Attitudes towards Brands and Advertisements: Qualitative and Thematic Analysis of Social Media Data

Social media has been described as a platform for discussing ideas, communicating experiences and exchanging knowledge. It has changed the way individuals interact, providing massive amount of data and rich market insight as customers and brands engage and build relationships. This public declaration is of great concern for any organisation as it transfers the power to shape brand images from the hands of advertisers to the words of consumers’ online connections.

This chapter sets an agenda proposing the possibilities of qualitatively analysing user-generated content on social media platforms to provide insight into attitudes towards advertisements and their brands. Unlike participants being interviewed in a focus group, filling in questionnaires or neuroscience providing insight into how the mind perceives advertisements which typically requires expensive, bulky equipment and lab-type settings that limit and influence the experience, this is readily available public data which can be thematically analysed to add to existing knowledge.

Presenting the idea, publicly declared responses to the advertisements of UK banks on Facebook were analysed in order to gain insight into their perceptions and attitudes towards the advertisements and their brands. An outline of how to perform an analysis of user-generated content was provided to buttress the research method. Challenges and limitations of this research method were also considered.