electronic word of mouth on instagram: customers’ engagements with brands in different sectors

Marketers desire to reach more customers through means of social media, and thus create official accounts on these websites. instagram, which has become a popular social media website in recent years, allows users to post pictures or short videos through appealing filters; this feature provides opportunity for marketers to promote themselves by creating content. however, not all content generated by marketers achieve a similar response from users: whilst some content achieves a high response from customers and widely spreads through electronic word of mouth (ewom), others do not. there may be many factors affecting customers’ engagements; however, in this study, we focus on sectoral differences. the question is posed: are sectoral differences one of the reasons behind the different customer engagement ratios of brand posts on instagram? in order to answer this question, a comparison was conducted across 100 instagram posts, posted by brands from 8 different sectors. the results show significant differences between sectors; customers’ engagement with brands in the beverages sector through liking is almost 2.5 times higher than brands in the apparel-luxury sector. moreover, customers’ engagement with brands in the electronics sector through commenting is almost 8 times higher than brands in the apparel sector.