Abstract:

Micro blog becomes an important tool of social marketing，challenging companies’ consumer-brand relationship management. Based on grounded theory，66 representative companies’ posts in Sina are collected，with 1395 company posts and 5959 following posts. A influence mechanism model of company micro blog  interaction tactics on consumer-brand relationship is proposed，then the saturation level of this mechanism is tested. Results show that 1) Companies adopt two types of tactics in micro blog interaction: social interaction and task-oriented interaction; 2) Micro blog interaction arises consumer emotional response and cognition toward specific brand and eventually influences consumer-brand relationship. Consumer emotional response includes pleasure and arousal, brand cognition includes perceived quality, perceived relatedness with companies and  brand resonance; 3) The influence mechanism differs among different consumer knowledge level, industry and brand awareness.

Key words: Micro blog, Interaction tactics, Consumer-brand relationship, Grounded theory