Customer Engagement Towards Branded Content for Healthcare a study of Delhi NCR

Abstract

The rapid increase in internet usage due to its easy accessibility has made the brands to realize the importance of its presence on virtual platforms for attracting and retaining the target audience. Marketers are thereby focusing on creating valuable and quality content to entice the attention and engage the target audience. Engaging customers online is of immense significance for greater brand exposure and the spread of positive word of mouth. Posting branded content seeks maximum customer engagement on social networking platforms. All efforts to engage customers will be useless if marketers cannot craft content strategies to engage customers online. Moreover, healthcare services are the product of passive demand, and people may not think of availing of them until there is a requirement. This urges healthcare companies to increase their brand presence on social media platforms by providing quality content to engage customers. Therefore, this study aims to address the research problem, How can healthcare brands effectively engage customers through branded content on social media to enhance trust, satisfaction, and overall brand loyalty?. To attain the purpose of the study , firstly, the factors of branded content leading to customer engagement were explored from the extant literature. Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) approaches were employed to establish interrelationship among the factors. Additionally, the identified factors were modelled using the structural equation modelling (SEM) approach to assess the impact of branded content on customer engagement. Nine factors identified were shareability, entertaining content, relevant content, content design, recent content, authenticity, interactivity, content quality, and usefulness. The DEMATEL approach findings categorized the factors into two groups, i.e., causal and effect groups, and ranked the factors based on their significance. Interactivity was found to be the most significant fact