Study of the Impact of Humour on Customers’ Engagement

Abstract

In a context of overabundance of information on social media, the challenge for an organization is to stand out and to create a link with its target. A Facebook page is a means for a company to federate the users around communities and to drive their engagement. The objective of this research is to test the effect of the use of humour in Facebook posts on perception, attitude and intention of engagement of social media users. An experimental study was conducted on a sample of fans of a Facebook page where we manipulated absence/presence of humour, and humour types. Results show a positive effect of perceived humour on attitude toward the publication, which influences the Facebook user’s intention to engage. Need for humour does not moderate the effect of humour on the attitude and the results do not reveal any difference between the types of humour tested.

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