The continues increase in social media usage within society has led to a shift in relation between consumers and companies. Social media has given consumers opportunities to voice their opinions on a global scale, resulting in challenges for companies. As social media sites are accessible to everyone, it has become increasingly difficult for companies to control what individual persons criticize, positively as well as negatively about them. On the other hand, consumers are influenced by the large quantity of information online, shaping the level of trust they feel for a brand. Nonetheless, the landscape has also provided opportunities for firms to expand their marketing methods. In this research, it was attempted to determine how different social media advertising methods, namely native and traditional advertising and selective language techniques can be used to influence corporate reputation and consumer trust on the platform Facebook. Although the management of corporate reputation has been widely explored, only limited research has been done on how online advertising, and in particular social media advertising can be used for those purposes. Moreover, to the author’s knowledge there has so far been no research done on the use of native advertising methods as a corporate reputation tool. Traditional theories on offline advertising as corporate reputation tools may not be sufficient when attempting to apply them to a social media context. Furthermore, academic literature has not yet explored native advertising to a full extent. Therefore, the results of this study provided further insight into native advertising and the use of social media advertising as a tool for strengthening corporate reputation and consumer trust. The following research question was asked: “To what extent do social media advertising methods (native vs. traditional) and selective language techniques (consumer vs. corporate praising) affect consumer trust and corporate reputation?”. Based on the given research question, six hypotheses were established. By creating an online experimental survey on the platform ‘Qualtrics’ the hypotheses were tested and the research question was answered. The experiment was conducted using a 2x2x2 factorial design, which was applied between subjects. The study was based on 2 advertising styles (native vs. traditional) X 2 persuasion techniques 2 (corporate vs. consumer praising) X 2 Facebook advertisement types (banner vs. image). Convenience sampling through an online crowdsourcing platform was used to collect 458 responses. After cleaning the data, 426 participants remained in the final data set. For the experiment, fictitious Facebook feeds were created. They each contained the advertisement of a fictitious fairtrade coffee company called Nature Beans. Through ‘Qualtrics’ participants were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions and then asked questions about the Facebook feed. Several statistical tests were conducted after the experiment had been completed. The findings did not show significant findings for all variables. However a significant correlation was discovered between native advertising and consumer trust. This research was among the first to determine the functioning of native advertising as a corporate reputation tool. Moreover, companies advertising on Facebook have the possibility of receiving a deeper understanding of the different promotion options and techniques available to them.

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Wang, Y.
hdl.handle.net/2105/55281
Media & Business
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication

Fassbender, Friederike. (2020, June). Corporate reputation management through advertising: Examining how social media advertising methods and persuasion techniques influence corporate reputation and consumer trust. Media & Business. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2105/55281