Engagement in Instagram Social Network: Investigating the Impact of Brand Equity of Club and Social Interactions among Tehran Esteghlal Football Team Fans

The study aims to investigate the shared brand equity of a sports team, types of social interactions of team fans towards this content and the impact of these two variables on the level of fans' engagement in the context of the Instagram network. This study was a kind of mixed method research. The statistical population of this study was posts of Esteghlal F.C. Instagram page (2370 Post) that 500 posts was selected as a sample. Content analysis method was used to identify the covered brand equity in Instagram images and to identify the parasocial interactions of fans, and the effect of these two variables on the engagement level of the fans were analyzed by Two-way ANOVA. Analyzing the content of images showed that the club has shared ten brand attributes including team success, star player, head coach, brand mark, management, club’s history and tradition, club’s culture and values, event’s image, sponsor and fans with fans. Fans also react to these brand attributes in the form of four kinds of engagement: loving, aspiring, belonging and criticizing. The results of two way Anova showed a significant difference between the average levels of fans engagement in brand attributes. In addition, the results of this test showed that the average level of fans engagement in terms of their parasocial interactions has a significant difference. Also, the results of this test indicate a significant difference between the average levels of fans engagement in the composition of brand attributes and fans interactions. The highest level of engagement was related to the combination of loving and brand attributes of star players.