Consumer engagement with brands' COVID-19 messaging on social media: the role of perceived brand-social issue fit and brand opportunism
Abstract
While the trade press has started to report on consumer responses to brand messaging about the ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, empirical results have yet to emerge. In this study, we investigated how consumers in the United States responded to Instagram ads containing COVID-19 claims based on the perceived brand--social issue fit, which is determined by whether the brand's product was considered essential or nonessential. Results showed perceived brand--social issue fit to be of dual nature, where stronger perceptions of fit (i.e., essential products advertised with COVID-19 claims) resulted in more positive ad evaluations, brand attitudes, and consumer engagement intentions. Lower perceptions of fit (i.e., nonessential products with COVID-19 claims) led to perceptions of brand opportunism, which we conceptualized as a negative evaluative outcome that negatively impacted ad/brand attitude and consumer engagement intentions. The findings provide insights for brands interested in placing ads addressing the changing environmental conditions resulting from COVID-19 and advances the literature on pandemic messaging.
Study specs
Analyzed consumer responses to Instagram ads using perceived brand-social issue fit as a determinant of ad evaluations, brand attitudes, and engagement intentions.
- Institution
- Arizona State University,Loyola University
- Discipline
- Marketing,Social Science
- Study Type
- Experimental Study
- Year
- 2025
- Human Data Platform
- Prolific
- Source
- View Source DOI Google Scholar
Measured Outcomes
Consumer responses, ad evaluations, brand attitudes, engagement intentions, and perceived brand opportunism based on fit between product type and COVID-19 messaging.
Peer Review & Critical Discussion
Potential Selection Bias in 2023 Cohort
The participant pool shows a concerning overrepresentation of users from high-income demographics. Looking at Table 3, we can see that 78% of respondents had annual incomes above $75k, which significantly limits the generalizability of these findings to broader populations.
Non-naive Participants Issue
I've noticed a methodological concern regarding participant naivety. Given that Prolific users often complete multiple studies, there's a real risk that participants had prior exposure to similar experimental paradigms, which could confound the results.
RLHF Applicability to This Study Design
The implications for RLHF training pipelines are understated. If we accept the authors' conclusions about preference stability, this has direct consequences for how we should structure reward model training. The temporal decay effect described in Section 4.2 is particularly relevant.
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