I Feel Like Owning It! Exploring the Antecedents of Psychological Ownership and Its Impact on Brand Loyalty in Digital Content Marketing

Abstract

Content marketing is an effective approach to brand communication on social media and can inspire people to develop a sense of “ownership” toward the product/brand featured in branded content. Drawing on the theory of psychological ownership and the uses and gratification theory, this study proposed a comprehensive framework to explicate how individual motivations serve as precursors of psychological ownership toward products featured in content marketing, via two processing routes or intermediaries, namely consumers’ flow experience and perceived content value. As such, this study identified six motivations explicating why consumers engage with content marketing: content inspiration, brand likeability, brand conversation, incentive, habitual pass time, and personal identity. Specifically, we found that some antecedents—the motivations of content inspiration, brand likability, brand conversation, and personal identity—positively predicted psychological ownership, via increasing flow and content value, respectively. Furthermore, psychological ownership was positively related to brand loyalty. These findings propose a comprehensive model explaining the process through which content marketing affects psychological ownership and subsequent brand loyalty.

Keywords:

• Brand loyalty
• content value
• digital content marketing
• flow
• motivations
• psychological ownership

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical Statement

This study has Southern Methodist University IRB Committee approval (Protocol ID: 21-208).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Southern Methodist University under the Meadows Faculty Development Grant.

Notes on contributors

Quan Xie

Quan Xie (Ph.D., Ohio University) is an Assistant Professor of Advertising at the Temerlin Advertising Institute, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University.

Chen Lou

Chen Lou (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Associate Professor of Integrated Marketing Communication in the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University.