Customer engagement on Instagram brand pages in the make-up cosmetics industry

Customer engagement measures in social media marketing are believed to be one of the most important measures for social media today. Little is known about which factors contribute customer engagement on Instagram brand posts within the make-up cosmetics industry. The goal of the study was to investigate customer engagement on Instagram brand pages in the make-up cosmetics industry. Content analyses of 750 brand posts in the make-up cosmetics industry were conducted where customer engagement on posts was measured through the number of likes and the number of comments. The results indicated that content that included image/video of products was positively related to customer engagement compared to other content. Highly vivid posts were positively related to the numbers of comments and negatively related to the numbers of likes. Question-based texts under images/videos were positively related to numbers of comments from customer. Share of positive comments by users under brand post were negatively related to the number of comments under posts. Content that was created by users received more likes than content created by the organization. This had not been tested before and therefore the research contributes to the social media and Instagram literature in the make-up cosmetics industry. The study demonstrates how Instagram usage can be measured effectively for the make-up cosmetics industry and shows that marketers in the make-up cosmetics industry can perhaps utilize this knowledge when designing marketing strategies for their brands. Keywords: Social media, Instagram, make-up cosmetics, customer engagement, regra