The Influence of Customer Engagement on Emotion, Purchase Intention and Positive User-Generated Content (UGC) Spread on Instagram

- In the past, cognitive was found to be the main factor that influences a person to conduct online purchases, but the scenario has changed. Hence, customers need more than cognitive elements to attract them to online transactions. Besides, emotion plays an important role in influencing customers’ online purchase behaviour, such as developing the intention to purchase and spread positive contents on the social network platform. Presently, Instagram is the most preferred platform among the young generation, and it has attracted many young women entrepreneurs (womenpreneurs) to be active on the platform. These womenpreneurs use Instagram not only to promote their brands and collections but they also fully utilise their personal accounts to stay connected with their followers. It is believed that customer engagement can touch one’s emotion and influence behaviour. In this study, data (N=153) were collected using the convenience sampling technique among the followers of Datin Vivy Sofinas and Neelofar Md. Noor. The outcome of SmartPLS3 shows that customer engagement affects arousal more than pleasure which that could increase the likelihood to purchase and spread positive user-generated content (UGC). Moreover, pleasure was found to have no significant relationship with UGC spread. Overall, this study had provided interesting findings that could impact the future of social network entrepreneurs.


Introduction
The usage of social network among young generation today is unquestionable. The number of users keeps on increasing day by day, and the most downloaded social network site now is Instagram (Bilal, Ahmed & Shahzad, 2014;Claesson & Ljunberg, 2018). Instagram is a mobile-friendly application that was created in 2010, and it had approximately 800 million users in 2018 (Casaló, Flavián & Ibáñez-Sánchez, 2018;Hiram Ting, Wong, Run & Lau, The Influence of Customer Engagement on Emotion, Purchase Intention and Positive User-Generated Content (UGC) Spread on Instagram 2015). Instagram allows users to share their photos and videos. Followers of Instagram can click the "like" button, leave comments, and "regram" the post (Claesson & Ljunberg, 2018;Geurin-Eagleman & Burch, 2016). The Instagram users use this platform to share their pictures, conduct digital purchases, and share their personal feedbacks and opinions on what they have viewed and purchased. Opinions and reviews shared on social media are known as User-Generated Content (UGC). Sellers and entrepreneurs always welcome both positive and negative feedback, but they definitely appreciate favourable contents.
Instagram is widely accepted by the young generation, especially female users (Claesson & Ljunberg, 2018;Kemp, 2018), and it is also popular among young women entrepreneurs (womenpreneurs). According to Cambridge Dictionary (2019), entrepreneur is defined as someone who starts their business, especially when it involves new opportunities and risks. Datin Vivy Sofinas Yusof, and Noor Neelofa Mohd. Noor are among the successful Malaysian womenpreneurs who have used Instagram as an extension for their current promotional platforms.
Datin Vivy Sofinas Yusof (Vivy) is the co-founder of FashionValet (FV) and The dUck Group that started the e-commerce in 2010 with a start-up capital of MYR100k, 20 staffs, and ten designer brands. Presently, FV has more than 500 designer brands, hundreds of staff and physical stores in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Singapore, and Dubai (Instagram Inc., 2019;Ramoran-Malasig, 2016;Henry Ting, 2016). Vivy finds social media as potent and believes in direct customer engagement as she has a personal link with her Instagram followers who are also her customers. Vivy prefers to conduct all her marketing and personal relation (PR) activities by herself, and she said, "no one knows the brands more than I do." To date, Vivy has 1.7 million Instagram followers (Instagram, 2019). From the engagement, this cofounder manages to learn about the market (Vivy's followers/customers mostly are women aged between 20-40 years old, and the followers/customers are internet savvy). Vivy starts to understand the expectations of the market in which she admits that online business is a fast-moving industry, and it is far more difficult to satisfy the current customers as they can always conduct product comparisons prior to the purchase (Ramoran-Malasig, 2016). Therefore, it is important to understand the market by having a close relationship with the customers and invite them to be a part of the promotional activities. Based on Vivy's principles and beliefs, she has many accomplishments throughout her career, including receiving the "Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award" in 2017 at the Asean @50 Achievements Awards, and she is also one of the recipients of Forbes30 Under 30 Asia 2017 (Jay, 2017;Low, 2017).
Naelofar Hijab (NH) Prima International Sdn. Bhd. is a company that produces and offers ranges of Muslimah products, such as instant shawls, abayas, sajadah, and praying garments. The company has also expanded the business to other types of products such as perfumes, handbags, and stationeries. This company started in 2014 as an online retail store before opening its first physical store in January 2015 in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail, Kuala Lumpur (Naelofar, 2019). The co-founder of NH is Noor Neelofa Mohd Noor (Neelofa), who is also a Malaysian celebrity that is active on Instagram. She has 6.4 million followers and uses this platform to stay connected with her followers, fans, and customers (Instgaram, 2019). Similar with Vivy, Neelofa was also one of the young entrepreneurs featured in Forbes30 Under 30 Asia 2017 (Bernama, 2017;Forbes, 2017) and was appointed as one of the ten ambassadors for the National Transformation 2050 (TN50) with the purpose to inspire, aspire, and encourage more young generation to embark on entrepreneurship (Bernama, 2017).
Both womenpreneurs started their businesses via the online platform, and they believe that customers choose the online platform for their transactions mainly because of its usefulness and convenience as introduced by Davis (1989) under Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The model is viewed as powerful and highly established that it influenced researchers and sellers to refer to it resulting and neglected another important element, namely emotions. According to Mehrabian and Russell (1974), emotional states could shape a person's response as emotions are the mutual core of human behaviour. Hence, the purpose of this study is to determine the influence of customer engagement, emotions, purchase intention, and spreading positive user-generated content.

Consumer Engagement
Presently, it is a norm and trend for the young generation to update on their recent purchases and experiences in Instagram (Howell, 2010;Ordun, 2015). Past studies revealed that dissatisfied customers tend to upload more reviews on their accounts compared to satisfied customers (Bambauer-Sachse & Mangold, 2010). Contents uploaded by users and customers could influence the actions of future customers. As a result, many sellers started to use their own personal accounts to stay connected and bridge the sellers-customers gap (Chanthinok, Ussahawanitchakit & Jhundra-indra, 2015;Hassan, Nadzim & Shiratuddin, 2015). They spend more time to engage with their followers and customers as they believe that engagements can influence a person's emotion in purchasing and spreading favourable UGC (Kudeshia & Kumar, 2017). According to Jo Malone, young generations who are highly attached to smartphones usually have their own online communities where they spread words about products and brands. These young consumers refuse to be ordinary customers, and they want to be a part of the creative process and entertained by sellers (Kestenbaum, 2017). This evidence confirmed the importance of customer engagement on the digital platform.

Pleasure
Generally, Instagram users would feel happy, joyful, and satisfied when sellers actively engage, interact, and entertain them. Pleasant and wonderful browsing experiences are viewed as essentials in persuading and increasing the likelihood of customers to initiate their purchasing intention (Gogoi, 2017;Ingham, Cadieux & Mekki Berrada, 2015;Nusairat, Akhorshaideh, Rashid, Sahadev & Rembielak, 2017). Opting that Instagram is used as a promotion platform and selling, Duffett (2015) strongly suggests that sellers should limit themselves from using unfamiliar terminologies, and they must not be too formal with the caption tones. Womenpreneurs, like Vivy, is known for her cheerful and vibrant personality. Her personality is her advantage, and it acts as a weapon that allows her to be close to her followers. She constantly uploads interesting posts with cheeky and fun captions that attract followers to view her Instagram continuously. She responds to some of the comments on her posts and Instagram stories uploaded by her followers. Her gesture creates an enjoyable browsing experience, which can influence her followers to develop favourable acts, such as purchasing and spreading positive UGC about her brands and products.

Arousal
Interactions and engagement between sellers (especially highly favoured womenpreneur icons like Vivy and Neelofa) and customers would arouse the followers. A great number of engagements will increase the excitements among customers as they feel appreciated by their favourite business icons (Vainikka, 2015). There is no doubt that excitements will lead to purchase intention and the possibility of sharing good words about the sellers and their products (Prashar, Sai Vijay & Parsad, 2017). The statements are supported by Aksah et al. (2017), Bettiga (2017), and Sanbonmatsu Kardes (1988) that a strong feeling of arousal will encourage and influence a person to react positively.

Purchase Intention
Emotion plays an important role in determining one's next act. Excited and happy Instagram users towards what they have been exposed to would respond positively. Several past studies defined purchase intention as the process by which the potential customers are willing to make a plan to purchase the item after being exposed to the stimulus such as an advertisement within a designated period of time (Ajzen, 1991;Hair & Money, 2011;Kudeshia & Kumar, 2017;Lee, Cheng & Shih, 2017). Although purchase intention is seen as a positive act, it is not the actual behaviour. Yi et al. (2016) mention that any intention usually leads to certain behaviour. It is difficult to prove the actual purchase on the paper. Due to the existence of social media such as Instagram, it has become a norm and a lifestyle to share what a person has purchased or consumed in the posts. A qualitative study by Ben and Amara (2016) found that happy and satisfied customers would share their experiences on their personal accounts.

User-Generated Content (UGC) Spread
Inquiring before embarking on a purchase is a normal act, especially for online purchasing. Customers usually could gain more information before making their purchase decision from a range of online sellers. Products and price ranges offered online are usually similar to the majority of online sellers are drop shippers and agents. For example, Naelofar Hijabs have their own stockists, agents, and drop shippers nationwide. Meanwhile, dUck Group has a wide range of product categories, and each category has its own Instagram account. What makes a brand become successful, more appealing, and better depends on how well they entertain and interact with their customers. The action is not restricted to womenpreneurs only as their representatives (managing the Instagram accounts) have to build a warm mood and relationship with the customers. A happy and satisfied customer that goes through browsing, interacting, and buying process experiences would create and share wonderful and positive contents about the brands and products. All these great UGC will enhance the sellers' reputation that can influence other Instagram users (Islam & Rahman, 2017).
Most of the previous studies confirmed that UGC is seen as more credible and trustworthy. It acts as a stimulus that l influences a person in developing the purchase intention (Islam & Rahman, 2017). Feedbacks and reviews posted online to provide customers with insights and ideas of what and whom they should purchase the product (Aziz & Wahid, 2018;Sohaib, Hui & Akram, 2018). This study intended to show how does favourable UGC emerge and act as the outcome. By definition, UGC is a uniform interpersonal influence generated by a network of consumers who are connected to one another, and the contents are usually shared on a platform where the population generally share similar interests (Kudeshia & Kumar, 2017;Ma & Atkin, 2017). As stated earlier, UGC is powerful and credible. Therefore, it is vital for online sellers, especially local brands like dUck and Naelofar, to build a great foundation and relationship with followers in ensuring the spread of good words.

Methodology of Study
The data collected for hypotheses testing were gathered among the followers of Vivy and Neelofar's Instagram accounts. Link to the online survey was sent via direct message on Instagram accounts where the respondents were randomly selected using the convenience sampling technique. The researchers approached 200 followers who have at least 100 followers and obtained 153 responses (76.5%). The development of questions was done after reading past literature and questions that were adapted from previous studies. The questions were adapted to ensure the validity of the measurements. The scales used were five-point Likert type response formats in which respondents rated from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Table 1 summarises the first section of the survey question. Partial Least Square (PLS) was used as the estimation procedure because it is useful in situations that have limited theoretical information or when the phenomenon is relatively new (Roldán & Sánchez-Franco, 2012). For this study, the placement of UGC as endogenous is considered something new. Data analyses were conducted using SmartPLS software version 3.0 (Hair, Hult, Ringle & Sarstedt, 2017). This study collected 153 sets for the analysis, which is considered acceptable. According to the GPower calculator, the minimum sample required for this study is 62 respondents. Before proving the hypotheses, several main assessments were conducted to measure the validity of the constructs. First, the researchers analysed the data to check the validity of the measures. Internal consistency was conducted to check the composite reliabilities (CR). Table 2 shows that all variables have CR between 0.880 and 0.903, which proved their internal consistency, although the advised range is between 0.7-0.9 (Hair et al., 2017). Next, factor loading was calculated, and the highly recommended value should be greater than 0.708 (Hair et al., 2014). All the variables in this study obtained loadings greater than 0.6, except for one item under customer engagement. However, the item was not removed as the average variance extracted (AVE) for the exogenous was greater than 0.5 (Hulland, 1999), and all the variables were greater than 0.5 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988;Fornell & Larcker, 1981;Hair et al., 2017). Finally, the researchers conducted heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations (HTMT) to check the discriminant validity. Ramayah, Cheah, Chuah, Ting, and Memon (2016) mention that the calculated figures for HTMT must not be above 0.85 (Kline, 2016) or 0.90 (Gold et al., 2001). Table 3 shows values that are between 0.490 and 0.818, which are below the cutoff value of 0.85. This result indicates that the constructs do not have discriminant validity problems. Once the measures were validated, the researchers estimated the hypotheses proposed in the model and their significances of using PLS with the recommended bootstrap of 5,000 iterations (Henseler, Ringle & Sarstedt, 2015).

Result
After assessing the validity, the structural model is assessed. The model went through five assessments, which were lateral collinearity (variance inflator factor [VIF]), path coefficient to prove the hypotheses, coefficient of determination (R²), the effect size of R² (f²), and stonegeisser Q² predictive relevance (Q²). Table 4 shows the results of VIF. According to Hair et al. (2017), the value must not be greater than either 3.3 or 5.0 and higher. The VIF values for the constructs in this study are between 1.000 and 1.620, indicating that the constructs do not have any collinearity issue. The results of the proposed model (  Looking at the results, customer engagement affects arousal more than pleasure, which results in arousal to influence purchase intention better than pleasure. Moreover, pleasure has no influence on UGC spread. It can be concluded that Instagram sellers like womenpreneurs must identify the means and mechanisms that can lead followers to develop positive response (both purchase intention and spread good words). Besides, excitement and anxiety encourage them to act favourably.

Conclusion
There are many online sellers, especially on Instagram. To date, more than 100,000 brands and products can be searched on the platform. Sellers must play their roles well and always have a competitive advantage to make them more superior than their rivalries, regardless of brands and products, because the product quality and price range are almost similar. Engagement is the key factor; however, how well an entrepreneur develops engagement strategies is another issue that should be highlighted.
It is every seller and entrepreneur's dreams to have a positive UGC spread about brands and products at the digital age where words spread faster than lighting. Other than engagement, sellers must conduct more than strategies that were discussed by Miller and Lammas (2011). They defined it as "instead of marketing the products to them (buyers), sellers should now market the products to them (buyers)". Hence, it is important to get customers to become involved with sellers' promotional activities. Today, customers are different from how they were from a decade ago. Customers want to participate in the seller's activities. Being closer to the seller and acknowledged by the seller will influence them to behave favourably. Instagram saw this possibility, and it provides multiple functions to assist the Instagram business operators (Ahmed, 2017). Women have highly populated this platform, and they know how they want to be treated; hence, there is no doubt that the womenpreneurs highlighted earlier can successfully pull off their strategies and out themselves on the map globally.
Theoretically, arousal is proven to have a strong influence on purchase intention and spread UGC when it comes to the buying-selling on Instagram, especially if they receive friendly treatment by their favourite sellers. In practice, Instagram sellers should focus on developing relationships with their followers, even if they have not become their customers. Being noticed can create excitement, which can lead to positive behaviour.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
No funding was involved in this study