Work in Progress

Wellness-Oriented Marketing: The Role of Linguistic Style and Employee Well-Being in Driving Consumer Engagement (with Haotian Zhang, Luca Cascio Rizzo and Ram Janakiraman)

Wellness-oriented marketing has gained significant traction in recent years, with digital platforms serving as a key medium for firms to communicate their commitment to wellness efforts. While firm-generated content (FGC) plays a crucial role in shaping consumer perceptions, the impact of wellness-related messaging within FGC remains under-explored. By analyzing 202,651 social media posts from 417 firms in 2021, the authors examine the relationship between wellness-related content in FGC and consumer engagement. They also investigate the heterogeneous effects of three key moderators: firm popularity, firm type (hedonic vs. utilitarian), and internal employee well-being, measured using employee ratings from Indeed data. The findings reveal that wellness-oriented textual cues significantly influence engagement; however, this effect is not uniform across firm types. Hedonic firms experience a stronger impact from wellness messaging, whereas utilitarian firms do not see a comparable payoff. Additionally, firms that prioritize internal employee well-being, as reflected in workplace reviews, derive greater benefits from wellness-related messaging on social media. These insights suggest that firms should strategically align their wellness messaging with firm characteristics and internal workplace culture to maximize consumer engagement.