Managing marketing communications: Customer-initiated contact on Israeli Facebook brand pages

Purpose: This study aims to focus on customer-initiated contact (CIC) discourse on Facebook brand pages. It concentrates on how brands manage CIC on Facebook when customers are more concerned with brand communications than product-related issues, price or distribution. A research framework from the perspective of consumer-initiated touch-point communication model is proposed. Design/methodology/approach: Two case studies of Israeli TV ads are examined. Discourse between customers and brands on the Facebook pages of the latter are analyzed. Research was conducted in three phases: data collection, quantitative content analysis and thematic analysis. Findings: It was demonstrated that customers use Facebook as a discourse platform for TV commercial brand advertising. However, brands are not always prepared to engage in online CIC involving advertising issues. The reply rate is moderate and the reply manner is not consistent, tending to be characterized as “official and dismissive.” Research limitations/implications: Data collection used a sample of two case studies. However, they generated rich findings, enough to support the purpose of the study. Originality/value: This paper expands the contemporary CIC point of view and adds an integrated marketing communications (IMC) perspective. It extends the perception of CIC from product-level customer service to brand-level discourse. Finally, it fills the research gap by using a research tool based on consumer-initiated touch-point communication model. Theoretical and practical implications are presented.