The Influence of Global Brand Distribution on Brand Popularity on Social Media

The literature on consumer choice between global and local brands is focused on sales-based measures of brand globalness (BG). When managers need to establish an effective social media campaign to raise awareness of their brands’ activities on social media, the literature focus may not provide clear guidance on how such measures can be applied to social media. This research contributes to global brand research by combining the literature streams on consumer social media engagement and global branding marketing strategies. First, to provide a managerial tool for this task, the authors propose two novel measures, BG and country brand popularity (CBP), based on consumers’ brand activities on social media. Using these measures, the authors hypothesize that CBP is influenced by cultural, social, and economic factors, which is motivated by motivation–opportunity–ability theory. Using Facebook data covering the top 100 brands that operate across 50 countries in each of 51 industries, they show that CBP is influenced by BG and cultural, social, and economic characteristics.