A series of experiments and a field-study finds that Facebook ‘liking’ generally reflects existing favourable attitudes; and that the act of ‘liking’ does not alter consumer behaviour toward a brand afterwards.

The study recognised a major issue to control for was that consumers who ‘like’ a brand on Facebook are very likely to already have existing favourable attitudes, and/or past brand usage. They endeavoured to control for this selection effect in a series of cleverly designed experiments. (Otherwise, the pre-existing positive attitudes would link to more buying etc. in the future compared to non-‘likers’, but this difference would not be due to actually deciding to ‘like’ the brand, it would simply be due to the pre-existing attitude or behaviour)

The study also did a field experiment in which consumers were offered a coupon for a brand of face cream under three different conditions:
1 A friend had ‘liked’ the brand on Facebook, and so a redeemable electronic coupon for a sample of the cream was sent to the respondent;
2 A friend actually did like the brand (not on FB) and had arranged for the coupon – this was called the ‘meaningful endorsement’ condition;
3 A friend had simply arranged for the coupon with no FB ‘like’ or indication of personal endorsement as a control condition.

The redemption rate for the coupon was 5.9% for the meaningful endorsement, 5.2% in the control, and lowest, 3.7%, in the FB ‘like’ condition. The authors concluded from this result that if consumers notice that friends ‘like’ a brand on Facebook, they see it as a far less meaningful endorsement than knowing the friend is actually (i.e. not just a ‘like’ click) fond of the brand.