the effectiveness of a company's efforts in communicating with
online influencers (Gillin, 2008). To substantiate this suggestion, a
longitudinal study that follows nonecustomers for a longer period
of time is needed.
As all studies, this research also has its limitations. First, KLM
Royal Dutch Airlines e the case company we used in this study e is
very active in the field of social media and has a large general brand
awareness in The Netherlands. This may attract people not being a
customer of KLM, but with a more than average interest in this
company or its online activities. In that sense, KLM may not be
representative for the average company, especially because this
study is mainly based on participants residing in KLM's home
market.
A second limitation is that our definition of “customer” is
debatable: the cut-off point for being regarded as a customer was
placed at having flown with KLM within the two years before this
study. This means that, for example, a participant who flew with
KLM for decades, but not in the last two years is not considered a
customer. Conversely, a “one-time flyer” with KLM in the last two
years is categorized as a customer in our study. This may have
influenced the results of this research by over or underestimating
the effects of being a (non)customer of KLM.
Third, in this study a very basic conceptualization of engagement was used, i.e., familiarity with a company's social media activities and following those activities on Twitter and/or Facebook.
Although following a brand in social media is a frequently used way
consumers engage online with a brand, it is also a rather minimal
form of engagement. In order to more fully investigate the impact
of a company's social media activities on corporate reputation,
future research should include a broader range of consumer
engagement measures.
As a last limitation, participants with a high level of engagement
in the company may have been different beforehand with regard to
perceived reputation. In the current study we only studied relations
between variables and not the direction of the relations. As
mentioned before, we recommend further research to shed light on
this. While, in the present study, we suggest that engagement in a
company's social media activities is a predictor of perception of
corporate reputation e even stronger for non-customers than for
customers e the direction of causality in this relation may be
opposite, and is most likely to be bidirectional. Thus, we recognize
the necessity for a longitudinal study that measures engagement in
social media activities in relation to corporate reputation in the
same sample at different time intervals, to draw more explicitly
causal claims about the exact operation of the conceptual model
proposed and supported here. Despite these limitations, this study
contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between
consumers' intensity of social media use, their engagement in
companies' social media activities and corporate reputation. We
showed that consumers' level of online engagement is positively
associated with perception of corporate reputation. Moreover, this
study emphasizes the importance for a company of not only
engaging online with its customers, but not the least also with its
non-customers. The findings provide evidence that for companies,
social media platforms really are a “stage to engage” with both
consumer groups, therewith enhancing their corporate reputation.