The impact of using electronic emotions (emoji) in digital communications on building relationships towards the brand ..... A quasi-experimental study

Document Type : Original Article

Author

كلية الإعلام وتكنولوجيا - الاتصال جامعة جنوب الوادي

Abstract

The study aims to measure the impact of the presence or absence of electronic emotions (emoji) in digital communications on building relationships with the brand by employing the theory of emotions as social information (EASI) to study the impact of "the emotional expressions of the source on the behavior of the recipient and shaping his perceptions about the sender and the service, which is reflected in his relationship with the brand, the basic hypothesis of which is that the emotional display of the sender can have important consequences on the behavior of the recipients through the quasi-experimental approach on a sample of students of the College of Media and Communication Technology, numbering (60) individuals, and based on the experimental and control group system, they were divided into two groups, each group numbering (30) individuals, where the experimental group is exposed to a set of models in the presence of electronic emotions; while the control group is exposed to the same models without including electronic emotions. The study reached a number of results, the most important of which is that the use of electronic emotions (emoji) in customer service messages leads to a variety of positive and negative effects through the mediating variables, which generally lead to lower or higher evaluations of the relationship and association with the brand due to the presence of many mediation processes, in addition to the importance of balancing in the use of emoji, as It does not differ according to the subject of communication (inquiry - complaints) while it differs according to the communication style (formal - informal).

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