Getting the word out on Twitter: the role of influentials,information brokers and strong ties in building word-of-mouth for brands

Using a sample of over 5300 tweets from top global brands, this study investigated how different types of users can influence brand content diffusion via retweets. Twitter users who influenced followers to retweet brand content were categorized as (1) influentials, because of their above average ability to influence others to retweet their tweets (in general), (2) information brokers, because of their position connecting groups of users or (3) having strong ties, because of their high percentage of friends in common and a mutual friend–follower relationship with the influenced follower. The results indicate that influentials and information brokers are associated with larger number of retweets for brand content. In addition, although information brokers have a larger overall influence on retweeting, they are more prone to do so when influentials are mentioned in the brand tweet, providing support for the strategy that aims to associate the brand with influential users.     

‘Retweet for a Chance to…’: an analysis of what triggers consumers to engage in seeded eWOM on Twitter

Twitter provides an important channel for brands to seed electronic word of mouth (eWOM) by followers retweeting brand messages, but prior research has not established a theoretical framework for how brands can maximise eWOM. This study presents and tests a theoretical model incorporating interactive, textual and visual tweet features to predict eWOM, using tweets by leading brands from three industries. Industry was found to be an important moderator of the effect of tweet features; after controlling for the reach and frequency of tweets, hashtags, retweet requests and photos were consistently associated with a higher retweet rate across industries, but the effect of URL links, non-initial mentions and video varied across industries, in some cases decreasing the retweet rate. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Retweet if you please! Do news factors explain engagement?

Stakeholders’ engagement with corporate messages is crucial for companies that want to increase their social media coverage. However, our understanding of the content-related factors that drive stakeholders’ engagement is still poor. Drawing from the literature on news selection and distribution, this paper explores whether the relevant news values that are already found in corporate messages could also explain greater engagement in social media. In particular, six news factors were examined in a sample of 2331 tweets that were posted by the Euro Stoxx 50 companies. The results show that four news factors (in particular, Prominence, Entertainment, Immediacy, and to a lesser extent Human interest) play a role in the drive of content sharing through retweets and favorites. Additionally, the inclusion of hashtags and media content helps increase retweets and favorites. Finally, we observe differences among industries. In particular, firms operating in business-to-business industries obtain less reach through sharing. The implications of these results are relevant for social media strategists as they suggest avenues to increase followers’ engagement with company-produced content.     

Antecedents of Retweeting in a (Political) Marketing Context

Word of mouth disseminates across Twitter by means of retweeting; however, the antecedents of retweeting have not received much attention. We used the chi‐square automatic interaction detection (CHAID) decision tree predictive method (Kass, 1980 ) with readily available Twitter data, and manually coded sentiment and content data, to identify why some tweets are more likely to be retweeted than others in a (political) marketing context. The analysis includes four CHAID models: (1) using message structure variables only, (2) source variables only, (3) message content and sentiment variables only, and (4) a combined model using source, message structure, message content, and sentiment variables. The aggregated predictive model correctly classified retweeting behavior with a 76.7% success rate. Retweeting tends to occur when the originator has a high number of Twitter followers and the sentiment of the tweet is negative, contradicting previous research (East, Hammond, & Wright, 2007 ; Wu, 2013 ) but concurring with others (Hennig‐Thurau, Wiertz, & Feldhaus, 2014 ). Additionally, particular types of tweet content are associated with high levels of retweeting, in particular those tweets including fear appeals or expressing support for others, while others are associated with very low levels of retweeting, such as those mentioning the sender's personal life. Managerial implications and research directions are presented. We make a methodological contribution by illustrating how CHAID predictive modeling can be used for Twitter data analysis and a theoretical contribution by providing insights into why retweeting occurs in a (political) marketing context.     

The impact of influencer motives and commonness perceptions on follower reactions toward incentivized reviews

Brands often incentivize influencers to review their products. However, such incentivized product reviews may reflect negatively on the influencers’ credibility and authenticity, especially if the reviews are positive. Given the more personal nature of influencer-crafted reviews than other product review formats, we posit that the motives to accept incentives—disclosed by the influencer—determine followers’ reactions to incentivized reviews. In one survey, three experiments, and one field study, we contribute to prior research by showing that intrinsic incentivization acceptance motives can mitigate the negative effects of positive incentivized reviews on credibility and, ultimately, revisit intention and behavior. Moreover, we extend past work by demonstrating that influencer type (review vs. lifestyle) determines followers’ perceptions of influencer authenticity, feelings of betrayal, word of mouth, and revisit intention in reaction to an incentivized review. Specifically, we find that review influencer followers’ reactions are determined by their perceptions of incentivized review commonness, such that motives matter more if incentivization is less common, while motives matter less if incentivized review are perceived to be more common. By contrast, we show that lifestyle influencer followers’ reactions are driven by the communicated incentivization acceptance motives, regardless of the perceived commonness of incentivized reviews.     

Starbucks’ marketing communications strategy on Twitter

Many scholars have found that social media are extraordinarily useful platforms for marketers to engage their stakeholders. Much research has developed frameworks for and proposed empirical guidelines on how brands should communicate and interact with audiences on social media platforms. However, a comprehensive study that is based on a successful and reputable brand is still lacking. The objective of this research was to categorise the types of content used by one of the most admired brands in the world, Starbucks, and evaluate its effectiveness on Twitter. In total, the author studied 565 tweets and retweets and 1392 replies. This research found that Starbucks’ marketing communications strategy includes three types of original and retweeted content: information-sharing, emotion-evoking, and action-inducing content. The author also found six types of replies: information, Apology and suppot, positive comment, question and enquiry, chit-chat, and gratitude. To be successful on the social media platforms, this research suggests that brands should use various types of content, focus on visual content, and prepare for and manage customer interactions appropriately. The findings present useful and practical information for brands that seek to engage audiences using an inexpensive but compelling marketing communications strategy on social media.     

Social Media for Socially Responsible Firms: Analysis of Fortune 500’s Twitter Profiles and their CSR/CSIR Ratings

The instrumental benefits of firm’s CSR activities are contingent upon the stakeholders’ awareness and favorable attribution. While social media creates an important momentum for firms to cultivate favorable awareness by establishing a powerful framework of stakeholder relationships, the opportunities are not distributed evenly for all firms. In this paper, we investigate the impact of CSR credentials on the effectiveness of social media as a stakeholder-relationship management platform. The analysis of Fortune 500 companies in the Twitter sphere reveals that a higher CSR rating is a strong indicator of an earlier adoption, a faster establishment of online presence (followers), a higher responsiveness to the firm’s identity (replies and mentions), and a stronger virality of the messages (retweets). Incidentally, the higher CSIR rating is also found to be associated with the stronger virality. Our findings also suggest that socially responsible firms can harvest proactive stakeholders’ participation (user-driven communication) without investing more resources (firm-driven communication). As the first study that conceptualizes the social media as a proponent of CSR, this paper contends that “being socially responsible” makes more practical sense for firms with the rise of social media.     

Leading in a Highly Competitive Environment: Effects of CEO Confident Leadership on Follower Commitment in China

As a trait, leader confidence has been examined in major leadership theories, such as transformational/charismatic, Pygmalion, and empowering leadership. However, how confidence affects leadership effectiveness remains an empirical question. Conceptualizing leadership confidence in two behavioral approaches—demonstrating self-confidence (DC-self) and demonstrating confidence in followers (DC-follower)—this study tests the independent effects of the two DC behaviors as well as their interactive effects with firm environment on followers’ commitment. Results of Hierarchal Linear Modeling analyses suggest that both DC behaviors have significant impact on follower commitment and their effects attenuate each other. Results also reveal that DC-self interacts with firm environment to influence follower commitment. The effect of DC-self on follower commitment is stronger in a more competitive environment. Those findings and their implications for leadership research and practice are discussed.     

Pioneers and followers: Competitive tactics,environment, and firm growth

Market pioneering—where a firm is first to offer a distinctively new product to the market—is a commonly recognized form of corporate entrepreneurship. As with other forms of corporate entrepreneurship, the linkage between market pioneering and firm performance has received limited empirical attention, much of which has yielded inconsistent results. Nonetheless, two conclusions regarding when and how pioneering relates to firm performance are revealed in the literature. First, theory and past research suggest that pioneering is an environment-specific phenomenon. That is, certain types of environments may be most likely to encourage or reward the actions of pioneers, while these same actions may meet with limited success in other environments. Second, theory and past research suggest that firm performance is affected by the fit between a firm's pioneer/follower status and its competitive tactics. In other words, market entry order moderates the effectiveness of a firm's competitive tactics such that certain tactics will be most effective when employed by market pioneers, while other tactics will be most effective when employed by market followers.Considered jointly, the preceding observations suggest that insights might be gained regarding the effective management of market pioneering and market following by seeking to understand (a) how these phenomena are manifested in different industry environments and (b) what pioneers and followers do differently in these environments to promote their performance. The research described in this paper addresses these issues. In particular, this paper develops theory that describes how particular competitive tactics are thought to relate to firm sales growth rate among market pioneers and market followers in two distinct environmental settings. Hypotheses are developed based on the following research propositions:P1: In hostile environments, pioneers and followers will differentially benefit in achieving high sales growth rates from their reliance on relatively high prices, relatively broad product lines, relatively broad served (geographical) markets, relatively advanced process technologies, and relatively advantageous purchasing arrangements.P2: In benign environments, pioneers and followers will differentially benefit in achieving high sales growth rates from their reliance on relatively high quality products, relatively strong product warranties, relatively high advertising and promotion expenditures, relatively strong control over distribution channels employed, and relatively large numbers of distribution channels employed.To test the hypothesized relationships, data were collected from the senior managers of 103 independent, nondiversified manufacturing firms operating in 75 industries. Cluster analysis, ANOVA, and correlational analysis were employed as the principal analytical techniques.The results suggest that market pioneers grow neither more nor less rapidly than market followers. However, in hostile environments, pioneering may enable firms to break out of the dominant price-based mode of competition and grow in spite of charging high prices. This ability of pioneers to excel in hostile environments seems to be further facilitated by limiting product line breath to a small number of product offerings that provide a “tight fit” with market needs. Pioneers in hostile environments also appear to be relatively better served than followers from gaining a wide geographical distribution for their products. Followers in hostile environments, on the other hand, should seek to reduce their cost structures in order to effectively sustain low price strategies. The employment of advanced process technologies and the pursuit of “purchasing advantages” were actions which proved to be more advantageous for followers than for pioneers in hostile environments.The managerial implications of this research applicable to benign environment firms are quite different. Other things being equal, relatively high prices may not be as detrimental to growth among followers in benign environments as they are among followers in more hostile environments. Benign environment followers may, in fact, be better off when they charge relatively high prices and compete on non-price bases. The results also suggest that, in benign environments, offering products with warranties superior to those of competitors may have a significantly more positive effect on sales growth among pioneers than followers. Moreover, employing a large number of distribution channels appears to benefit pioneers more than followers. However, among the sampled firms, benign environment pioneers that realized the greatest growth did not have extensive control over distribution channel members. Therefore, benign environment pioneers may grow more quickly if they target their distribution-related resources toward expanding their channels rather than toward controlling some smaller number these channels.This study contributes to the pioneering literature by having corroborated several findings of the PIMS-based studies regarding tactical differences between pioneers and followers, and by having further documented the relevance of market entry order (or pioneer/follower status) as a moderator of the performance associated with particular competitive tactics. Moreover, by having examined the tactics-performance relationships of pioneers and followers in two distinct environmental settings, this study adds specificity and empirical support to the emerging theoretical paradigm that depicts pioneering as an environment-specific phenomenon. Finally, this study contributes to the literature on coping with hostility by having theorized about and empirically identified common and effective bases for competition under varying levels of environmental hostility.     

Influencer marketing: Social media influencers as human brands attaching to followers and yielding positive marketing results by fulfilling needs

While the literature related to this topic has predominantly focused on investigating the influence mechanism that social media influencers (SMIs) impose over their followers, less is known about their attachment mechanism. Given that social media platforms were originally designed to facilitate personal bonding and not product or brand recommendations, we posited that social media followers' emotional attachment to SMIs is an important precedent that affects the followers' behavioral inclination to accept the SMIs' endorsements. We thus drew new attention to the relationship between SMIs and their followers by focusing on their attachment development mechanism and its casual factors and effects. In doing so, Study 1 inductively analyzed the key causal factors, both with respect to SMI persona- and content-driven attributes, that make followers feel attached to SMIs. By integrating the findings of Study 1 with the human brand theory, Study 2 provided empirical evidence after analyzing 325 U.S. consumers' responses about how SMIs' personas (i.e., inspiration, enjoyability, and similarity) and content curation abilities (i.e., informativeness) affected followers to perceive the SMIs as human brands who fulfill their needs for ideality, relatedness, and competence—all of which resulted in an intense attachment to SMIs. It was this positive emotion shaped with SMIs that transferred to SMIs’ endorsements and positively influenced the followers to acquire the products/brands that the SMIs recommended.     

Leading national brands facing store brands competition: Is price competitiveness the only thing that matters?

Store Brands (SBs) have experienced a strong increase in both value and unit sales internationally during the last decades; thus their market share has been constantly growing. Starting from these considerations, the present work aims at deepening the topic of inter-brand competition within the FMCG market and, in particular, the market share trade-off between Leading National Brands (LNBs) and Store Brands. Our empirical analysis is based on panel data about 322 product categories sold within the Modern Grocery Distribution stores in the 2010–2013 period. Results obtained show: (i) the existence of a relationship between the increase in the LNB-SB price gap and the switching of market share from the former towards the latter; (ii) the consolidation of a change in consumers' purchasing preference in favor of SBs; (iii) the existence of an inverse relationship between the inter-brand competition intensity and the retail branding life cycle evolutionary stage, which is different for each product category.     

Missed eWOM opportunities: A cross-sector analysis of online monitoring behavior

This paper provides empirical evidence that major sectors of the USA are not listening to pertinent online conversations (electronic word-of-mouth [eWOM]) that occur outside of their own social media portals. Data include cross sector as well as longitudinal research on prominent sectors, including business, not for profits, and academia. The Inc. 500 (fastest-growing US companies), top charities, and colleges and universities all neglect, to some extent, the monitoring of eWOM. Findings indicate that monitoring behavior may be related to how involved an organization is in social media, if they have a written policy governing its use within the organization, if they have specific goals that are related to their social media plan, if they use tracking measures such as page views, numbers of fans or followers, and how they staff the social media function. Charities are most likely to engage in monitoring behavior for their causes. The academic sector often employs part-time (student) assistance with its social media initiatives, ultimately resulting in less monitoring behavior.     

Please Accept My Sincerest Apologies: Examining Follower Reactions to Leader Apology

Recognizing gaps in our present understanding of leader apologies, this investigation examines how followers appraise leader apologies and how these perceptions impact work-related outcomes. Results indicate that followers who viewed their leader as trustworthy or caring before a leader wrongdoing were more likely to perceive their leader’s apology to be sincere, as compared to followers who previously doubted their leader’s trustworthiness and caring. Attributions of apology sincerity affected follower reactions, with followers perceiving sincere apologies reporting greater trust in leadership, satisfaction with supervision, leader–member exchange quality, affective organizational commitment, and forgiveness than those reporting insincere or no apologies. A mediation model was supported, showing that attributions of apology sincerity fostered perceptions of humility, which enhanced perceptions of transformational leadership, and consequently garnered more positive follower reactions.     

Seek or destroy? Examining value creation and destruction in behaviour maintenance in social marketing

This article presents an empirical investigation of how behaviour maintenance is supported or hindered through value creation and destruction in social marketing. Using a longitudinal, netnographic approach, we identify and examine the key facilitators and barriers encountered during the maintenance of physical and mental health behaviours. Data were collected over a 12-week observation period via Twitter from a sample of 242 participants. A total of 5212 tweets were analysed using content and thematic analysis facilitated by NVivo software program. The findings identify key barriers to and facilitators of behaviour maintenance at the individual level (downstream), meso level (midstream), and policy level (upstream) that have an influence on value creation and destruction in social marketing. These findings demonstrate the importance of employing a strategic and integrated approach to social change management.     

Marketing through Instagram influencers: the impact of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude

ABSTRACT

Findings of two experimental studies show that Instagram influencers with high numbers of followers are found more likeable, partly because they are considered more popular. Important, only in limited cases, perceptions of popularity induced by the influencer's number of followers increase the influencer's perceived opinion leadership. However, if the influencer follows very few accounts him-/herself, this can negatively impact popular influencers’ likeability. Also, cooperating with influencers with high numbers of followers might not be the best marketing choice for promoting divergent products, as this decreases the brand's perceived uniqueness and consequently brand attitudes.     

How social presence drives commitment and loyalty with online brand communities? the role of social commerce trust

Increasing interest in social commerce has been accompanied by concerns about creating high-quality customer relationships. Brands are particularly interested in how they may foster the creation of commitment and loyalty regarding their online social commerce communities. The present study contributes to this question by examining the relationship between social presence and customer relationship quality by means of customer commitment and loyalty. More specifically, this study clarifies the role of social commerce trust in this relationship. Based on 189 questionnaires from social commerce users, the direct relationships between social presence and commitment as well as loyalty are not supported, in contrast to prior findings. The results show that social commerce trust fully mediates the relationship between social presence and commitment as well as loyalty in social commerce online brand communities.     

The Cinderella moment: Exploring consumers' motivations to engage with renting as collaborative luxury consumption mode

Past literature argued that the purchase of luxury goods is driven by people's motivation to conform or fit into our economic and social system. In this study, the authors focus on a new aspect of consumption, that is, renting instead of purchasing luxury goods, backed by the emerging opportunities of sharing economy platforms. Drawing upon the analysis of spontaneous consumers' online communications (in the form of tweets), this study aims to investigate the motivations to engage with luxury garment renting within a collaborative consumption context. To this end, a series of automatic content analyses, via two studies, were conducted using the tweets posted with respect to the Run the Runway collaborative consumption platform. Results demonstrate consumers' increased willingness to show their social status through renting rather than owning luxurious apparel based on five main motivators (need to wear new clothes for a special event, inspirations created by the products/brands, possibility to explore a new way of consuming luxury goods, need to make more sustainable choices, and to increase the life cycle of each luxury product). The implications of these findings are discussed, while they pave the way for future research in collaborative consumption of luxury retailing.     

Payday Loan Marketing in Social Media Networks

The payday lending industry has grown dramatically over the past two decades, with lenders increasingly marketing their products on the Internet. However, little is known about payday loan (PDL ) marketing through social media networks. Our study is the first to report the PDL promotions on Twitter. Out of 23,276 tweets related to PDLs from June 29, 2015 to October 2, 2015, 71% were commercial tweets, most of which came from a small percentage of users. The overall impact to the general public was large and we observed a range of opinions in our sentiment analysis. Commercial tweets had an average sentiment score of 34.9 while noncommercial had a total average sentiment score of 50.7. Commercial tweets were more concentrated in states with restrictive or hybrid regulations on PDL . Our findings provide evidence for enhancing online PDL regulations and using social media data for real‐time monitoring of PDL lending.     

Ethics Matter: Moderating Leaders’ Power Use and Followers’ Citizenship Behaviors

Followers’ perceptions of their leaders’ ethics have the potential to impact the way they react to the influence of these leaders. The present study of 365 U.S. Air Force Academy Cadets examined how followers’ perceptions of their leaders’ ethics moderated the relationships found between the leaders’ use of power, as conceptualized by French and Raven (Studies in social power, 1959), and the followers’ contextual performance. Our results indicated that leaders’ use of expert, referent, and reward power was associated with higher levels of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) among their followers when the followers perceived these leaders to be more ethical. Moreover, when followers perceived their leaders to be less ethical, these followers reported lower levels of OCBs when their leaders’ utilized referent power. Practical implications, limitations, and future research are also discussed.     

The impact of influencers' multi-SNS use on followers’ behavioral intentions: An integration of cue consistency theory and social identity theory

The considerable marketing potential brought by the rapid growth of social media has been extensively examined in the literature, particularly in terms of the impact of influencers' recommendations on their followers' decisions. However, little attention has been given to how the individual influencers' use of multiple social networking sites affects their followers' behavioral intentions. Hence, this academic gap warrants further exploration. Drawing on cue consistency theory, social identity theory, and stimulus-organism-response framework, this research proposes three research questions and constructs an integrated research model to explore how the influencers' cue consistency affects the social identification of their followers, subsequently influencing their behavioral intentions. A structural equation modeling technique is performed to analyze the data of 510 valid respondents. The findings show that influencers' consistent cues (i.e., information and image consistency) across social media have positive impacts on followers' cognitive and affective identification toward the influencers. Furthermore, the determinants for followers' purchase intention and electronic word-of-mouth intention are affirmed to serve as both cognitive and affective identification. Especially, the results indicate that the relationships between followers’ social identifications and behavioral intentions are moderated by the type of influencer (i.e., lifestyle vs. review). Accordingly, the results indicate how the use of multiple social networking sites by influencers impacts the behavioral intentions of their followers. The findings offer new insights into influencer marketing and provide important lessons for marketers.