"A content recipe for the gourmand": digital content marketing success preconditions in the food industry and their contribution to brand performance

Abstract: Digital content marketing (DCM) as a marketing instrument is steadily developing and clearly on the rise. Nowadays, food producers are ready to allocate higher budgets and exploit different DCM techniques to reach their marketing goals. Though little is known of what exactly differentiates successful DCM initiatives and how brand performance can be linked to them. After identifying an obvious knowledge gap, this thesis developed an initial framework for DCM success, specifically applicable in the food industry. By introducing findings from an Expert Panel and existing relevant theories, this research outlined the scope of DCM success factors dividing them into two groups - primary and secondary. A conceptual framework featuring relationships between primary factors, their sub-variables and attitudes towards the content and brand was further tested through a quantitative study. Due to time and resource limitations the authors focused only on primary success factors that are fundamental for the food industry and the sub-variables chosen for testing were of main concern by practitioners. The study resulted in the conclusions that out of the four primary success factors, credibility and uniqueness has a strong positive influence on both content and brand attitude, whereas engagement only affects brand attitude directly and relevance only affects content attitude. Meanwhile, the contribution of the sub-variables also varied from what was expected. Brand salience was not found to have a negative impact on credibility, interactive polls however were found to positively contribute to the perception of engagement. As a result, all those findings established a strong foundation for understanding DCM success, resulting in more constructive approach to content and brand performance.