Exploring audience engagement in YouTube vlogs through consumer engagement theory: The case of U.K. beauty vlogger Zoe Sugg

Video blogs (vlogs) are a streamed video media type on a variety of topics including beauty, gaming and lifestyles (Jerslev, 2016). Consumption of vlogs is widespread: over 50 percent of adults in the U.S. were vlog viewers (Nguyen, 2018). YouTube has played an important role in encouraging vlog consumption (Kaminsky, 2010). YouTube allows video bloggers (vloggers) to easily distribute content (Weaver, etal., 2012). Vloggers who operate on YouTube are also called YouTubers (Correa, etal., 2020). Some YouTube vloggers have developed large audiences. In 2020, among more than 37 million channels on YouTube, 700 YouTube channels gained over 10 million subscribers, and around 22,000 channels gained over one million subscribers (Funk, 2020). These popular vloggers could also be seen as influencers, famous among their viewers and with an ability to influence public opinions towards, for example, brands and products (Abidin and Ots, 2016, Freberg, et al., 2011). These YouTube vlogger influencers are part of a larger culture of online influencers, along with other social media influencers established through, for example, content creation on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. Our focus in this paper is on vlogging, and on YouTube vlogging in particular, which, if a vlogger transitions to influencer, can grow to have complex relationships with their work on other platforms. One concept that relates to vloggers’ success on YouTube is the achievement of audience engagement (AE). AE refers to the building of connections and experiences between online media creators and audiences. The achievement of AE with online media, such as vlogs on YouTube, is reflected by active participatory activities by audiences with vloggers including liking and commenting on videos, and the direct consumption of vlog content (Burgess and Green, 2018, Khan, 2017, McRoberts, etal., 2016). Existing research unveiled vloggers’ common implementation of AE factors to engage viewers on YouTube. These include encouraging viewer interaction for participation and using certain filming techniques to stimulate consumption (eg., McRoberts, et al., 2016, Rasmussen, 2018, Zhang, 2018). Commonly, the AE factors concerning vlogs and YouTube that can account for vlogger success have been mainly studied from the perspective of a creator-audience relationship. In this paper, however, we propose another angle to interpret AE and its contribution to vlogger success through a concept that has rarely been applied explicitly in the context of vlogging. The concept is consumer/customer engagement (CE) — behavioural connections between consumers and brands, beyond product purchase and consumption (van Doorn, et al., 2010). CE has been widely used to refer to consumer relationships with brands (eg., Beckers, et al., 2018, Obilo, et al., 2021). Achieving CE can build and maintain positive relationships between firms and consumers. CE turns consumers into participants (Schmitt, 2012) taking part in product development (Sashi, 2012) and fostering product success. CE also fosters customer trust, brand knowledge, retainment and dissemination of a brand via “word of mouth” (WOM — communication between consumers regarding a brand) (Cheung, et al., 2020, Obilo, et al., 2021, Vivek, et al., 2012). This paper aims to establish an argument that when considering vloggers as personal brands, AE with vloggers can be understood as a form of CE. This paper also argues that some AE factors that vloggers use to engage viewers, in general, could be seen as CE factors contributing to vlogger success as personal brands. We build this argument by using a case study of a popular vlogger. This case study illustrates how we can see AE factors in vlogger videos as comparable to those exploited by traditional brands for CE. By exploring vlogger AE using CE, this paper provides an explicit discussion that bridges the gap between CE and vlogging on YouTube. This paper contributes to those areas in the literature that seek to understand YouTube and similar social media creator and influencer practices for their audience bases and their overall successes or failures. The paper offers new ways for interpreting behaviours of online content creators that may eventually build audiences and fan bases.