Investigating the Effect of Instagram Contests Feature on User Engagement by Explaining ‎the Mediating Role of Users’ Emotions and Brand Awareness

In today's competitive world, Instagram is one of the most popular social media used by many companies and has become a new way to increase engagement and interaction with users. In this regard, the present study examined the effect of Instagram contests, brand awareness, and users’ emotions on their engagement with the company. This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of research strategy. The statistical population of the research is 8000 users of the Parsi App (an active startup in the field of fintech) on Instagram. In order to collect the data, the non-probability sampling method was used. The online questionnaire link was sent to the users who participated in the Parsi App contest and 300 responses were collected. The collected data were analyzed by structural equation modeling and the partial least squares approach using the third version of Smart PLS software. In this way, the results of the research showed that the features of Instagram contests, user emotions, and brand awareness each have a positive and significant effect on user engagement. In addition, the feature of Instagram contests, taking into account the mediating variable of brand awareness, has a positive and significant effect on user engagement. However, the mediating role of users' emotions in this regard was not confirmed at the 95% confidence level. This issue shows the importance of paying attention to tools that encourage engagement, such as designing Instagram contests, which can be implemented as a strategy in the form of social networks and digital marketing.