert Heijn and Jumbo are the biggest players in the market, as described before. PLUS and DEEN are middle sized brands that operate more locally and Lidl is a popular and growing discounter. Therefore, these brands together create a representative set of the brick-and-mortar grocery businesses which are currently players in the Dutch market. Additionally, Picnic was part of the research to broaden the scope of the grocery industry by also including the fast-growing online business. A detailed description of each company is offered in appendix 1. All these businesses offer a broad range of nutrition products

20 that Dutch consumers use regularly, the FCMG. Most of them also have non-food selections like personal care and cleaning products.

3.2 SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Although WhatsApp is the most used platform, the most valuable platforms for this thesis are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram because they are not ‘messaging’ platforms, which do not accommodate extensive business use, but instead allow for more branded content and potential consumer engagement. A pure communication platform like WhatsApp is harder to use for business purposes because there are no options to for instance create business pages.

Facebook and YouTube are at the top of the lists of most used platforms. As noted before, Instagram has shown incredible growth over the past years, making this platform interesting as well. Twitter, although not as popular anymore as it was years ago, hosts a different sort of communication where it is more common to post a lot of content in a short time period. The platform has also been known to be suited for customer service. On top of the sheer size of the platforms, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have adapted their user-interface design in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish branded content from non-branded content, users are shown branded posts directly on their ‘News Feed’ or ‘Timeline’. This is beneficial for advertisers because it lowers the burden to reach the consumer’s attention. By spending money on post promotion, they can make their content visible for users that do not ‘like’ or ‘follow’ them yet. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram also allow businesses to create business profiles and have introduced extensive business tools for targeted advertising. All three of these platforms use user data such as age, location and interests to show the right ads to the right target audiences. In the case of YouTube, different implementations have been designed. YouTube videos that contain products from or are made by a business are hard to distinguish from ‘regular’ videos at first sight.

The number of followers, likes or subscriptions per platform and supermarket chain are summarized in appendix 2.

3.3 RESEARCH PROCEDURES

This thesis consists of two kinds of research. First, as presented in section 2 of this work, extensive literature research was conducted on the topics and concepts at hand. These efforts were mainly focused on building a foundational background for the field research. This further research consisted of two questionnaires, one before and one after a test period in which the proposed concepts and factors from the literature review where challenged. Both questionnaires consisted mainly of Likert-scaled statements (Likert, 1932), in which the participants could express their opinion in a ‘1’ or ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘5’ or ‘strongly agree’ range.

3.3.1 OPENING QUESTIONNAIRE

To collect data on the public opinion on the current situation, a survey was conducted. This survey started with questions on the participants’ background and their knowledge of technology, social media and the Dutch grocery business. Furthermore, in-depth questions were asked on the topics of social media, consumer engagement, trust and consumer-brand

21 relationships. These questions were partly based on the study by Tont (2014) on high-street fashion brands, a study which included comparable research. In Tont’s research, many questions were formed from the literature research outlined in the ‘Literature review’ section of this thesis. The survey was conducted in Dutch, to increase the potential reach of the questionnaire. The fact that the topic concerned Dutch supermarkets made Dutch people the target group, with a Dutch survey they would be more likely to participate. The questionnaire was shared through Facebook and e-mail. An overview of all the questions can be found in appendix 3. To avoid response biases, the word loyalty was not used in the questionnaire. The survey was split into 17 sections so that participants were only asked the questions relevant to their social media activity.

3.3.2 TEST GROUPS

For a more sophisticated look into the impact of social media use on the Dutch consumer, test groups were formed. Participants of the first survey were asked to sign up for this testing phase. In each test group, users of social media were asked to follow a randomly assigned supermarket chain on social media. They were incentivized to keep an eye on the business’ presence and efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and/or YouTube. After seven days, the participants were asked their opinion on the business’ social media efforts and social media and marketing in general through a second questionnaire. The data gathered from this test was of high value for this research, as it gave an insight in the way that social media can or can not change someone’s perception of a brand. The different factors defined before were used when formulating the questions for this survey to test their effect in the case of Dutch consumers and Dutch supermarket chains. Again, the words brand loyalty were not used in questions related to the business at hand to prevent response biases. The survey was distributed via e-mail. The complete survey can be found in appendix 4. The survey was split into 63 sections to make sure that the participants were only asked questions about the supermarket and the platforms they researched.

3.3.3 DATA PROCESSING

The gathered data from both the first and the second survey were processed independently using IBM SPSS Statistics 23.

4. RESULTS

4.1 OPENING QUESTIONNAIRE Variable Frequency Percentage The survey was completed by 141 Age Total 141 Total 100 % voluntary participants of which two 15 to 20 years old 23 16,3 % thirds were female. The majority of the 20 to 25 years old 76 53,9 % 25 to 30 years old 11 7,8 % respondents was in the age group 20 to 30 to 40 years old 6 4,3 % 25 years old with 53,9%, which can 40 to 50 years old 6 4,3% possibly be ascribed to the age 50+ years old 19 13,5% distribution within the reach of the Gender Total 141 Total 100 % Male 47 33,3 % author’s social media. An overview of Female 94 66,7 % the complete demographic distribution is offered in Table 4. Table 4: Overview of first survey respondents’ demographics

Every participant used a smartphone on a daily basis, while computers (both desktop and laptop) were used daily by 87,9%, tablets by 14,2% and smartwatches by 5%. The distribution of the social media platforms used multiple times a week was in line with the research by Newcom (2018). WhatsApp was regularly used by all the participants, followed by Facebook with 96,5%. Instagram and YouTube both had 97 frequent users, which is 68,8% of the total respondents. Another big platform was Snapchat with 59,6%, although this result should be considered carefully because of the age distribution of the participants mainly being within Snapchat’s target user base. Twitter had 25 frequent users (17,7%). Messaging applications Facebook Messenger and Telegram hosted 41 (29,1%) and 5 (3,5%) of the participants respectively. Pinterest had 17 frequent users, which is around 12%.

When questioned on frequently visited supermarkets, 80,1% admitted to be a frequent shopper at Albert Heijn (113 respondents), followed by Jumbo and Lidl with 35,5% and 17% respectively. DEEN was listed by 10,6% of participants, PLUS by 5%. Looking at Picnic’s popularity, 37% admitted that they have never heard of the business, while 59% did know of Picnic but had never used the service. The other 4% noted that they had used Picnic to order groceries once or do so on a frequent basis.

Out of the 141 respondents, 32 followed Albert Heijn on Facebook, Instagram and/or YouTube (22,7%). This is the highest percentage, none of the other chains had more than 5% of the respondents in their social media following. Almost all of the 32 respondents followed Albert Heijn on Facebook (87,5%), 6 of them followed the brand on Instagram. Twitter and LinkedIn both had 1 follower. 25% said they like, comment or share content posted by Albert Heijn if they find it relevant or appealing, answering with a 4 or 5 on the five-point Likert scale. More than half said they might recommend Albert Heijn to their surroundings, whereas another 12,5% was sure they would.

Followers of Jumbo, Picnic and PLUS showed to strongest feelings of engagement, two thirds said they feel more connected to the brand due to their social media efforts. Albert Heijn and DEEN are less successful, their followers mainly answered with a 3 or 4 out of 5. Lidl followers do not feel this connection, when asked if their feelings of connection to the brand have increased through social media, 75% disagreed.

Trust has been noted as one of the most important factors for brand loyalty. Therefore, the survey included a question regarding the trustworthiness of the products and services offered by each brand. Jumbo and PLUS were trusted the most, with an average score of 4,33 out of 5. Albert Heijn, DEEN and Lidl followed with around a 4,0 out of 5. Picnic scored a 3,67 which might be a hint towards the general habituation of online grocery shopping that is happening today. The public is often still sceptic about online grocery shopping, with ongoing concerns on the quality of the delivered products.

One of the key statements from the survey was: ‘By following Brand X on social media I’m more convinced to buy my groceries there’. Participants did not agree, with the mean of all responses at 2,82 out of 5. As for Albert Heijn, 15,6% of the respondents showed that they might be more convinced to shop at Albert Heijn now that they follow the brand on social media, 21,9% was indifferent and 62,5% somewhat or strongly disagreed with this assumption. For Jumbo, two thirds disagreed. PLUS, DEEN and Lidl got no positive responses.

4.2 TEST GROUPS

Based on the number of respondents that signed up to participate in the test, 22 volunteers were randomly assigned to a supermarket chain. There were four participants for Albert Heijn, Jumbo, DEEN and Lidl. Three participants were assigned to PLUS and Picnic. Which business got three or four participants was decided through an online random picker on the Internet (www.miniwebtool.com/random-picker). Using this same tool, the e-mail addresses were randomly distributed over the six brands.

After the test period, 15 valid responses Variable Frequency Percentage were recorded. This included all four Age Total 15 Total 100 % participants for Albert Heijn, three 15 to 20 years old 1 6,7 % responses for Jumbo and two for PLUS, 20 to 25 years old 5 33,3 % 25 to 30 years old 1 6,7 % DEEN, Lidl and Picnic. Most 30 to 40 years old 0 0 % respondents were above 50 years old 40 to 50 years old 2 13,3 % (40%), followed by the 20 to 25 years 50+ years old 6 40% old category (33,3%). Eleven out the Gender Total 15 Total 100 % Male 4 26,7 % fifteen respondents were female Female 11 73,3 % (73,3%). A full overview of the demographics of the respondents is Table 5: Overview of second survey respondents’ demographics offered in Table 5.

The majority of the respondents saw themselves as an active user of social media, with two thirds responding to this statement with a 4 or 5 out of 5. Almost half (46,7%) of the respondents noted that they like to follow brands on social media or check brand pages regularly. 60% of the participants disagreed with the statements “I like, comment and/or share content by businesses on social media if it is relevant or appeals to me” and “I like it when businesses seek for interaction with me on social media”, responding with a 1 or 2 out of 5. Strong disagreement was also shown with the assumption that consumers mainly follow businesses on social media to keep up with sales, discounts and giveaways, 53,3% answered with a 1 out of 5. Four other respondents disagreed or had a neutral opinion. Furthermore, 6 respondents showed to be equally susceptible to online marketing as they are to TV, newspaper and street advertising, 5 lean strongly towards the traditional advertising techniques. Around 20% said they are more attracted to online marketing.

4.3 FINDINGS PER BRAND

In this section, the responses for each supermarket chain are further explored. To discuss the effects of the social media efforts by the supermarket chains, the questions from the second survey were categorized on their related brand loyalty factor based on previous research. Appendix 5 shows the different factors with the questions related to them.

4.3.1 ALBERT HEIJN

None of the respondents followed Albert Heijn on Twitter or YouTube. The majority of Albert Heijn respondents which followed the business on Facebook disagreed with statements regarding increased engagement with the business on the platform by answering with a 2 or 3 out of 5. This might be because, according to the respondents, Albert Heijn barely posted any

24 content on their Facebook page over the course of the research. One respondent did find the posted content to be relevant. In the case of Instagram, Albert Heijn posted more content but did not seek interaction with followers. According to two respondents, the content that was posted was not inspiring to them. The results also show that none of the respondents shared the content posted by Albert Heijn and they did not feel as if they were part of the Albert Heijn community. None of the respondents were convinced to shop at Albert Heijn after following their social media, nor did they feel like they trust the brand more than before.

4.3.2 JUMBO

One of the Jumbo respondents noted that his or her engagement with the brand had improved over the test period and that the posted content on Twitter was inspiring and entertaining. On the other hand, no interaction with the consumer was established on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Jumbo’s Facebook and Instagram posts did not increase involvement with the respondents, with three neutral answers and one strong disagreement recorded. Respondents were not impressed by the content Jumbo distributes on YouTube, all of them show a strong disagreement with the assumptions that the content was interesting, relevant, inspiring or entertaining. Consequently, no increased feelings of engagement were found on this platform either.

Jumbo’s social media efforts do not increase trust in the company, with a mean response of 2,33 out of 5 regarding this assumption. Also, disagreement was shown with the statement that respondents would be more tempted to shop at Jumbo after the test period. Respondents additionally noted that they were surprised by the low level of entertainment and relevancy of the content on Jumbo’s social media pages, stating that most posts had nothing to do with the product offering in that only product-callbacks were shared instead of for instance the ‘discounts of the week’. The low level of relevancy might be the reason no one shared Jumbo’s content. One participant did feel part of the Jumbo community, the others did not. Ultimately, all respondents said they would stop following Jumbo on social media after the test period, which summarizes their general opinion on the added value of Jumbo’s social media efforts.

4.3.3 PLUS

In the case of PLUS, mixed results were shown. One of the respondents was positive, noting that the content on all platforms was interesting, entertaining and relevant. The content gave him or her a better look at PLUS as a company and also increased buying intention and trust, ultimately making this person a new ‘fan’ of the brand. Although no interaction was established with the brand, engagement did increase as the respondent felt part of the PLUS community. The other respondent had opposite feelings, expressing that the content was of no value to him or her. In this case, none of the factors were positively influenced by following PLUS.

4.3.4 DEEN

Twitter and Instagram posts by DEEN did not stimulate feelings in relation to the brand loyalty factors. Respondents noted that the content on Facebook was interesting and that it enriched their vision of DEEN, but again no influence on shopping intention or engagement was noted. DEEN did not post content on YouTube during the test period, previous material also did not impress the respondents. Neither of the respondents had interaction with the brand on social

25 media, although it was noted that DEEN regularly uses these platforms for customer service. One respondent did confirm the assumption that trust in DEEN as a company and its products and services would increase through social media efforts, possibly because of the newly acquired information about the business from the content. Finally, one respondent commented that DEEN was not active enough on social media to leave a lasting impression or to create feelings of engagement or community.

4.3.5 LIDL

The results for Lidl are slightly comparable to DEEN. The content distributed by Lidl on social media was found to be interesting and informative, but no feelings of entertainment, engagement or community were achieved. All respondents strongly disagreed with the statements “I felt like I was part of Lidl’s community on social media” and “I shared, liked, saved or forwarded Lidl’s content if it appealed to me”. On the contrary, Lidl did get the highest score on increase of trust out of all brands with a mean of 3,5 out of 5. When asked about shopping intention, responses were neutral meaning no real effect was noticed.

4.3.6 PICNIC

One of the respondents for Picnic commented that the brand is barely active on social media and that when they did post content, it was not relevant. This sentiment is reflected by the research results, in which respondents made clear that Picnic did not post a lot of content and that it was not interesting, inspiring, entertaining or relevant. Therefore, no increased feelings of community, engagement and shopping intention were reported. In line with the results for DEEN and Lidl, Picnic followers did see the content on Facebook and YouTube as informative, noting that they do feel like they know the brand better than before. However, this did not lead to increased trust in the business and its offering, with a general disagreement (2 out of 5) with this notion.

4.4 BRAND LOYALTY FACTORS AND HYPOTHESES TESTING

The results from the previous section are generally negative to the point that social media efforts do not positively influence the factors that were noted as antecedents of brand loyalty. The main problems found in present research have to do with the frequency of posts, relevancy and attractiveness of content and the attitude of the brand in the brand-consumer relationship. Many respondents noted that the brand did not post enough content. They also reported that the value in the content was inadequate as posts were often not relevant, interesting, inspiring or entertaining. This implies that the quality of the content is below expectations, leading to a low perceived added value for the consumer in following the brand on social media. The brands did not seek for much interaction nor did they facilitate extensive community engagement.

Consequently, after the questions related to each factor Factor Mean are combined, the overall sentiment of respondents on Community 1,67 the social media effects was negative, as shown in Table Trust 2,33 6. These results show the average response of all Commitment 1,87 respondents to questions related to each factor for all Engagement 0,92 brands and all platforms. Table 6: General sentiment per factor, score out of five

A breakdown of the factors with the considered questions can be found in appendix 6. If no response was recorded to a question because the respondent did not follow the brand on the questioned platform, a zero was assigned to this question. These ‘zero-responses’ were considered in the conducted calculations because they reflect that the respondent did not feel the need to follow the brand on said social media platform, thus meaning that the efforts by the brand on this platform have no impact on him or her. Table 7 shows the Cronbach’s Alpha score (Cronbach, 1951) for each brand considering the combined questions that construct the factor ‘engagement’. The scale represents the internal consistency within the questions, each subscale consisted of 8 items. The split between the brands is necessary because the respondents only filled in the questionnaire for one brand, so their sentiment can’t be described from different results than those of that brand. PLUS and Picnic have ‘excellent’ consistency and Jumbo, DEEN and Lidl have a ‘good’ score. Albert Heijn shows ‘questionable’ consistency (Statistics How To, n.d.).

Brand Cronbach’s Alpha Albert Heijn .650 Jumbo .855 PLUS .944

DEEN .888 Lidl .823 Picnic .911

Table 7: Cronbach’s Alpha score for each supermarket chain regarding the factor ‘engagement’

From the results in Table 6, we reject hypothesis 1 which assumed that social media efforts by Dutch supermarket chains significantly increase consumer engagement. Hypothesis 2 is also rejected because the results show that social media efforts by Dutch supermarket chains do not significantly increase brand trust.

A positive finding was that the content was often found informative, informing the consumer about the brand and the services they provide. Even though this is positive for the brand, extensive knowledge about the brand is not tied to any of the brand loyalty antecedents.

Although the results for the entire sample are negative, positive connections between the different factors could still be present when looking at individual cases. Therefore, correlation calculations were conducted. In the following calculations, the Kendall rank correlation coefficient was used. Due to the small sample size, low variances occurred for many variables. The formula of Kendall’s tau is fairly insensitive for low-variance variables, therefore it is in this case more useful than Pearson’s correlation coefficient and the Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficient (Field, 2009). These correlation calculations provide insights in the relationship between the different factors in individual cases.

A significantly positive relationship was found at a significance level of 5% between the level of community experienced by the respondent and how much they trust the brand (r = .519, p = .026). This suggests that respondents that experience greater feelings of community also trust the brand more, in line with previous research (e.g. Laroche, Habibi, & Richard, 2013; Balakrishnan, Dahnil, & Yi, 2014; McKee, 2010) where feelings of community were found as an antecedent of trust. With this result, hypothesis 3 on this relationship is accepted.

Trust was found to have a significantly positive relationship with brand commitment (r = .469, p = .041). This suggests that the more people trust a supermarket brand, the more likely they are to stick with this brand. In the literature review, brand commitment was seen as a direct and necessary antecedent of brand loyalty. This result confirms hypothesis 4, which hypothesized that increased trust in Dutch supermarket chains significantly positively stimulates brand commitment.

Two thirds of the respondents said they are generally loyal to brands based on their brand image or past experiences they’ve had with the brand as customers. This supports the notion that brand loyalty is formed based on customer satisfaction and brand credibility. It was not possible to extract a clear effect of interaction on brand loyalty from the results because hardly any interaction was established between the brands and the respondents.

5. CONCLUSIONS

5.1 GENERAL DISCUSSION Analysis of responses to the first survey confirm that Albert Heijn is currently the biggest player in the Dutch grocery business. Also, it can be concluded that Facebook is the most used platform to follow brands, in line with Facebook’s overall user amount in the Netherlands. Less activity from brands is seen on Twitter and YouTube, with consequences on the relationship formation between brand and consumer on these platforms. Perhaps this is because Twitter use by brands nowadays is mainly focused on customer service. YouTube might be a harder platform for business use because, in the public eye, it is seen mainly as an entertainment hub instead of a social media platform fit for engagement. Finally, Dutch people show to be active on social media and in their use of digital technology, as was suggested in earlier research on penetration rates. The latter statement is also confirmed by the responses from participants in the test groups.

The majority of the respondents for different supermarkets stated that the brands did not post a lot of content on social media. Also, many respondents labeled the content as irrelevant, not entertaining or interesting and uninspiring, which suggests that the quality of the content is generally insufficient.

Dutch consumers show to be loyal to brands based on their previous experiences with the brand and the general image or reputation of the brand. When they follow brands on social media, they are not primarily looking for discounts or giveaways but instead to find extra value in a deeper relationship with the brand. However, the findings show that they do not seek direct interaction with the brand nor do they feel the need to share branded content with their social network. Engagement, which includes interaction and involvement with the brand, is often not achieved while this should be one of the core components of the value added by the social media efforts.

Feelings of community increase trust in the brand, which leads to increased brand commitment and thus stimulates brand loyalty. The results from the conducted research show that Dutch supermarket chains have not yet been able to trigger this kind of loyalty formation.

This study confirms that there are positive relationships between the factors that social media can stimulate, according to previous research, and brand loyalty. Reality shows that Dutch

28 supermarket chains have not been able to stimulate these factors sufficiently. The potential of social media for Dutch supermarket chains has not been fully exploited yet, partly because of the low quality of the content. This industry needs to convert online followers into loyal fans, but it is unclear how to manage this. For now, the results of their efforts are limited to informing consumers about their brand, which is not known to increase loyalty.

5.2 ACADEMIC CONTRIBUTION AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS

In the current business environment, social media has grown to become a key asset of a brand’s marketing strategy. There are new opportunities in this ecosystem that have not been fully explored and of which knowledge is still incomplete. This research enriches academic knowledge on social media marketing, the grocery industry and brand loyalty, little to no research was done on this combination of topics before. Marketeers, managers and academics are offered new insights into key topics relevant to their profession. Furthermore, knowledge of the FMCG-industry is extended with up-to-date industry facts and opinions.

The results of this study are of practical value to marketing teams of any brand in sales, especially in the FMCG-industry. Considering the outcome of present research, social media marketing strategies should be revised to fit the current environment. This research confirms that there are opportunities in social media marketing to increase brand loyalty. Communities can increase trust and brand commitment. When redesigning strategies, strong emphasis should be put on the relevancy and the entertainment level of the produced content, characteristics which were shown to be crucial to achieve any effect on brand loyalty antecedents. In line with the offered results, it is suggested to focus on the added value of the content for the consumer, which is currently poor. Fostering brand-consumer relationships through meaningful interactions could stimulate brand conviction. Marketeers should continue innovating in their social media strategies by trying out new content formats and platforms to find a successful strategy that fits their brand and their customer base.

5.3 LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH

5.3.1 LIMITATIONS AND REFLECTION

The main limitation of this research is the small sample size of the testing phase (n = 15). A larger sample size would have increased the accuracy of the findings in comparison to the entire population. Due to this limitation, it was difficult to achieve statistically significant results. When results were found, discrepancy often occurred between the qualitative and quantitative findings. The qualitative results from the conducted surveys are potentially more representative of the entire population because these insights give a more transparent look into the consumer’s opinion than statistical calculations. Because of this limitation, the validity of this research should be considered when extracting insights from the results. The reliability and reproducibility of this research is fostered through the use of previously accepted research methods. Comparable work in different industries included similar research, partly using the same methodology. The data gathering and processing methodology used in this study consists of widely accepted and confirmed practices as for instance the use of Likert-scaled surveys and statistical calculations that have been validated in previous literature like Field (2009).

5.3.2 DIRECTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

First of all, comparable work to present research could be conducted on the same industry with a larger sample size to gain insights on the topics covered based on a more representative population. Furthermore, comparable research could be done on different industries that have yet to be tested to further extend academic knowledge on social media marketing and brand loyalty. Also, research on the content that is posted by brands on social media and the effectiveness of different kinds of content would be relevant for today’s business environment. A more design-focused research on the exact type and content of the material distributed by the businesses can result in more exact guidelines to successful conversion of social media efforts into business results.

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APPENDIX

APPENDIX 1: BACKGROUND INFORMATION SUPERMARKET CHAINS

Albert Heijn Albert Heijn Sr. took over his father’s store in 1887, this marks the start of the brand Albert Heijn. It is the oldest existing Dutch supermarket chain. At the time of writing, Albert Heijn has 960 stores throughout the Netherlands, including their Albert Heijn XL and Albert Heijn To Go formulas (AH.nl, n.d.), making it the biggest supermarket chain in the country. There are also Albert Heijn stores in Germany and Belgium. As noted before, Albert Heijn has a market share of 35,3% (Distrifood, 2018). In 2017, Albert Heijn showed a 5% year-over-year sales increase to a total of 13,6 billion euro (Ahold, 2017).

Jumbo Supermarkten Jumbo Supermarkten [Jumbo Supermarkets] is the second largest supermarket chain in the country, with a market share of 18,7% (Distrifood, 2018). The chain, that started in 1979, holds 585 stores and grew by 5% between 2016 and 2017. Total sales for 2017 came out at just over 7 billion euro. Online sales grew by 100% year-over-year (Jumbo, n.d.). In March, Jumbo announced the acquisition of almost 80 EMTÉ stores (EMTÉ, 2018).

PLUS Known under this name since 2001, PLUS has 260 stores in the Netherlands (PLUS, n.d.). In 2017, PLUS realized a 5,5% growth to 2,4 billion euro in sales. Their market share was 6,4% (PLUS, 2018). PLUS has won many awards for their sustainability efforts, which is one of their main focus points as an organization.

DEEN DEEN is a family-owned smaller supermarket chain which opened its first store in 1953. Nowadays, DEEN has 82 stores in Dutch provinces Noord-Holland, Flevoland, Gelderland and Utrecht. Their business focusses on fair pricing and fresh produce. They also push hard to be the “friendly neighborhood store” with kind personnel and a strong local appearance (DEEN, n.d.). DEEN has over 7500 employees.

Lidl Lidl is a German discount supermarket chain with more than 400 stores in the Netherlands. Their total sales in 2017 are estimated around 3,9 billion euro (Distrifood, n.d.). Lidl has been known in the Netherlands as the best supplier for fresh produce like greens and fruits, although many still don’t shop at Lidl because of the brand image of the chain. The chain is often classified as ‘poor’ due to their low pricing, but is actually an incredibly stable business in the discount supermarket segment.

Picnic Picnic is the fastest growing Dutch online supermarket. It is fully online, they have no physical stores. Picnic has made efforts to make grocery delivery efficient for business and consumer. Due to their full focus on delivery instead of this service being an add-on to the regular business, they have been able to make big changes to how grocery shopping is done. They offer free delivery and let customers pick a delivery time in timeslots as close as 30 minutes. The business was founded by an entrepreneur, two software engineers and a marketing director in 2015. They have found a niche in the Dutch grocery industry by offering fast, easy delivery services in a way no other chain has been able to establish in the Netherlands before. In 2017, just two years after launch, the business grew to 100 million euro in sales and almost 90 thousand regular customers (LevensmiddelenKrant, 2018).

APPENDIX 2: SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING PER BRAND

The table underneath shows the number of followers, likes or subscriptions per platform and brand relevant for this research. The numbers are rounded up to thousands.

Twitter Facebook Instagram YouTube TOTAL

Albert Heijn 40 K 468 K 65 K 11 K 584 K

Jumbo 12 K 457 K 35 K 7 K 511 K

PLUS 8 K 136 K 6 K 2 K 152 K

DEEN 725 24 K 1 K 1 K 27 K

Lidl 4 K 732 K 44 K 3 K 783 K

Picnic 3 K 82 K 9 K 693 95 K

APPENDIX 3: QUESTIONNAIRE 1

This table shows all topic-focused questions from the first questionnaire. General questions about age and gender were asked but not listed in this appendix. To foster transparency, all questions and options were translated from Dutch to English. These translations were done manually and might differ slightly from the original questions. The table also lists the literature on which the questions are based as well as some factors that were sought to research in the question. In line with Tont (2014), the brand names were changed to ‘Brand X’ because the questions for each brand were similar.

QUESTION OPTIONS BASED ON Devices and brands Which of the following devices do Computer (desktop or you use daily? laptop) Smartphone Tablet Smartwatch None of the above Which of the following social Twitter media platforms do you use Facebook multiple times per week? Instagram YouTube Pinterest WhatsApp Snapchat Facebook Messenger Telegram None of the above At which of the following stores do Albert Heijn you buy your groceries the most Jumbo often (you may choose multiple)? PLUS Lidl DEEN None of the above Picnic Are you familiar with online Yes, I use their service supermarket Picnic? regularly Yes, I’ve used their service before Yes, but I’m yet to use their service for the first time No Brand X on social media I follow Brand X on Facebook, True Instagram and/or YouTube or Not true check their pages regularly On which social media do you Facebook follow Brand X? Instagram YouTube Twitter Other… Brand X’s content on social media 1: Strongly disagree Kim and Ko (2010) [Entertainment] is interesting to 5: Strongly agree By looking at Brand X’s content, I 1: Strongly disagree Erdoğmuş and Çiçek (2012) [Relevancy] acquire new information about to their products/services 5: Strongly agree Brand X’s content inspires me 1: Strongly disagree Cheun, Lee and Jin (2011); to Brodie et al. (2011) [Engagement] 5: Strongly agree I like, comment and share Brand 1: Strongly disagree Erdoğmuş and Çiçek (2012) [Relevancy] X’s content if it’s relevant to me or to Kim and Ko (2010) [Entertainment] if it amuses me 5: Strongly agree I would say I’m a fan of Brand X 1: Strongly disagree Brodie et al. (2011) [Commitment] to

5: Strongly agree I would recommend Brand X to 1: Strongly disagree Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013); my surroundings to Balakrishnan, Dahnil and Yi (2014); 5: Strongly agree McKee (2010) [Community] By following Brand X on social 1: Strongly disagree media I’m more convinced to buy to my groceries there. 5: Strongly agree By following Brand X on social 1: Strongly disagree Brodie et al. (2011) [Engagement] media I feel more attached to the to brand 5: Strongly agree I trust Brand X as a business and 1: Strongly disagree Kim and Ko (2010); their products/services to Cheung, Lee and Jin (2011); 5: Strongly agree Chiu, Huang and Yen (2010); Harris and Goode (2004); Kim, Chung and Lee (2011); Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013) [Trust]

APPENDIX 4: QUESTIONNAIRE 2

This table shows all topic-focused questions from the second (follow-up) questionnaire. General questions about for instance age and gender were asked but not listed in this appendix. To foster transparency, all questions and options were translated from Dutch to English. These translations were done manually and might differ slightly from the original questions. The table also lists the literature on which the questions are based as well as some factors that were sought to research in the question. In line with Tont (2014), the brand names were changed to ‘Brand X’ because the questions for each brand were similar. The social media platforms were named as ‘Platform Y’ because the questions for each brand and for each platform were the same.

QUESTION OPTIONS BASED ON Brand X I already followed Brand X on social Yes media before this research No I shop at Brand X 1: Never to 5: Always I would say I’m a fan of Brand X 1: Strongly disagree Brodie et al. (2011) [Commitment] to 5: Strongly agree Brand X’s content on Platform Y During the research period, Brand X 1: Never posted/shared content on Platform Y to 5: Often The content was interesting 1: Strongly disagree Kim and Ko (2010) [Entertainment] to 5: Strongly agree The content amused me 1: Strongly disagree Kim and Ko (2010) [Entertainment] to 5: Strongly agree The content inspired me 1: Strongly disagree Cheun, Lee and Jin (2011); to Brodie et al. (2011) [Engagement] 5: Strongly agree The content has improved my opinion of 1: Strongly disagree Brand X to 5: Strongly agree The content was relevant to me 1: Strongly disagree Erdoğmuş and Çiçek (2012) [Relevancy] to 5: Strongly agree I interacted with Brand X on Platform Y 1: Never Brodie et al. (2011) [Engagement] to 5: Often Brand X offered discounts and other 1: Never Erdoğmuş and Çiçek (2012) [Discounts] saving campaigns on Platform Y to 5: Often Brand X shared content of others 1: Never Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013); (including consumers) on Platform Y to Balakrishnan, Dahnil and Yi (2014); 5: Often McKee (2010) [Community] Brand X used Platform Y for customer 1: Never Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013); service to Balakrishnan, Dahnil and Yi (2014); 5: Often McKee (2010) [Community] By following Brand X on Platform Y, I 1: Strongly disagree Brodie et al. (2011) [Engagement] feel more involved in the business to 5: Strongly agree By following Brand X on Platform Y, I 1: Strongly disagree Erdoğmuş and Çiçek (2012) [Relevancy] gained knowledge of their product / to service offering 5: Strongly agree By following Brand X on Platform Y, I’m 1: Strongly disagree more attracted to buying my groceries to here 5: Strongly agree General thoughts on Brand X’s social media activity

During the research period, I felt like I 1: Strongly disagree Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013); was part of Brand X’s community on to Balakrishnan, Dahnil and Yi (2014); social media 5: Strongly agree McKee (2010) [Community] I shared, liked, saved or forwarded Brand 1: Never Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013); X’s content if it appealed to me to Balakrishnan, Dahnil and Yi (2014); 5: Often McKee (2010) [Community] I trust Brand X and their 1: Strongly disagree Kim and Ko (2010); products/services more since I started to Cheung, Lee and Jin (2011); following them on social media 5: Strongly agree Chiu, Huang and Yen (2010); Harris and Goode (2004); Kim, Chung and Lee (2011); Laroche, Habibi and Richard (2013) [Trust] I’m generally more convinced to (only) 1: Strongly disagree shop at Brand X to 5: Strongly agree I will keep following Brand X on social Yes media No Not sure Social media use, brand loyalty and marketing impact per participant I see myself as an active social media user 1: Strongly disagree to 5: Strongly agree I’m generally brand loyal because of the 1: Strongly disagree Gounaris and Stathakopoulos (2003) image I have of the brand or based on to [Brand image] past experiences with the brand 5: Strongly agree Kim, Chung and Lee (2011) [Customer satisfaction] Bloemer and Kasper (1995); Garbarino and Johnson (1999) Kraft et al. (1973); Newman and Werbel (1973); LaBarbera and Mazursky (1983); Garfein (1987); Kasper (1988); Burmann (1991); Bloemer and Lemmink (1992); Kotler and Armstrong (2010) [Satisfaction] I find it interesting to follow / watch 1: Strongly disagree businesses on social media to 5: Strongly agree I like, comment and/or share content by 1: Strongly disagree Erdoğmuş and Çiçek (2012) [Relevancy] businesses on social media if it is relevant to or appeals to me 5: Strongly agree I like it when businesses seek for 1: Strongly disagree Brodie et al. (2011) [Engagement] interaction with me on social media to 5: Strongly agree I mainly follow businesses on social 1: Strongly disagree Erdoğmuş and Çiçek (2012) [Discounts] media to keep up with sales, discounts to and giveaways 5: Strongly agree I am more susceptible to online 1: Strongly disagree advertising than I am to advertising on to TV, in the paper or on the street 5: Strongly agree

APPENDIX 5: BRAND LOYALTY FACTORS AND RELATED QUESTIONS

Commitment / Satisfaction I would say I’m a fan of Brand X I’m generally brand loyal because of the image I have of the brand or based on past experiences with the brand

Entertainment The content was interesting The content amused me The content inspired me

Engagement I interacted with Brand X on Platform Y By following Brand X on Platform Y, I feel more involved in the business I like it when businesses seek for interaction with me on social media

Relevancy The content was relevant to me By following Brand X on Platform Y, I gained knowledge of their product / service offering I like, comment and/or share content by businesses on social media if it relevant or appeals to me I shared, liked, saved or forwarded Brand X’s content if it appealed to me

Community Brand X shared content of others (including consumers) on Platform Y Brand X used Platform Y for customer service During the research period, I felt like I was part of Brand X’s community on social media

Discounts Brand X offered discounts and other saving campaigns on Platform Y I mainly follow businesses on social media to keep up with sales, discounts and giveaways

Trust I trust Brand X and their products/services more since I started following them on social media

APPENDIX 6: COMBINED QUESTIONS TO FACTOR

Community During the research period, I felt like I was part of the Albert Heijn community on social media During the research period, I felt like I was part of the Jumbo community on social media During the research period, I felt like I was part of the PLUS community on social media During the research period, I felt like I was part of the DEEN community on social media During the research period, I felt like I was part of the Lidl community on social media During the research period, I felt like I was part of the Picnic community on social media

Trust I trust Albert Heijn and their products/services more since I started following them on social media I trust Jumbo and their products/services more since I started following them on social media I trust PLUS and their products/services more since I started following them on social media I trust DEEN and their products/services more since I started following them on social media I trust Lidl and their products/services more since I started following them on social media I trust Picnic and their products/services more since I started following them on social media

Commitment I’m generally more convinced to (only) shop at Albert Heijn I’m generally more convinced to (only) shop at Jumbo I’m generally more convinced to (only) shop at PLUS I’m generally more convinced to (only) shop at DEEN I’m generally more convinced to (only) shop at Lidl I’m generally more convinced to (only) shop at Picnic

Engagement By following Albert Heijn on Twitter, I feel more involved in the business By following Albert Heijn on Facebook, I feel more involved in the business By following Albert Heijn on Instagram, I feel more involved in the business By following Albert Heijn on YouTube, I feel more involved in the business By following Jumbo on Twitter, I feel more involved in the business By following Jumbo on Facebook, I feel more involved in the business By following Jumbo on Instagram, I feel more involved in the business By following Jumbo on YouTube, I feel more involved in the business By following PLUS on Twitter, I feel more involved in the business By following PLUS on Facebook, I feel more involved in the business By following PLUS on Instagram, I feel more involved in the business By following PLUS on YouTube, I feel more involved in the business By following DEEN on Twitter, I feel more involved in the business By following DEEN on Facebook, I feel more involved in the business By following DEEN on Instagram, I feel more involved in the business By following DEEN on YouTube, I feel more involved in the business By following Lidl on Twitter, I feel more involved in the business By following Lidl on Facebook, I feel more involved in the business By following Lidl on Instagram, I feel more involved in the business By following Lidl on YouTube, I feel more involved in the business By following Picnic on Twitter, I feel more involved in the business By following Picnic on Facebook, I feel more involved in the business By following Picnic on Instagram, I feel more involved in the business By following Picnic on YouTube, I feel more involved in the business

I interacted with Albert Heijn on Twitter I interacted with Albert Heijn on Facebook I interacted with Albert Heijn on Instagram I interacted with Albert Heijn on YouTube I interacted with Jumbo on Twitter I interacted with Jumbo on Facebook I interacted with Jumbo on Instagram I interacted with Jumbo on YouTube

I interacted with PLUS on Twitter I interacted with PLUS on Facebook I interacted with PLUS on Instagram I interacted with PLUS on YouTube I interacted with DEEN on Twitter I interacted with DEEN on Facebook I interacted with DEEN on Instagram I interacted with DEEN on YouTube I interacted with Lidl on Twitter I interacted with Lidl on Facebook I interacted with Lidl on Instagram I interacted with Lidl on YouTube I interacted with Picnic on Twitter I interacted with Picnic on Facebook I interacted with Picnic on Instagram I interacted with Picnic on YouTube