Corporate blogs: Interpersonal communication between consumers and brands

Soyoen Cho

Abstract

Blogs are one of the recent online communication forms the marketers have begun to explore as a communication tool. Recently, CEOs and marketers have tried to use blogs as direct conversation tools with consumers (Smudde, 2005). Blogs, which are highly interactive and networked, offer a unique channel for developing relationship among people or organizations (Keller & Miller, 2006). This paper will look at whether interpersonal communication frameworks can be applied to the relationship building between brands and consumers through corporate blogs.

Corporate blogs can be considered as a form of personification of brands. CEOs, marketers, communication managers, or employees post stories about the brand or the industry using informal languages in a personal diary format to imbue the brands with human-like traits. Personification of a brand is one of the most frequently used marketing communication strategies like the spokespersons of advertisement and anthropomorphization of a brand (Aaker, 1997).

Prior research has suggested that people think of brand as a human like property sometimes form relationships with brands in much the same way in which they form relationships with each other in a social context (Aaker 1997; Fournier 1998; Aggarwal 2004). Brand consumer relationship research shows that a brand and a consumer are conceptualized as being in a relationship similar to a relationship between two people. Therefore, corporate blog authors are likely to us various interpersonal communication strategies such as impression management strategies and relational maintenance strategies to manage brand images and build intimate consumer brand relationship.

This paper will examine what kind of impression management strategies and relational maintenance strategies corporate blog authors use. Specifically, five impression management strategies, such as ingratiation, competence, intimidation, exemplification and supplication ( Jones, 1990) and five relational maintenance strategies such as positivity, openness, assurances, social networks, and sharing tasks (Stafford & Canary, 1991) used in corporate blogs will be identified. Also, this paper will explore how corporate blogs can be classified and what kind of interactivity features they have.

This study will use content analysis to review corporate blogs. I found total 24 corporate blogs, after searching for the blogs of I Top 100 brands (selected by Interbrand) and Top 100 American companies (selected by Fortune) using Google. The content and the format of this sample of corporate blogs will be analyzed by two coders.

Aaker, J. (1997). Dimensions of brand personality. Journal of marketing research. 34(August). 347-357.

Aggarwal, P. (2004). The effects of brand relationship norms on consumer attitudes and behavior. Journal of consumer research, 31(June), 87-101.

Jones, E. (1990). Interpersonal Perceptions. New York: Freeman.

Kelleher, T. and Miller, B. (2006). Organizational blogs and the human voice: Relational strategies and relational outcomes. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), article 1. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue2/kelleher.html.

Smudde, P.M.(2005). Blogging, ethics and public relations: A proactive and dialogic approach. Public Relations Quarterly, pp.34-38.

Stafford, L., & Canary, D. J. (1991). Maintenance strategies and romantic relationship type, gender, and relational characteristics. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 8, 217–242.

Full Paper [pdf]

About the Author

Soyen Cho is Ph.D student in school of Jouranlism and Mass Communication at University of Minnesota. Her research interest is interactive advertising and self-representation on the virtual environment.  Before she came to U.S., she worked as a reporter for a business newspaper company in South Korea.