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important in helping brands to create a sense of authenticity as people nowadays depend on the reviews of past consumers of the
brands before making the decision to purchase product or service as advertised (Agarwal, 2020).

2.3 Brand Passion
Brand passion indicates the customer’s earnest feeling for a certain brand (Mukherjee, 2020). Bauer, Heinrich, and Martin (2007)
interpreted brand passion as a basically affective and positive behavior towards a particular brand which can cause emotional
attachment and affect important behavioral variables such as the willingness of a consumer to spread positively about a certain
brand or make further purchase intention. Pourazad, Stocchi, and Pare (2020) also explained that brand passion is a strong emotional
attachment that leads consumers to include the brand in their identity, desire and fondness.

In most cases, brand passion is stronger when the relationship between a consumer and a brand is at an early phase of
development (Ahuvia, Batra, & Bagozzi, 2009). Therefore, building brand passion is important for retailers because it promotes
long-lasting brand loyalty (Mostafa & Kasamani, 2021). Batra, Ahuvia, and Bagozzi (2012) also noted that passion is the key
element of the emotional connection between a brand and a consumer that may translate into loyalty. When customers have passion
connected with a brand, they become personally invested in the brand by willingly advocate the brand, pay premium price, follow
closely their social media, and develop stronger sense of community (Pourazad, Stocchi, & Pare, 2020). The behaviors are
summarized as attitudinal brand loyalty, a long-term and emotional dedication to a brand (Appiah, Ozuem, & Howell, 2016).
Therefore, brand passion is vital for business because it has considerable influence on the willingness of consumers to keep a long-
term relationship with the brand (Albert, Merunka, & Valette-Florence, 2013).

2.4 Hypotheses Development
2.4.1 Firm-created and User-generated Social Media Communication
When a company communicates more through their social media platform like Facebook by posting more and variety of contents
in its official brand page to reach wider audiences, the user engagement with the brand will increases (Ceballos, Crespo, & Cousté,
2016). This is proven by the finding of De Vries et al. (2012) where vivid and interactive post by brands enhances the number of
likes and comments. It can be deduced that people are more interested when a brand posts content that stimulates multiple senses
such as video or interactive posts which contain questions such as asking how the audiences feel about the brand’s product or
service. Additionally, Moreno-Munoz et al. (2016) noted that effective use of social media communication can encourage consumer
discussion and participation. A survey conducted by Ramzan and Syed (2018) also revealed that content marketing (firm-created
social media communication) is important in developing consumer engagement and consequently encourages consumers to share
the content. In short, there are positive relationship between the firm-created and user-generated social media communication.
Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed:
H1: Firm-created social media communication has a statistically significant impact on generation of user-generated social media
communication.

2.4.2 Firm-created Social Media Communication and Brand Passion
In order for consumers to generate the passions for a brand, it is necessary for marketers or retailers to develop a long-term
relationship between consumers and brand using social media communication (Mukherjee, 2020). This relationship can be built by
developing and distributing appealing and valuable content on social media platform to attract target audience (Du Plessis, 2017).
A few evidence was found to prove that the firm-created social media communication positively influences the brand passion. For
instances, Khalid (2016) revealed that the firm-created social media communication encourages brand trust, brand loyalty and
brand passion. Similarly, Hermaren and Achyar (2018) indicated that the firm-created content is positively related to brand loyalty,
and eventually brand passion. According to Ismail (2017), social media communication created by brand is a key driver of brand
loyalty, which is associated with brand passion since followers of a brand on social media tend to commit to the brand. Hence, the
hypothesis is proposed:
H2: There is a statistically significant impact of firm-created social media communication on brand passion.

2.4.3 User-generated Social Media Communication on Brand Passion
When online consumers actively engage with the business activity, they may willingly create content or spread positive word-of-
mouth about the brand, and consequently influence the passion of other consumers towards a brand. Shen and Bisell (2013) found
that businesses emphasizing on enhancing consumer engagement on social media can improve their brand awareness and image,

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