Visual content on social media
Published: 1 September 2025
New research by Dr Jaylan Azer and colleagues is the first to show how people use pictures rather than words to engage with brands on social media, identifying four distinct image-based behaviours that shape purchase decisions, brand perceptions and imitation.
New research from Adam Smith Business School’s Dr Jaylan Azer, with co-authors Dr Lorena Blasco-Arcas (ESCP Business School, Madrid) and Dr Matthew Alexander (Strathclyde Business School), is reshaping our understanding of visual content on social media. Their study is the first academic research to examine how consumers use pictures, rather than text, to engage with brands online.
Published in the Journal of Service Research as “Visual Modality of Engagement: Conceptualization, Typology of Forms, and Outcomes”, the project introduces the idea of the Visual Modality of Engagement (VME). VME captures what customers do when they use images or videos to express how they think and feel about a brand, beyond transaction.
The team analysed almost 30,000 pictorial posts created by individual users on the official Instagram and Facebook pages of Amazon, Apple, American Airlines and Nike, ultimately working with 18,985 relevant images. By studying these posts, they identified four distinct behaviours that people express through images: two positive and two negative. Experiential images show people enjoying and using a brand; evidential images show the product or service itself, evidencing ownership or use. Mocking images parody or ridicule the brand, while dissuasive images actively warn others not to buy or use it, sometimes by crossing out the logo or endorsing competitors.
The researchers then ran experimental studies to test how these different visual behaviours influence brand-related outcomes (e.g., purchase intentions, brand evaluations), and customer-related outcomes (e.g., willingness to imitate posts and resharing intentions). Their results show that the four forms of VME do not have the same impact: different types of images lead to different effects on both brands and other customers in the network. The work also demonstrates how social interaction (likes and comments) and brand interaction (brand likes, comments or silence) can reinforce or soften these effects.
For social media and content managers, the study offers a practical framework for spotting which customer images are most influential, especially negative mocking and dissuasive posts, and for prioritising image-based metrics in social listening.
For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk
First published: 1 September 2025