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Is Instagram an effective brand conversation platform A study among young

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Article  in  International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management · January 2021

DOI: 10.1504/IJICBM.2021.112604

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Int. J. Indian Culture and Business Management, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2021 53

Is Instagram is an effective brand conversation

platform? A study among the young Instagram
users in India

Anand Narsimha*
IFIM Business School,
Bangalore, India
Email: Anand.n@ifimbschool.com
*Corresponding author

V. Moovendhan and M. Manoharan

Vellore Institute of Technology,
Vellore, India
Email: Fi12moovendhanv@iimidr.ac.in
Email: manoharan.m@vit.ac.in

Abstract: Instagram generally perceived to be a brand engagement than brand

awareness medium. The research aimed at investigating the most influencing
variable among various brand equity concepts such as brand awareness, brand
association, brand loyalty and perceived quality of Instagram users in India.
Though numerous researches explored Facebook and Twitter users on this
context, there is little research on Instagram despite being the emerging visual
communication medium. The result of this survey-based research indicates that
young users perceive the brand circulated on Instagram as quality, followed
by brand loyalty and brand association. The brand awareness had a subtle
relationship with overall brand equity, and this result asserts that Instagram is
perceived as better of brand engagement tool than brand awareness medium
while building brand equity for a product.

Keywords: Instagram; brand equity; brand conversation; India.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Narsimha, A.,

Moovendhan, V. and Manoharan, M. (2021) ‘Is Instagram is an effective brand
conversation platform? A study among the young Instagram users in India’,
Int. J. Indian Culture and Business Management, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp.53–65.

Biographical notes: Anand Narsimha is a corporate turned academician with

over 30 years of leadership experience spanning brand marketing, advertising,
consulting and academics. He is an Adjunct Faculty at IFIM Business School,
Bangalore. He has received his Master’s in Behavioural Sciences from
BITS-Pilani and has done an Executive Post Graduate Program in Strategic
Brand Management from IIM-Calcutta. His areas of teaching include brand
management, marketing communications, global marketing, marketing
strategy, shopper marketing and creativity and innovation. He has rich
cross-category experience having navigated brands for leading Indian and
Global corporations such as, P&G, Nestle, and Dabur.

Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

54 A. Narsimha et al.

V. Moovendhan is a corporate turned academician with over 22 years of

Industry, academic experience. He is a Fellow of Indian Institute of
Management, Indore and currently, he teaches at Vellore Institute of
Technology, Vellore.

M. Manoharan is a former bureaucrat turned academicians with over 25 years

of industry, academic experience. He has received his Bachelor’s in
Engineering and MBA from Pondicherry University.

1 Introduction

Instagram offers marketers to reach the target audience with ease and quickness. The
visual communication service can be a potential tool for the marketers to reach out to the
consumers as long as the product is fit into the Instagram’s nature and aesthetic of the
service (Peters et al., 2013). In the past marketing communication and brand building
exercise was gaining more attention among the marketing brand managers in recent time.
The social media marketing offers its unique advantage such as targeted communication,
quick and cost-effective research while comparing to tradition media advertising and
promotion. Instagram also provides co-creation, interaction with brand managers and
brand community in a dynamic environment. The targeted visual content can create brand
awareness, and loyal customers can be a brand advocate.
Recent advertising expenses forecast study has forecasted that the budget for social
media advertising is expected to touch $50.2 billion by 2020. The social media platform
Facebook and Twitter to share 20% of the market of the advertising spent. This online
video advertisement expected to touch $35.4 billion by 2019 is an emerging opportunity
for visual brand communication tool such as Instagram. Despite being its emerging
social media status, there is a dearth of research that has been done on Instagram. Despite
being considered as better engagement tool than other social media platforms such as
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, Instagram garnered very less revenue shows brands
managers are still relatively shying away from Instagram over other social media option.
This research aims at exploring Instagram as a suitable brand conversation tool in
social media. The brand equity concept has four main sub-concepts such as perceived
quality, brand loyalty, brand awareness and association. It is imperative to ascertain the
impact of Instagram on which aspect of brand equity is more effective. The result
indicates that the users of Instagram perceive the quality of the brand as the most
effective, followed by brand loyalty and brand association. This is an exciting
contribution where the brand managers can focus on brand engagement with respect to
loyalty and association rather than brand awareness through this medium. The subsequent
sections are devoted to the literature review and empirical research analysis.

2 Review of literature and hypothesis

The research on brand communication among social media was gained attention from
scholars in recent times. The nature of brand communication in social media is different
from traditional media. In social media arena, brand communication is interactive
 Is Instagram is an effective brand conversation platform? 55

communication between customers and brands, where it helps reach right customers
easily, provides instant feedback from customers unlike traditional media (Solis, 2010;
Peters et al., 2013) and cost-effective (Godes and Mayzlin, 2004). Consumers trust more
on information generated from social media than traditional marketing communication
channels employed by companies (Karakaya and Barnes, 2010). The social media has its
limitations such as control over brand message (Dekay, 2012) user’s personality, interests
and motivation should be aligned with brand messages in order to motivate them to share
besides influence of the users within their network (Peters et al., 2013; Kohli et al., 2015;
Dellarocas et al., 2007). The firm generated communication has more control than
user-generated brand communication and later is considered as more reliable among the
users (Vanden Bergh et al., 2011; Mangold and Faulds, 2009).
Smith et al. (2012) assumes that marketing and branding communication on social
media channels increasingly will gain more attention among the brand managers.
Scholars also claim social media can offer an effective and interactive relationship with
customers such as ease of establishing the relationship, speed (Bartlett, 2010; Hackworth
and Kunz, 2011; Selina and Milz, 2009; Gallaugher and Ransbotham, 2010). Some of the
brand communication research on social media focused on the areas such as the need for
identification of the right social media and right target customer (Kaplan and Haenlein,
2010). The need for a clear goal, message, and consistency across all social platforms
is necessary for effective branding through social media platform (Solis, 2011). For
effective brand communication, Walter and Gioglio (2014) emphasised on relevant
content to engage users for further sharing within the user’s network. Users who follow
the brand (De Vries et al., 2012) with genuine interest more often receptive than those
who triggered by promotional offers (Xie and Lee, 2015). A model of social media
effects on brand image and brand awareness developed by Cheung et al. (2019), explores
the influence of social media marketing communication on various brand products.
There is a dearth of research on Instagram as compared to other peer social
networking media such as Facebook and Twitter. We highlight here some of the studies
conducted in the context of Instagram exclusively. Few studies have focused on
Instagram in the lenses of behavioural aspects. Some investigation was conducted on the
types of images uploads (Hu et al., 2014; Bakhshi et al., 2014) wherein they gained
insights such as pictures with a face, selfies, and pictures accompanying friends have
received more likes. De Veirman et al. (2017) found that Instagram influencers with a
high number of followers are likeable; however, influencers with a high number of
followers may not found to be a right choice while promoting divergent products. Evans
et al. (2017) studied disclosure are message featuring ‘paid ad’ positively influencing ad
recognition and influences brand sharing intentions. Phua et al. (2017) investigated
the consumers who follow brands through social networks including Instagram and
influence on brand community-based impacts. The study reveals that Instagram users as
affectionate, fashion-conscious and social.
The Instagram usage also increases the person’s happiness and decreases the
loneliness of the users (Pittman and Reich, 2016). The narcissism also linked with the
extent of user involvement in Instagram postings. Some stream of research examined the
Instagram in the lenses of user gratification (UG) theory and found that the Instagram
users were more affectionate, sociable and follow fashion (Phua et al., 2017), further they
found that Instagram users have high influence on brand community engagement and
56 A. Narsimha et al.

identification than other social networks sites, understanding consumer interaction

(Casaló et al., 2017).

2.1 Brand equity

Brand equity is defined as “set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand name and
symbol, which add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service”
(Aaker, 1991). Branding is an integral part of the marketing activities in an organisation
and unquestionably endows value to the product (Farquhar, 1989). The study on the need
and benefit for branding is the main subject of research in marketing discipline in the
academic arena. Brand equity is measured upon in the lenses on the firm-based valuation
of the brand (Simon and Sullivan, 1993) and consumer perspective (Christodoulides and
De Chernatony, 2010). In this research, we adapt Aaker’s framework of brand equity
which is later empirically validated by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2015) consists
of brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty and perceived quality were
four metrics measuring brand equity as a multifaceted latent construct (Baldauf et al.,
2009; Gil et al., 2007; Pappu et al., 2006; Yasin et al., 2007; Yoo and Donthu, 2001;
Zeugner-Roth et al., 2008; Schivinski and Dabrowski, 2015). In the context of associating
brand equity with social media has gained attention recently. Brand equity was linked
with Facebook (Schivinski and Dabrowski, 2015; Bruhn et al., 2013; Kabadayi and Price,
2014; Ellison et al., 2007; Pempek et al., 2009; Ross et al., 2009; Gummerus et al., 2012;
Shao and Ross, 2015; Kim and Ko, 2012; Wallace et al., 2012; Stokburger-Sauer, 2010;
Phua and Ahn, 2016). Impact of gratification on-brand content strategies (Gao and Feng,
2016; Phua and Ahn, 2016), positive impact of social media marketing on cognitive,
affective and behavioural attitude (Duffett and Duffett, 2017), consumer engagement and
brand (Colliander and Dahlén, 2011; Phua and Ahn, 2014; Tsai and Men, 2013). Brand
equity also studied by linking with Twitter (Watkins and Lee, 2016; Phua and Ahn,
2016). From the literature on brand equity on the social media content and Instagram in
specific, there is a dearth of study which aims at gaining the insight on the more effective
elements of brand equity concept.

2.2 Brand association/awareness

Brand awareness is defined as the “strength of brand’s presence in the minds of the
consumer” (Aaker, 1996). Brand awareness is the signal of substance, familiarity,
visibility and enables recall or recognises the brand in its category of competing products
(Aaker, 1991; Pappu et al., 2005). Brand awareness is the components of brand recall and
brand recognition (Keller, 1993). Social media is used by millions of people so that it can
be leveraged for creating brand awareness with the ability to reach the right audience
(Fanion, 2011). The brand association is whatever the consumer cognise with that brand
such as certain image, character; signs and symbols can be attached to it (Aaker
and Joachimsthaler, 2000). The brand association differentiates and communicates
information to the buyers as long as it is positive in nature in relation to competing
products. Creating awareness and brand communication improves brand equity (Yoo
et al., 2000). Low and Lamb (2000) demonstrate that a familiar brand has more brand
association than non-familiar brands and hence proposed a multidimensional brand
association for familiar brands. Langaro et al. (2018) studied the role of social networks
in brand building, the study asserts the positive role of social network on creating brand
 Is Instagram is an effective brand conversation platform? 57

awareness. In a survey of private label brand, brand awareness and perceived quality are
key risk relievers and improving the perceived value of the private label, while building
brand equity (Girard et al., 2017). Cheung et al. (2019) has developed a conceptual model
on the impact of social media on brand awareness and association. Pina et al. (2019)
investigated the effect of appreciative learning on social media found to be engaging
brands. Soler and Gémar (2017) studied the impact of brand awareness on brand value
employing online customer rating data. The interaction of social media networks found to
have spillover effect of leveraging luxury fashion brands on Instagram (Romão et al.,
2019).
From the literature review and discussion, we understood that brand association and
awareness is positively generated brand equity. So, we hypothesise:
H1 Brand awareness is positively associated with brand equity among Instagram users.
H2 Brand association is positively associated with brand equity among Instagram users.

2.3 Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty is defined is the consumer attachment towards the particular brand, where
they would prefer over the other competing brands [Aaker, (1991), p.39]. Brand loyalty
defined as “a deeply held commitment to rebuy or re-patronise a preferred product or
service consistently in the future, despite situational influences and marketing efforts
having the potential to cause switching behaviour” [Oliver, (1997), p.392]. There are
two approaches has been discussed about the brand loyalty in the literature, the first
approach based on the behaviour emphasises the purchase choices and attitudinal
perspective accentuated on the intention to be loyal to a particular brand (Pappu et al.,
2005). This research borrowed the idea of attitudinal perspective and consumer
perceptions from Pappu et al. (2005). Advertising can be positively associated with brand
loyalty (Yoo et al., 2000) also mediated by store image, perceived quality and consumer’s
satisfaction (Ha et al., 2011). Further, advertising influences repurchase behaviour and
reduce the switching cost (Shum, 2004).
In the context of social media, Facebook, Bruhn et al. (2013) and Schivinski and
Dabrowski (2015) have studied the positive impact of brand communication on brand
loyalty among peers in the brand community. Similarly, also found evidence of the
positive impact of brand communication on brand loyalty. So, we hypothesis as follows:
H3 Brand loyalty is positively associated with brand equity in Instagram.

2.4 Perceived quality

According to Aaker (1991, p.85), perceived quality also one of the critical dimensions of
the brand equity and defined as “the consumer’s perception of the overall quality or
superiority of a product or service with respect to its intended purpose, relative to
alternatives.” Perceived quality is consumer’s subjective evaluation which, endows value
to the product. There is a positive association of perceived quality with advertisement
spend and higher the advertisement means better the quality (Kirmani and Wright, 1989;
Villarejo-Ramos and Sanchez-Franco, 2005; Yoo et al., 2000).
In the social media context, there is a dearth of studies on perceived quality; however,
there are few studies linked with user-generated content. The peer to peer and users to
58 A. Narsimha et al.

company interaction also communicates about the product quality and customer service
(Li and Bernoff, 2011; Riegner. 2007). Product reviews affect consumer perception of
product quality and subsequently affects products sales (Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006):
H4 Perceived quality is positively associated with brand equity among Instagram users.

Figure 1 Research model

Brand
awareness

Brand
association Brand
equity

Brand
loyalty

Perceived
quality

3 Research methodology

To study the impact of brand communication on Instagram, we designed a 12 items

questionnaires aimed at young users of Instagram in the age group of 21–30 in the city of
Bangalore. The data has been collected for a period of four months using a standardised
online survey mode. In order to make sure that the respondents are users of Instagram,
separate questions were asked whether they have an Instagram account and those
respondents having accounts only allowed responding to the survey. In total, we have
collected 120 fully answered responses. We adapted the brand equity measures from
Pappu et al. (2005). There were 12 items has been included in the questionnaire
measuring a single item from brand awareness, five items were measuring brand
association, three items measuring perceived quality and four items measuring brand
loyalty. All the items were measured using 1 to 5 point liker scale ranging from strongly
agree (5) to strongly disagree (1). The questionnaire was designed in a reflective format.

3.1 Reliability and validity

In order to ensure that the data is suitable for analysis, we conducted reliability and
validity check as per the procedures specified in the past literature. To establish an
individual item wise reliability, we conducted factor analysis. The result of the item-wise
reliability test indicated that all the items were loaded heavily with > 0.70 much above
 Is Instagram is an effective brand conversation platform? 59

the specified limit suggested that the reliability of the individual scale (Nunnally and
Bernstein, 1994). The result of factor analysis is depicted in Table 1.
Table 1 Item reliability

Items Loading STDEV T statistics P values

Q10 ← brand association 0.912 0.014 65.474 0.000
Q11 ← perceived quality 0.866 0.034 25.645 0.000
Q12 ← perceived quality 0.920 0.015 59.559 0.000
Q13 ← perceived quality 0.891 0.017 52.212 0.000
Q14 ← perceived quality 0.870 0.025 34.577 0.000
Q15 ← perceived quality 0.806 0.036 22.308 0.000
Q16 ← brand loyalty 0.839 0.035 24.142 0.000
Q17 ← brand loyalty 0.895 0.021 42.153 0.000
Q18 ← brand loyalty 0.928 0.015 63.571 0.000
Q19 ← brand loyalty 0.890 0.025 35.010 0.000
Q6 ← brand awareness 1.000 0.000
Q7 ← brand association 0.825 0.037 22.030 0.000
Q8 ← brand association 0.884 0.024 37.351 0.000
Q9 ← brand association 0.912 0.019 46.908 0.000

To ensure the convergent and discriminate validity, we conducted a composite reliability

and average variance extracted (AVE). The composite reliability value of the all the
constructs were above 0.93 which is much above the threshold level of 0.70 specified.
The AVE for all the constructs were much above the minimum cut of 0.50 as specified
which is ranging from 0.75 to 0.78 and all the AVE values are lesser than CR values.
Further, we conducted a discriminate validity test to ensure the constructs are
independent in nature. The squared correlation between the constructs and any other
constructs is lesser than the AVE indicating that the discriminate validity of the
constructs in the proposed model and meets the Fornell and Larcker (1981) criteria. Thus,
the results show that the data is suitable for a further proceeding to hypothesis testing.
Table 2 Composite reliability and discriminate validity test

Brand Brand Brand Perceived

CR AVE
association awareness loyalty quality
Brand association 0.935 0.782 0.884
Brand awareness 1.000 1.000 0.763 1.000
Brand loyalty 0.937 0.789 0.724 0.653 0.888
Perceived quality 0.940 0.759 0.826 0.665 0.805 0.871
60 A. Narsimha et al.

4 Result analysis and interpretation

We conducted a hypothesis testing using Smart PLS V (v.3.2.6) by bootstrapping with

2,000 times resample to estimate the standard error and path coefficients. The result of
the parameters estimates with significance for the study is depicted in Table 3.
Brand awareness is positively related to brand equity with (β = 0.091, p > 0.000), thus
Hypothesis H1 is supported. Brand association is positively associated with brand equity
with (β = 0.29, p > 0.000) therefore, Hypothesis H2 is supported. Brand loyalty is
positively related with brand equity (β = 0.34, p > 0.000), thus Hypothesis H3 is
supported. Perceived quality is positively related to brand equity (β = 0.36, p > 0.000),
thus Hypothesis H4 is supported. From the results of the study, we confirm that all
hypothesis tests positively related to brand equity. The highest relationship is with
perceived quality and brand; subsequently, brand loyalty dominates the relationship with
brand equity with the least effective relationship is brand awareness. The model also
yielded good fitness measures with SRMR of 0.058.
Table 3 Path coefficient estimates

Path Standard T P
Hypothesis Mean
coefficients (β) deviation statistics values
Brand association → brand equity (H2) 0.297 0.298 0.010 31.209 0.000
Brand awareness → brand equity (H1) 0.091 0.091 0.006 16.514 0.000
Brand loyalty → brand equity (H3) 0.345 0.345 0.013 26.743 0.000
Perceived quality → brand equity (H4) 0.361 0.360 0.009 38.612 0.000

5 Conclusions and implications

The result of the empirical testing indicates that brands circulated on Instagram have
brand loyalty and association more than brand awareness in the minds of users is an
interesting observation. This observation demonstrates that Instagram as a medium for
brand engagement than brand awareness at this time research. Further, among all brand
equity constructs, users of Instagram perceive those brands circulated in the medium has
better quality is worth noting. This indicates that users of Instagram perceive brands
advertised in the medium are premium as they are already aware of the brands through
other media but perceive those brands circulated in Instagram has a quality which is
critical among other brand equity concepts such as loyalty, association and awareness.
The least effective variable is brand awareness among Instagram users. This result
asserts that presently Instagram perceived as a useful tool for generating brand
engagement such as brand loyalty and association rather than awareness. This is evident
that Facebook may be a better platform for creating brand awareness due to its mammoth
size of the registered users. However, Instagram though comparatively lesser users can
help in position as a premium brand. This research overall provides invaluable input on
how to spend adequately on Instagram by suggesting as brand engagement medium than
brand awareness medium.
Corporate communication departments and advertising agencies shall look at
Instagram as a medium for engaging promotion on brand recall. Since the brands appear
in Instagram perceived to be high quality, corporates who want to emphasis their product
 Is Instagram is an effective brand conversation platform? 61

as quality can be achieved through Instagram. Though Instagram may not be a great
platform for launching the product, it can be leveraged as an effective brand conversation
tool by initiating various promotional activities such as loyalty program through the
brand community at Instagram.

6 Limitation and future research

Though research has numerous merits, it has some limitation as follows: the research is
conducted only on Instagram in evaluating brand equity, a comparative study with other
social media such as Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter is warranted. The research can be
extended in the lenses of attribution concepts in terms of purchase intention or
conversation. Further, a socio-graphic comparison can also worth investigating in the
future as this present study just focused on the young population in Bangalore, India.

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