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The differential impact of user- and Impact of UGC

& FGC on
firm-generated content on online online brand
advocacy
brand advocacy:
customer engagement and brand
familiarity matter Received 13 May 2022
Revised 31 July 2022
16 October 2022
Ahmad Aljarah Accepted 4 November 2022
Department of Marketing, Girne American University, Kyrenia, North Cyprus and
Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Business and Economics,
University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
Dima Sawaftah
Department of Digital Marketing,
Faculty of Modern Sciences, Arab American University, Ramallah, Palestine
Blend Ibrahim
Department of Business, Faculty of Business, Istanbul Ticaret University,
Istanbul, Turkey, and
Eva Lahuerta-Otero
Department of Business Administration,
University of Salamanca and Multidisciplinary Business Institute (IME),
Salamanca, Spain

Abstract
Purpose – The aim of this study is first, to investigate the relative effect of user-generated content (UGC) and
firm-generated content (FGC) on online brand advocacy, and second, to examine the mediation effect of
customer engagement and the moderation effect of brand familiarity in the relationship between UGC and FGC
and online brand advocacy. The differential impact of UGC and FGC on consumer behavior has yet to receive
sufficient academic attention among hospitality scholars.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on social learning theory, cognitive consistency theory and
schema theory, this study established an integrated research framework to explain the relationship between
the constructs of the study. This study adopts a scenario-based experimental design in two separate studies
within contexts to examine the proposed hypotheses.
Findings – The results revealed that UGC is a stronger predictor of online brand advocacy than FGC.
A mediation analysis supported that the effect of digital content marketing types on online brand advocacy
occurs because of customer engagement. Further, when the brand was familiar, participants showed a higher
level of online brand advocacy than when they were exposed to FGC (vs. unfamiliar brand), whereas the effect
of familiar and unfamiliar brands on online brand advocacy remains slightly close to each other when the
participants were exposed to UGC. Brand familiarity positively enhanced participants’ engagement when they
were exposed to UGC. Further, customer engagement is only a significant mediator when the brand is
unfamiliar.
Practical implications – This paper presents significant managerial implications for hospitality companies
about how they can effectively enhance brand advocacy in the online medium.

European Journal of Innovation

Management
The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Editors and Reviewers for their most helpful and © Emerald Publishing Limited
1460-1060
constructive comments. DOI 10.1108/EJIM-05-2022-0259
EJIM Originality/value – This research provides a novel contribution by examining the differential impact of UGC
and FGC on online brand advocacy as well as uncovering the underlying mechanism of how and under what
conditions user- and firm-generated content promotes online brand advocacy in the hospitality context.
Keywords User-generated content, Firm-generated content, Customer engagement, Online brand advocacy,
Brand familiarity
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
In today’s world, where customers face hundreds of possibilities when making a purchasing
decision, brand advocates are the best possible marketer. There is nothing more powerful than a
trusted recommendation when facing a purchase decision. Nine out of ten consumers trust
brand advocates compared to two of ten trusting online ads (Fugetta, 2012; Mathison, 2017).
While companies try to communicate the benefits of their products and services through digital
content, social media advocacy is the best way to spread electronic word of mouth. In this
context, digital content marketing is one of the most prominent marketing tools that
substantially affect consumer responses (Mathew and Soliman, 2021). The consumption of
online content has been inflated to an average of seven hours daily in the recent year compared
to an average of three hours in the previous years (Koetsier, 2020). By surveying 1,500 marketers
in different countries, a recent study by Petrova (2021) revealed that 84% of the participants
assured that their firms had a content marketing strategy in 2020 compared to 77% in 2019.
Such growing importance of content marketing attracts the intention of scholars to investigate
two types of content intensively, namely, user-generated content (UGC) and firm-generated
content (FGC) (e.g. Colicev et al., 2019). Briefly, FGC refers to content that has been professionally
designed and managed by firms, while UGC refers to the content that has been created by users
in different forms (e.g. likes, comments and reviews).
Digital content marketing, including FGC and UGC, is still growing among customers and
firms but is still frightening and undeveloped for academic research (Hollebeek and Macky,
2019; J€arvinen and Taiminen, 2016). In the hospitality context, several studies have made calls
for further studies on UGC and FGC (e.g. Heng Wei et al., 2022). Despite the importance of UGC
and FGC in the hospitality industry, the majority of related studies conducted in this context
focused only on UGC or FGC. For instance, a study by Lu and Stepchenkova (2014)
systematically reviewed UGC literature in the hospitality context and argued UGC from
different perspectives (e.g. service quality, destination image, reputation, eWOM, experiences
and behavior). While the study by Ray and Bala (2021) utilized a multi-method approach and
found that UGC can be used to explore the factors affecting usage intention in the case of online
food delivery and online travel agency services. In contrast, several studies (e.g. Hernandez-
Ortega et al., 2020; Valeri, 2022a) investigated the extent to which the destination image
attributes include in the FGC increase the popularity of the destination. Similarly, the study of
Kim et al. (2021) aimed to expand our understanding of FGC in the hotel segment and argued
three latent topics related to FGC – including information giving, interactive communication and
service recovery. Consequently, while these studies have provided preliminary insights into the
impact of UGC and FGC on consumer behavior, research examining the differential impact of
UGC and FGC on customers’ behavior has yet to receive sufficient academic attention among
hospitality scholars. Even though a few studies attempt to cover this gap by examining the
differential impact of UGC and FGC on brand equity (Huerta-Alvarez  et al., 2020; Stojanovic et al.,
2022), brand loyalty (Heng Wei et al., 2022) and customer engagement (Ibrahim et al., 2022),
the differential impact of user- and firm-generated content on customer voluntary behavior,
such as online brand advocacy, is overlooked. Briefly, online brand advocacy is defined as
customer–customer behavior that aims to promote, support or defend a brand through an online
environment (Wilk et al., 2018). Further, although a few studies have attempted to investigate the
consequences of user- and firm-generated content on consumer behavior in the hospitality
context on different social networking sites such as Instagram (e.g. Ballester et al., 2021) and Impact of UGC
Facebook (Heng Wei et al., 2022), studies on the differential impact of UGC and FGC on consumer & FGC on
behavior on Twitter are scarce. Each social media platform has unique propositions and
characteristics (Dedeo glu et al., 2019; Heng Wei et al., 2022) and recent studies argued that the
online brand
same content created by either a user or a firm, on different social networks sites is perceived advocacy
differently by users (Casalo et al., 2021; Ibrahim and Aljarah, 2021; Roma and Aloini, 2019; Smith
et al., 2012). To address these gaps, this study investigates the differential impact of UGC and
FGC created through Twitter on online brand advocacy in coffee shop brands.
In the surroundings of Web 2.0, digital content marketing is being used by firms that keep
trying to gain or provoke customer engagement (Brodie et al., 2011; Kumar and Pansari, 2015;
Taiminen, 2019). Customer engagement is a stimulus situation that pushes customers to boost
their participation with interactive actions concerning the brand and practices, predominately,
but not completely, in online mediums (Brodie et al., 2011; Harmeling et al., 2017). When
customers recognize the content persuasiveness that matches their needs, it will lead to an
efficient customer engagement and more probably stand behind it in the future (J€arvinen and
Taiminen, 2016; Sashi, 2012), which, in turn, will lead to a positive influence on customer
responses (e.g. online brand advocacy) (Holliman and Rowley, 2014; J€arvinen and Taiminen,
2016). Besides examining the differential impact of UGC and FGC on online brand advocacy, this
study goes a step forward and argues that the differential impact of UGC and FGC on online
brand advocacy is mediated by customer engagement.
Taking into consideration that brand familiarity should be considered when assessing
consumer attitudes toward a brand (Taiminen and Karjaluoto, 2017), this study aims to
close a gap in the marketing literature in general, and hospitality literature in particular, by
providing a better understanding of the differential effect of UGC and FGC – generated
through Twitter – on online brand advocacy. Moreover, it examines the underlying
mechanism of how and under what conditions UGC and FGC most effectively enhance
customer responses by verifying the mediation effect of customer engagement and the
moderation effect of brand familiarity in the relationship among the constructs of the study.
The research objectives addressing the purpose of this study are based on the assumption
that the relative effect of UGC and FGC on online brand advocacy should be considered
along with customer engagement based on the contingent role of brand familiarity. The
research questions of this study are as follows: 1) Do UGC and FGC differ in their effect on
online brand advocacy? 2) Does customer engagement mediate the relationship between
UGC/FGC and online brand advocacy 3) Does brand familiarity moderate the relationships
between UGC/FGC, customer engagement and online brand advocacy? The result of this
study will contribute to the literature in several ways. This study is a response to the latest
calls for further empirical investigation of UGC and FGC by using an experimental design
method to measure the consequences of UGC and FGC on consumer behavior (e.g. Dedeo glu
et al., 2019; Ray and Bala, 2021). Further, this study investigates the relative effect of UGC
and FGC on online brand advocacy, a relation that has been not yet investigated. By doing
so, this investigation fills the gap in the literature and provides further insights into the
antecedents of online brand advocacy from the perspective of the UGC and FGC. Moreover,
this study examines the mechanism underlying the relationship between the FGC and UGC
and online brand advocacy by invoking customer engagement as a mediator. By doing so,
this study contributes to the literature by uncovering the relationship between the FGC and
UGC online brand advocacy from the perspective of customer engagement which, in turn,
enhances our understanding of the true contribution of UGC and FGC on online brand
advocacy. Lastly, this study contributes to the literature by investigating the underlying
condition under which UGC and FGC most effectively enhance online brand advocacy by
invoking brand familiarity as a moderator variable among the constructs of the study.
EJIM This study adopts the narrative literature review method to discuss the constructs of the
study and develop the proposed hypotheses. The remainder of this study is as follows. First,
the theoretical framework of the study is presented. This is followed by discussing the
relevant theoretical background of the study’s constructs and developing the hypotheses.
Next, a description of the methodology and data collection procedures as well as the study
findings are presented. The study concluded with theoretical and managerial implications as
well as some limitations and directions for future studies.

2. Research framework
Although the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework has been originally developed
within the context of environmental psychologists (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974), scholars in the
hospitality context have widely adopted the SOR framework to investigate the nexus between
certain characteristics of an environment and customer responses (e.g. Aljarah, 2020; Ibrahim,
2021a; Albattat et al., 2022; Deb et al., 2022; Zheng et al., 2022). The SOR framework serves as the
underpinning theory, which assumes that certain characteristics of an environment (Stimulus)
affect the inner states of customers (Organism), which, in turn, drive their engagement in certain
behaviors (Responses) (Ibrahim et al., 2021; Mehrabian and Russell, 1974). This study borrows
this SOR framework to examine whether digital content marketing types (stimulus) can elicit
engagement (organism) – taking into consideration the cognition and affection nature of
customer engagement (Islam and Rahman, 2017), resulting in engagement in online brand
advocacy (response). Moreover, within the SOR framework, the social learning theory (SLT)
(Bandura, 1978), the cognitive consistency theory (Heider, 1946) and the schema theory
(Rumelhart, 1980) will be utilized to discuss the nexuses among the constructs of the study. The
conceptual model that integrates the hypothesized relationships and the moderating effect of
brand familiarity is presented in Figure 1.

3. Theoretical background
3.1 Digital content marketing
The primary contribution of social media is to have users play the roles of co-creators, reviewers
and authors (Scorrano et al., 2019). Nowadays, the use of appropriate marketing tools through
social media is considered a critical approach for the success of any business in the industry
(Labanauskait_e et al., 2020; Obermayer et al., 2022; Sun and Liu, 2021; Valeri and Baggio, 2020,
2021). In this vein, digital content marketing has been defined as the act of creating and
disseminating brand-related content to a firm’s current or potential customers through its digital
platforms to enhance customers’ attitudes toward the brand (Breidbach et al., 2014; Hollebeek
and Macky, 2019). It has been considered a source of gratefulness for customers by attaching
value to their lives (J€arvinen and Taiminen, 2016). Digital marketing is known for its

Brand Familiarity
Customer Engagement
(familiar vs. unfamiliar)

Figure 1. Digital Content Marketing

Research Online Brand Advocacy
conceptual model (User-generated vs. Firm-
generated content)
transformative impact on businesses and its outsized impact on the brand–consumer Impact of UGC
relationship (Ibrahim, 2021b; Makrides et al., 2019). Driven from the firm and customer & FGC on
perspectives, two main types of digital content marketing have been mainly argued in the
literature including UGC and FGC (Kumar et al., 2015). FGC has been defined as the content that
online brand
has been created and delivered through a firm’s digital platforms (Yang et al., 2019), and advocacy
controlled by the firm’s management (Bruhn et al., 2015). An example of FGC includes brand-
created videos about new product launches posted on Facebook (e.g. Colicev et al., 2019). Its
positive effect on consumer responses has been widely confirmed (Hernandez-Ortega et al., 2020;
Yang et al., 2019). In contrast, UGC – also known as the “wisdom of the crowd” (Colicev et al.,
2019, p. 2) – refers to the content that the general public has generated about a firm, and it
comprises any form of online content that is produced, originated, distributed and utilized by
users (Daugherty et al., 2008). An example of UGC includes user posts on the brand’s wall on
Facebook (Colicev et al., 2019). It is a creative way that allows users to communicate, involve,
articulate themselves and participate in generating content (Ulkuniemi and Saraniemi, 2015). It
has been considered a source of obtaining a trusted brand status (Pharr, 2019), increasing
purchase intention (Mayrhofer et al., 2020) and reducing perceived risk (Albattat et al., 2020;
Chemli et al., 2020; Li et al., 2020; Toanoglou et al., 2022; Valeri, 2022b).

3.2 Online brand advocacy

Online brand advocacy is the customer–customer behavior that aims to promote, support or
defense a brand through the online environment (Wilk et al., 2018). It has been considered as an
umbrella that contains different constructs such as electronic word of mouth, social media brand
advocacy and online brand recommendation; each of these constructs could not be replaced by
the online brand advocacy concept; in which customers are expected to engage in defending the
brand through talking positively about a brand, adoring a brand, sharing information about a
brand and using a virtual positive expression such as smileys (Wilk et al., 2019). Online brand
advocacy seeds from social exchange theory (SET) (Blau, 1964) in which SET assists the
connection between consumer attitudinal appraisals and voluntary behavior. SET is based on
the premise that the nexus between customers and firms are realized as social exchanges in
which customers swap useful earnings from the feeling of personal commitment or gratefulness
via presenting beneficial and positive comments to the firm (Lii and Lee, 2012). Through SET,
positive sensations, behaviors and thoughts are probably to be exchanged by the customers in
the form of actions when gaining specific interests from the brand nexus (Brodie et al., 2011).
Several antecedents of online brand advocacy have been discussed in the literature. For instance.

3.3 Customer engagement

Customer engagement has been defined as “a psychological state that occurs under interactive,
co-creative experiences with a focal agent/object (e.g. a brand)” (Brodie et al., 2011, p. 260). It has
been increasingly investigated in the literature in recent years (Kim et al., 2020) and has been
found as one of the key antecedents of individuals’ brand assessments (So et al., 2016), customer
trust, loyalty and co-creation in the hospitality context (Bilro et al., 2019; Nohutlu et al., 2022;
Rather et al., 2019), and as a result of customer experience with a brand (Malthouse et al., 2016).
The primary goal of firms in boosting customer engagement is to build a strong long-term
relationship with customers (Gill et al., 2017). Customer engagement has been counted as a
process containing a set of behaviors and attitudes related to customers that bring favorable
outcomes to the brand (Brodie et al., 2011; Gummerus et al., 2014). Thus, it has been considered an
efficient and comprehensive term that explains the creation of a robust, assured and loyal
customer nexus (Naumann and Bowden, 2015). Customer engagement is a multidimensional
notion that appeared in different shapes of emotional, cognitive and behavioral reactions
regarding the brand or the business (Breidbach et al., 2014; Brodie et al., 2011; Trabucchi et al.,
2020). Within the online brand community’s environment, customer engagement consists of the
EJIM cognitive and emotional dimensions which, in turn, motivate behavioral engagement during
reactive involvements (Breidbach et al., 2014).

3.4 Brand familiarity

One of the most distinguishing characteristics among brands is brand familiarity (Delgado-
Ballester et al., 2012) which, in turn, has been defined as the amount of time that customer spends
processing information about a brand (Baker et al., 1986). Familiar brands have master
connection merits across unfamiliar brands due to the strong relations between the customers
with the brand (Lange and Dahlen, 2003; Tam, 2008). The dissimilarity between familiar and
unfamiliar brands is labeled by the understanding of organizations that are stocked in the
customers’ memory (Wong and Guan, 2018). In familiar brands, customers do not need as much
effort in dealing with information of the brand; it is more effortlessly to recover and keep, where
these brands are generally more preferable and improve the attitudes toward the brand that will
generate more customer engagement (Campbell and Keller, 2003; Dawar and Lei, 2009).
Knowing the variances regarding the knowledge of the brand, customers are expected to show
differences in their way and aim of handling the content when being faced with specific ads via
familiar brands and unfamiliar brands (Wong and Guan, 2018).

3.5 Hypotheses development

It has been argued that brand content through digital platforms can affect customers and
turn them into brand advocators (Hur et al., 2011) and boost their engagement (Ashley and
Tuten, 2015). The effect of each type of digital content marketing on consumer response has
been widely documented in the literature (Colicev et al., 2019). However, in this study, we
argue that UGC is a stronger predictor of online brand advocacy than FGC. The theoretical
argument behind this is rooted in SLT. SLT is based on the premise that individuals may
learn new behaviors by noticing others’ behaviors either in an explicit or implicit style which
leads to specific outcomes (Burmann and Zeplin, 2005; McCall, 1986). The newly learned
behavior is contingent on the credibility of the source of behaviors that have been observed
(Bandura, 1978). UGC is a form of digital content marketing that is attributed to credibility,
trustworthiness and unbiased information because it is based on the users’ feedback and not
related to any commercial benefits, the latter, may reduce the trust and credibility of the
source of the content (Lahuerta Otero et al., 2014; Mir and Rehman, 2013; Verhellen et al., 2013;
Wei and Lu, 2013). This argument is supported by the literature (Bickart and Schindler, 2001;
Gretzel, 2008; Ruiz-Equihua et al., 2019), that customers are more willing to obtain detailed
information and learn from the behavior of other customers than from a firm’s behavior.
Further, as a form of digital content marketing, UGC appears to be more successful in
boosting brand familiarity with brands connotation due to its connected insight of credibility
and trustworthiness, thus, it may reduce customer doubtfulness about the company’s general
intent (Bahtar and Muda, 2016; Hassan et al., 2015). As a result, the content that has been
created for non-advertising purposes (e.g. UGC) has a greater impact on customer responses
than the content that has been created for advertising purposes (e.g. FGC) (Hollebeek and
Macky, 2019). All things considered and taking into consideration that customers are more
frequently exposed to UGC than to FGC (Colicev et al., 2019), it is logical to hypothesize that
the two types of digital content marketing differ in their relative influence on customer
responses such as online brand advocacy. As such, we propose the following hypothesis:
H1. UGC and FGC differ in their relative influence on online brand advocacy such that
UGC is a stronger predictor of online brand advocacy than FGC.
When customers are engaged with a brand, they may also advocate the brand in the online
environment as suggested by cognitive consistency theory. The cognitive consistency theory is
based on the premise that when customers meet psychological discomfort, they strive to seek Impact of UGC
psychological harmony among their beliefs and behaviors (Heider, 1946) and avoid cognitive & FGC on
dissonances (Festinger, 1957). If a customer acknowledges a favorable attribute of an
organization (e.g. customer engagement), he or she is more likely to generate other actions that
online brand
are consistent with his or her beliefs, attitudes and behaviors (e.g. online brand advocacy) advocacy
(Aljarah and Alrawashdeh, 2020; Fu et al., 2014). Empirical findings seem to support this. For
instance, the study by Samala and Singh (2019) found that customers who are engaged with a
brand are more likely to advocate it. When customers are exposed to digital content marketing,
they may be engaged with the brand (J€arvinen and Taiminen, 2016; Sashi, 2012) which, in turn,
may generate a belief-consistence feeling such as engaging in online brand advocacy. Thus, it is
logical to hypothesize that customer engagement mediates the relationship between digital
content marketing and online brand advocacy. Hence, we propose the following hypothesis:
H2. The relationship between digital content marketing types and online brand
advocacy is mediated by customer engagement.
The schema theory has been used among scholars to understand the effects of brand familiarity
on consumer responses. The schema theory is based on the premise that individuals utilize
classes and schemes to assort and structure information that is accommodated in the customers’
memories (Rumelhart, 1980). A schema is a hypothetical memory in the mind of the customers
that facilitate them to organize newly obtained information (Hu et al., 2012). When the stimulus is
familiar, then dealing with it will be cognitive effortless, while the unfamiliar one will need
additional cognitive efforts in a way to absorb it and adjust it through the past scheme (Martı-
parre~no et al., 2017). The familiarity of the brand will aid in generating unprecedented
information links and merge it within the previously standing structures of the memory with
minimal effort (Lang, 2000) which, in turn, may generate a faster response to the stimuli that
customers have been exposed (e.g. digital content marketing) in the form of online brand
advocacy. These arguments find support from the literature. For instance, the study by Acharya
(2020) found that brand familiarity plays a significant role in encouraging customers to engage
with a brand and involve more in brand advocacy (e.g. word of mouth). All things considered
and under the schema theory, this study expects that the effect of digital content marketing
types as a stimulus on consumer responses will be contingent on the level of brand familiarity.
Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed:
H3. The effect of digital content marketing types on online brand advocacy will be
moderated by brand familiarity.
Moreover, as brand familiarity might act in the moderating role between digital content
marketing and online brand advocacy, the direct impact of digital content marketing on
online brand advocacy via customer engagement might also be moderated by brand
familiarity. When the customer is exposed to an unfamiliar brand, the mediating impact of
customer engagement between digital content marketing and online brand advocacy may
display a stronger direct relationship between digital content marketing and online brand
advocacy, whereas when the customer is exposed to a familiar brand, such a relationship may
be diminished. Thus, the following hypothesis is suggested:
H4. The mediating role of customer engagement in the digital content marketing–online
brand advocacy relationship is moderated by brand familiarity.

4. Methods
This study adopts a scenario-based experimental design in two separate studies within
contexts to examine the proposed hypotheses. Experiment studies are becoming an
increasingly popular methodology in tourism and hospitality research (e.g. Aljarah et al.,
EJIM 2022; Galati et al., 2021). The scenario-based experiment design is an effective design that has
many advantages such as minimizing memory retrieval, rationalization tendencies and
inconsistency factors (Grewal et al., 2004). The scenarios were created in a style to guarantee
reality as in past studies that have been conducted in the hospitality context (e.g.
Stadlthanner et al., 2022). If the position is included in the participants who are required to
deal with it seriously, then the experimental scenario will be genuine (Aronson et al., 1985) as
cited in Lii and Lee (2012). Study 1 has been conducted to examine H1 and H2, while study 2 is
conducted to examine H3 and H4. Before conducting each study, a pretest has been conducted
for the manipulation check.

4.1 Stimuli development

Customers of coffee shops were chosen as a sample for this study. Coffee shops are nowadays
one of the fastest-growing service industries (Hoang and Suleri, 2021). From 2021 to 2026, the
market share of specialty coffee shops is expected to increase by USD 68.59 billion, and the
market growth momentum is expected to accelerate at a compound annual growth rate of
13.02% (technavio, 2022). In 2020, the number of coffeehouse stores in the United States
reached a total of 37,189 (Statista, 2021). The essential characteristic of coffee brands is the
standardization and homogeneity of the products offered by the company, which makes it
difficult for branded coffee to leverage its internal capabilities, such as service quality or
coffee quality, to differentiate and gain a competitive advantage over peers (Aljarah, 2021).
To manipulate the UGC and FGC, four posts representing FGC and four comments
representing UGC were developed for a fictitious coffee shop (Infinity Coffee) on a fictitious
Twitter account (See Figure 2). The firm-generated stimuli covered the main message that
the coffee shop is going to help one student to gain his/her bachelor’s degree by offering him/

Figure 2.
Digital content
marketing stimuli
her tuition fees, whereas the user-generated stimuli supported a positive response (comments) Impact of UGC
to the FGC, each comment was a response to a specific post. A written scenario description & FGC on
was created before the generated content to let the participants know the story behind the
sequential posts and comments as follows: “Through the days off in 2020, Infinity Coffee used
online brand
off-white cups for hot drinks which are ordered by its customers within North Cyprus. The advocacy
firm invited its customers to create different sketches on their off-white cups, the final
sketches of their cups will be posted on one of Infinity Coffee’s social media official accounts
and implicate #OffwhiteCup in the caption; to help one student to gain a bachelor’s degree
tuition-free through the Infinity Coffee Achievement Plan”.
The stimuli development process included a theoretical and empirical examination of
the content of each digital content marketing type. Theoretically, the initially created
content has been introduced to five students in the marketing department (one of them is
working as a content marketer) and four faculty members in the marketing department to
provide feedback. The content of each stimulus has been slightly modified based on the
feedback of the students and faculty members. Empirically, a quantitative manipulation
check was conducted. Thirty-seven undergraduate university students (Mage 5 25.18,
52.6% Male) have been chosen and split into two sets randomly (FGC vs. UGC) using a
convenience sampling method. Each group has received one type of digital content
marketing (either FGC or UGC) and is asked to rate their agreement and disagreement with
a statement after exposure to one of the digital content marketing types. The following
statement has been used: “To what extent do you agree that the content that you have seen
represents FGC/UGC?”. Five-point Likert scales were employed to measure how strongly
the subjects agreed or disagreed with the statements (1 5 strongly disagree; 5 5 strongly
agree). The findings revealed that participants rated each of the exposed digital content
marketing types high (M UGC 5 4.43 vs. M FGC 5 4.36; both are greater than the median
value of 4.00). Thus, the stimuli were efficient and adequate to be employed as a stimulus for
digital content marketing types.

4.2 Study I: The main experiment

Study 1 has been conducted to examine H1 and H2. Research by Djafarova and Bowes (2021)
argued that generation Z, as a group, is one of the most influenced by digital content.
Therefore, generation Z was deemed appropriate participants for this study. A total of 141
participants from generation Z (Mage 5 22.39, 61.7% Male) participated in Study 1.
SurveyMonkey has been used and the participants have randomly been exposed to either
UGC or FGC stimuli after reading the aims and the description of the campaign. A second
manipulation check has been carried out in the main experiment to ensure the effectiveness of
the stimulus by adding the following questions after the exposure “to the digital content
marketing type: Looking back to the material you read, to what extent do you agree that the
content represents FGC/UGC?” (1 5 strongly disagree, 5 5 strongly agree). The outcome
authorized us to judge if the subjects recognized each digital content marketing type. After
that, the subjects were called to evaluate their engagement and online brand advocacy.
Customer engagement has been measured by using 10 items adopted from Hollebeek et al.
(2014) while online brand advocacy has been measured by adopting 18 items adopted from
the study of Wilk et al. (2019) (See Appendix). Finally, participants were asked to complete
several demographic details.
The estimation outcomes displayed that the entire subjects affirm that the digital content
marketing types outlined in the stimuli correspond either to firm or UGC (M UGC 5 4.46 vs.
M FGC 5 4.58; both are greater than the median value of 4.00). Consequently, the manipulation
of digital content marketing types was effective. All the measurement scales employed to
EJIM evaluate the introduced constructs had a high level of reliability (Customer engagement
α 5 0.88; online brand advocacy α 5 0.93).
An independent-samples T-test was utilized to examine H1. The findings, see Table 1,
revealed a significant variation among the two sets in online brand advocacy (t (139) 5 2.68,
p 5 0.008 < 0.05). As predicted, the subjects in the UGC group had higher level of online brand
advocacy (M UGC 5 3.70, S.D. 5 0.75) than in FGC group (M FGC 5 3.33, S.D. 5 0.87). Thus, H1
is supported. The 95% bias-corrected bootstrapped confidence interval (N 5 5,000) using
PROCESS (version 3.5), developed by Hayes (2017), has been used to examine the mediation
effect of customer engagement in the relationship between digital content marketing types
and online brand advocacy. Following the method of Su et al. (2020), the independent variable
was coded as 1 for UGC and 2 for FGC. As shown in Figure 3, the findings signify that the
indirect effect of digital content marketing on online brand advocacy through customer
engagement was significant (β 5 0.10, 95% CI [0.01, 0.20]). Meanwhile, the direct effect of
digital content marketing on online brand advocacy reported a significant relationship
(β 5 0.27, 95% CI [0.06, 0.54]). Thus, the relationship between digital content marketing and
online brand advocacy is mediated by customer engagement. Hence, H2 is supported. The
findings of the mediation effect are represented in Table 2.

4.3 Study II: The moderation effect

Study 2 has been conducted to examine H3 and H4. To manipulate brand familiarity, a pretest
was conducted using 30 participants from generation Z (Mage 5 23.29, 55.2% Male) to rate
the brand familiarity of 10 coffee shop brands in North Cyprus on a five-point Likert scale
(1 5 strongly disagree; 5 5 strongly agree) as in the study of Martı-parre~
no et al. (2017). A
three-item scale has been adopted from Kent and Allen (1994) to measure the familiarity of
each coffee shop. The findings revealed that Gloria Jeans Coffee is the most familiar brand
(Mbrand familiarity 5 4.22, SD 5 1.01), while Mambocino Caffe was the less familiar brand

Constructs Mean SD DF t-value

Table 1.
The main effect of User-generated content 3.70 0.75 139 2.68*
UGC/FGC on online Firm-generated content 3.33 0.87
brand advocacy Note(s): *p < 0.05; DF 5 Degree of freedom

Digital content marketing β = 0.27 95% [0.06 – 0.54] Online brand

(user-versus firm-
advocacy
generated content)

β = 0.10 95% [0.01 – 0.20]

Figure 3.
The mediation effects Customer engagement

β CI low CI high

Table 2. Direct effect: UGC/FGC → OBA 0.27 0.06 0.54

The mediation effect of Indirect effect: UGC/FGC → CE → OBA 0.10 0.01 0.20
customer engagement Note(s): OBA 5 online brand advocacy; CE 5 customer engagement
(Mbrand familiarity 5 1.90, SD 5 1.11) being that difference significant (t 5 8.18; Impact of UGC
df 5 54; p < 0.01). & FGC on
A two-by-two between-subjects experimental design has been conducted [(FGC vs.
UGC) 3 (familiar brand vs. unfamiliar brand)] with 197 subjects (Mage 5 24.3, 72.1% Male)
online brand
who have engaged randomly with one of the four cases. First, the subjects were informed advocacy
about the aim of the study so they possess an introductory perception of the study. Then, the
subjects have been requested to read the scenario description before exposing them to the
experiment cases of the used digital content marketing types in Study 1. Next, on a five-point
Likert scale ranging from (1 5 strongly disagree) to (5 5 strongly agree), brand familiarity
has been evaluated. To recheck if the subjects truly grasp the stimuli, a digital content
marketing type manipulation check has been attended similarly to Study 1. Finally, the
participants were asked to fulfill customer engagement and online brand advocacy scales,
besides their demographic details. The procedure was similar to the one followed in Study 1.
To examine if the manipulation was effective, on a five-point Likert scale (1 5 strongly
disagree; 5 5 strongly agree), participants were asked to rate the familiarity of the brand that
they have been exposed to (Gloria Jeans Coffee/Mambocino Caffe). Findings stated that the
subjects that were exposed to any of the digital content marketing types including Gloria
Jeans Coffee brand rated the brand familiarity high (M brand familiarity 5 3.79, SD 5 0.94). By
contrast, the subjects that were exposed to any digital content marketing type including
Mambocino Caffe rated brand familiarity low (M brand familiarity 5 2.34, SD 5 1.23). The result
of the t-test revealed a statistical difference among the responses. Further, to ensure the
manipulation of digital content marketing in the second study, the following question has
been added to the survey: To what extent do you agree that the content that you have seen
represents UGC/FGC? The findings revealed that the subject could accurately assign the
digital content marketing types (M FGC 5 4.43; M UGC 5 4.40; both of them were significantly
greater than the median value of 4). Thus, the manipulation of digital content marketing type
and brand familiarity variables was effective. The value of Cronbach’s α regarding customer
engagement and online brand advocacy were 0.93 and 0.97, respectively, higher than the
critical value, 0.70, which displays that the research data has a high level of reliability.
A two-way ANOVA test has been used to examine the moderation effects of brand
familiarity on digital content marketing types and online brand advocacy. The findings
revealed a significant moderation effect of brand familiarity on the digital content marketing
types and online brand advocacy relationship (F (1) 5 4.04, p < 0.05). Hence, H3 is strongly
supported. The results of the interaction effect are plotted in Figure 3. As shown in the figure,
brand familiarity strengthens the positive relationship between each digital content

5
Online Brand Advocacy

4
3.38 3.36

3 2.63 3.23

2
Familiar Brands
Figure 4.
Unfamiliar Brands The interaction effects
1 of brand familiarity
FGC UGC
EJIM marketing type and online brand advocacy with a slightly stronger effect for FGC–online
brand advocacy. Interestingly, the effect of the familiar and unfamiliar brands was slightly
close to each other in the case of the UGC and online brand advocacy relationship but was
stronger in the case of a familiar brand. Thus, H3 is supported.
The results of the moderated mediation effects are reported in Table 3. The findings
revealed that when customers were unfamiliar with the brand, customer engagement
strongly mediated the relationship between digital content marketing and online brand
advocacy (β 5 0.49, 95% bias-corrected CI [0.17, 0.80]. Interestingly, customer engagement
was not a significant mediator in the digital content marketing types and online brand
advocacy relationship when customers were familiar with the brand (β 5 0.05, 95% bias-
corrected CI [
0.18, 0.29]. To verify the significance of the difference, the moderated
mediation index conducted using PROCESS was reported. As shown in Table 3, the
moderated mediation index reported a significant difference (β 5 0.44, 95% bias-corrected CI
[0.04, 0.82]. Thus, H4 is partially supported.

5. Discussion
5.1 Summary of the findings
Despite the increasing number of studies investigating digital content marketing, the existing
literature on the consequences of digital content marketing on consumer behavior is still
frightening and undeveloped for academic research, as aforementioned. Further, research
examining the differential impact of UGC and FGC on customers’ behavior has yet to receive
sufficient academic attention among hospitality scholars, which in turn has stimulated past
studies to make calls for further investigation into the relative effect of digital content
marketing types on consumer behavior. Drawing on the social learning theory, cognitive
consistency theory and schema theory, this study is the first that explores the relative effect
of UGC and FGC – created through Twitter – on online brand advocacy among coffee shop
z-generation customers taking into consideration the mediating role of customer engagement
and the moderating role of brand familiarity in this relationship. Consistent with our
theoretical argument, the findings of this study revealed that UGC is a stronger predictor of
online brand advocacy and customer engagement compared to FGC. Further, the relative
effect of UGC and FGC on online brand advocacy is mediated by customer engagement and
moderated by brand familiarity. The findings also revealed that the mediation effect of
customer engagement on the relative effect of UGC and FGC on online brand advocacy is
moderated by brand familiarity.

5.2 Theoretical contribution

The findings of this study contribute to the literature in several ways. First, although several
studies have investigated the consequences of UGC and FGC in the consumer literature,
rather less attention has been devoted to applying this concept to explain online brand
advocacy. Thus, this study contributed to the literature by moving a step forward and

Digital content marketing types → Customer engagement →

Online brand advocacy
Effect Boot SE Boot LLCI Boot ULCI

A simple path of familiar brand 0.0566 0.121
0.180 0.293

Table 3. A simple path of an unfamiliar brand 0.4996 0.160 0.171 0.802
Conditional indirect Differences 0.443 0.196 0.041 0.823
effects Note(s): LLCI: Lower Level Confidence Interval; ULCI: Upper Level Confidence Interval
examining the relative effect of UGC and FGC on online brand advocacy among coffee shop Impact of UGC
customers in the hospitality context by drawing on the theoretical lens of SLT. In the line of & FGC on
past studies (e.g. Colicev et al., 2019; Goh et al., 2013), the finding of this study confirmed the
differential impact of UGC and FGC suggesting that consumers not only respond to the
online brand
content published in the online medium but also factor the sources of the content into advocacy
consideration. This result is consistent with the pattern in earlier studies on UGC and FGC
(e.g. Goh et al., 2013; Hollebeek and Macky, 2019). Yet, this study contributed to the past
studies by implementing the differential impact of UGC and FGC on online brand advocacy in
the hospitality context, an effect that has been neglected by past studies. More precisely, this
study confirmed that customers of coffee shops tend to advocate a brand more when they are
stimulated by UGC (vs. FGC).
Second, since this study is the first that explores the differential effect of UGC and FGC on
online brand advocacy, a logical investigation that should have been done is why UGC and
FGC affect online brand advocacy. This study has contributed to the literature by unpacking
the mechanism underlying the impact of UGC and FGC on online brand advocacy by
investigating the mediating role of customer engagement. In the line with past studies
(e.g. J€arvinen and Taiminen, 2016; Samala and Singh, 2019; Sashi, 2012) that customer
engagement is an important antecedent for advocating a brand, the findings of this study
empirically confirmed that customer engagement plays a critical role in assimilating UGC
and FGC and converting them into online brand advocacy in the hospitality context. A
successful UGC or FGC and high levels of customer engagement with the content enable
brands to utilize their heterogeneity to further improve customer attitude, thus generating
more brand advocacy. Unlike previous studies, this study empirically examined the indirect
relationship between digital content marketing (UGC/FGC) and online brand advocacy in the
hospitality context.
Third, our framework goes beyond examining the direct and indirect relationship between
the two types of digital content marketing and online brand advocacy and allows for a
comparison of two different brands that vary in level of familiarity. By assessing the
intersection of familiar and unfamiliar brands with the UGC and FGC with our typology, this
study deepens our understanding of the UGC and FGC consequences on consumer behavior.
While there is several studies on brand familiarity (e.g. Zhu et al., 2021), UGC (e.g. Ray and
Bala, 2021) and FGC (e.g. Hernandez-Ortega et al., 2020), no single study has examined the
contingent effect of brand familiarity on the consequences of firm-generated and customer-
generated contents. This study went a step forward by empathizing that brand familiarity
should be taken into consideration when examining the effect of UGC and FGC on online
brand advocacy since this impact varies according to the familiarity of the brand. This is an
important contribution to the branding and hospitality literature as past studies on the
impact of UGC and FGC on consumer behavior (e.g. Heng Wei et al., 2022; Huerta-Alvarez 
et al., 2020; Ibrahim et al., 2022; Stojanovic et al., 2022) have neglected the critical role of brand
familiarity in this relation. Specifically, this study illuminates that UGCs and FGCs are
stronger predictors of online brand advocacy when the brand is familiar (vs. unfamiliar). This
is in line with our theoretical argument, past studies (e.g. Rhee and Jung, 2019) and the schema
theory that familiar brands require less cognitive effort and, thus, generate unprecedented
information links and merge it within the previous standing structures of the member with
minimal effort, which generates a faster response to what customers have been exposed in the
form of online brand advocacy.
Fourth, this study has further extended the branding and hospitality literature by
giving a convincing reason for better understanding the indirect relationship between the
two types of digital content marketing and online brand advocacy via customer
engagement, as illustrated that the conditional indirect effect of UGC and FGC on online
brand advocacy through customer engagement relies significantly on the interaction with
EJIM brand familiarity. More precisely, we found that customer engagement explains the
relationship between digital content marketing and online brand advocacy only when the
brand is unfamiliar. One explanation for why customer engagement did not reach a
statistically significant mediator when the brand is familiar could be that familiar brands
are easier to recall than unfamiliar brands (Brennan and Babin, 2004). Thus, the necessity
for a high level of engagement is needless for customers, who are stimulated by a UGC or
FGC, to advocate a familiar brand.

5.3 Managerial contributions

This study has several managerial contributions. Based on the findings of this study,
marketers and decision-makers should recognize the importance of content created in an
online medium, particularly UGC, in building an effective marketing strategy. Given that
UGC has a stronger power to stimulate a customer to advocate brands compared to FGC,
marketers and decision-makers should motivate their customers to generate brand-related
content by themselves, as such content is considered more trustworthy and has a high level
of credibility. For instance, coffee shops can offer customers a discount or freebie for
posting a photo of their experience on social media channels (i.e. Facebook and Instagram),
or writing a review on company rating websites (i.e. TripAdvisor and Google Reviews).
Creating a branded hashtag for the company and asking customers to tag it in their posts
could be also a successful marketing strategy to generate more content about a brand.
Meanwhile, such ideas could create more engagement with the brand, which in turn, will
play a critical role in converting the created content by customers to brand advocacy, as per
the finding of this study. Moreover, this study found that a high level of engagement is
important only when the brand is unfamiliar. This is important for small businesses or
newly launched brands who seeking to increase customer advocacy toward their brands an
extra effort is needed to create engagement toward the brand for their strategy of
encouraging customers to generate content to have a high level of brand advocacy works
effectively. In contrast, for established brands, marketers and decision-makers should
know that a high level of engagement is not mandatory to assimilate the content generated
by users and convert them to brand advocacy. Further, this paper has layered social
implications, as it empirically investigates how strategically we may combine UGC/FGC,
customer engagement and brand familiarity to benefit modern business scenarios dealing
with increasingly demanding customers.

6. Limitations and future research lines

This study like any other study has several limitations. This study has included only one factor
that is contingent on the effect of digital content marketing types on online brand advocacy.
Future studies may include other factors that may be contingent on digital content marketing
and online brand advocacy relationships such as gender and customer culture. Further, this
study has used the second-order method for measuring online brand advocacy. Future studies
may adopt the four dimensions of online brand advocacy (brand defense, brand information
sharing, brand positivity and virtual positive expression) suggested by Wilk et al. (2019) and
investigate the relative effect of digital content marketing types on each of the online brand
advocacy dimensions. This study has collected data from only generation Z, therefore, the
findings of this study might have generalizability concerns due to ignoring other generations.
Thus, future studies may investigate the research topic by taking into consideration all
generations as each generation has specific attributes and interests (Bevan-Dye, 2020). Finally,
future studies may focus on the field rather than experiment studies, so that customers may
have some previous real experience to assess digital content marketing more precisely.
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EJIM Appendix

Customer engagement
Using [brand] gets me to think about [brand]
I think about [brand] a lot when I’m using it
Using [brand] stimulates my interest to learn more about [brand]
I feel very positive when I use [brand]
Using [brand] makes me happy
I feel good when I use [brand]
I’m proud to use [brand]
I spend a lot of time using [brand], compared to other [category] brands
Whenever I’m using [category], I usually use [brand]
[Brand] is one of the brands I usually use when I use [category]
Online brand advocacy
Defend the brand when others talk it down
Stand up for the brand when others talk negatively about it
Talk up the brand when others talk negatively about it
Defend the brand if I hear someone speaking poorly about it
Try to convince others to buy the brand
Talk about the good points of this brand*
Say positive things about the brand
Mention I am happy with its performance
Talk about the brand favorably
Say the brand is great
Express my fondness for the brand*
Provide details about upcoming promotions and available discounts for the brand
Provide extra details about the brand (e.g. price, store locations, availability of discounts or a link to a website)
Share information about available or upcoming promotions (discounts) for the brand
Provide lengthy explanations as to why the brand is better than other brands
Use emoticons or emojis, such as smileys or winks
Use smileys [☺]
Table A1. Use visual symbols (e.g. emoticon, emoji, exclamation or capital lettering)
Measurements Note(s): *Items removed due to low loading

Corresponding author
Ahmad Aljarah can be contacted at: a.jarah@gmail.com

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