User-Generated Content Strategies for Building Brand-Consumer Relationships

Abstract

This paper investigates the nature and meaning of user-generated content and brand-consumer relationships to derive strategies for building and strengthening the latter. Strong and long-term brand-consumer relationships have proven to deliver economic advantages and beneficial outcome for the company and are determined by different factors such as brand engagement, functionality and trust, identification, and personality. In recent years the technological advancement has changed the online environment by providing consumers with the possibilities to distribute their own content and interact with other consumers on a variety of platforms. From a brand´s perspective, the emergence of user-generated content that is brand-related has caused a shift in the traditional brand-consumer relationship approach and accordingly in brand communication. In order for the brand to successfully establish a loyal and long-term relationship nowadays one needs to understand the motivations of consumers for creating and considering brand-related user-generated content, as well as examining the changes within the traditional relationship construct and its relevant factors. The company should recognize that user-generated content can be seen as an efficient and effective brand communication tool and implement corresponding strategies to enhance brand-consumer relationships. This paper therefore provides a conceptual framework, which proposes different user-generated content strategies based on predetermined objectives, and gives advice on performance and control procedures to evaluate the success of the strategies. These strategies are composed for practical appliance and represent a basis for further research.