Are you engaged? The influence of brand schematicity on online brand engagement and brand purchase

Purpose Consumers’ engagement with brands online is increasingly important for marketers for both promotion of their brand’s message and sales. The purpose of this paper is to examine if consumers’ brand schematicity, a generalized consumer disposition to process information using brand schema, influenced their proclivity to engage with brands online through consuming and co-creating brand-related content, and the influence of online brand engagement on actual purchase of brands. Design/methodology/approach Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. Findings Study 1 shows that brand schematicity increases online brand consumption and online brand co-creation and Study 2 shows that this online brand engagement is not always beneficial to brands in terms of sales. Specifically, because of resource depletion, consumers who co-create brand content online may purchase brands less while those that consume online brand content purchase more brands. Originality/value There is a lack of previous research addressing individual differences in consumers’ online brand engagement that this paper investigates. Further, a generalized, dispositional variable such as brand schematicity has not been hitherto investigated in the context of consumers’ online behavior. Finally, this paper shows counter-intuitive effects of online brand engagement on brand purchase.