Abstract
Brand values and the communication of them to customers, has become an integral part of marketing with the rise of social media use. Using social media as an active marketing initiative has also received a huge amount of attention in the media and amongst academics alike because of its ability to connect individuals together, creating powerful brand communities where many-to-many communication can flourish.
The marketing and communication characteristics of social media websites like Facebook, in particular, are well documented and described by authors such as Grams (2012), Legorburu and McColl (2014), Richardson (2013) and (Leboff, 2013).
This study further contributes to this debate, investigating the role social media plays in the use of brand values as an emotional connector between consumers and businesses.
Brand values, always a part of the culture of a brand were found to encourage more human contact, mimicking the effects of traditional word-of-mouth. Such grass-roots and inexpensive social media marketing campaign studies are lacking and the findings suggest that businesses might benefit by humanising and creating more of a business personality around their brand to become more appealing.