用户生成内容如何影响多渠道零售商品牌权益——一个调节聚焦范式下的研究框架

多渠道零售商品牌权益是优化多渠道零售商绩效的关键所在。用户生成内容建立起消费者和零售企业之间沟通的媒介,能有效促进消费者对零售商线上线下渠道感知的转移及融合,是互联网环境下促进消费者品牌态度形成的重要基础,对多渠道零售商品牌权益具有重要影响。基于调节聚焦理论构建用户生成内容影响多渠道零售商品牌权益的概念框架,发现用户生成内容的质量和类型影响零售商品牌权益,而消费者的调节聚焦倾向对零售商品牌权益有调节作用,消费者的调节聚焦倾向与信息框架的匹配度影响多渠道零售商的品牌权益,有效挖掘和利用用户生成内容能促进零售商品牌权益增值。因此,加强对用户生成内容质量的影响因素研究,提高和运用跨学科研究方法,完善对多渠道零售商不同渠道间策略的系统性研究将是未来该领域的主要研究方向。     

品牌中心和非品牌中心企业生成内容对品牌态度的影响——基于新浪微博的实证研究

本文分析品牌相关用户生成内容,计算用户品牌态度,基于此研究非品牌中心和品牌中心企业生成内容对品牌态度的影响。本文将品牌态度的认知、情感、行为意向维度,以及品牌态度的正、负维度综合考虑。研究结果显示,非品牌中心和品牌中心企业生成内容对品牌态度以及情感、认知、行为意向维度的影响无显著差异;但除了正向和负向行为意向外,非品牌中心内容对正向品牌态度的正向影响更低,对负向品牌态度的负向影响也更低。     

消费者社群地位与生成内容有效性的关系研究

随着Web2.0技术的发展,消费者可通过在线网络或社区自由地生成各种各样的内容。通过对太平洋快问网收集的数据进行科学分析,结果表明:消费者的社群地位正向影响其生成内容的有效性;消费者生成内容的领域宽度中介了社群地位与生成内容有效性的关系,并从总体上对生成内容的信息量和有效性产生负向影响;消费者生成内容的频率中介了社群地位与生成内容有效性的关系,并从总体上对生成内容的有效性产生负向影响;消费者生成内容的信息量中介了社群地位与生成内容有效性的关系,并对生成内容的有效性产生正向影响。     

虚拟社群中的品牌定位——基于用户生成内容点互信息的实证研究

互联网的迅速发展使得虚拟的品牌社群不断涌现,如何测量用户生成内容中有关品牌的定位,从而了解用户对品牌的感知情况,对于营销理论界和实务界都具有重要意义。在研究中,开拓性地使用了点互信息理论和语义分析方法,从用户生成的文本信息中挖掘用户对品牌的感知情况,并将其量化得到品牌知觉图。通过对数据的分析,了解品牌在虚拟社群的用户中感知定位与公司定位初衷的差异,并且得到相互竞争的品牌在相同的定位维度上的差异。     

情境因素对网络社群中消费者生成内容行为的影响研究——以IT产品消费为例

Web2.0技术的发展,使得消费者可通过在线网络或社区自由地生成内容,但少有研究关注情境因素对消费者生成内容行为的影响。本文通过从现有网络消费者社群中收集数据,采用客观度量的方式,研究了情境因素对消费者生成内容行为的影响。结果表明,消费者生成内容行为受到激励、标识、地位、知识和声望的影响。更具体地说,与无激励相比,消费者在有激励的条件下,对其他消费者的问题响应更加及时,响应的平均速度也更快,生成内容所含信息量更多;网络社群团队成员标识和级别地位都对消费者生成内容的频率及信息量产生正向影响;网络社群消费者的级别地位正向影响其生成内容领域的发展,并进而影响其生成内容频率的变化;网络社群消费者向其声望领域生成内容更加及时,且生成内容所含信息量更大。     

用户生成内容中的时间毗邻线索对消费者的影响研究

用户生成内容正成为消费者在决策过程中越来越重要的依据,不少企业通过鼓励消费者转发企业宣传文章或在社交平台上发布评价内容的方式进行宣传,用户生成内容营销成为企业重要的宣传途径之一。本研究采用实验的方法,提出用户生成内容中时间毗邻的信息会通过影响消费者的感知可信度从而影响购买意愿,其中性别在时间毗邻线索与购买意愿之间起调节作用,时间毗邻线索的形式对男性的购买意愿没有显著影响。最后根据研究的结论,为企业提供新的营销建议。     

用户生成内容模式对消费者购买行为影响的实证研究——感知价值的调节

通过文献资料的整理，本文总结了用户生成内容（UGC）模式的四大特征。利用数据收集、分析加以实证研究，结合感知价值对消费者购买行为进行研究分析，探讨了UGC模式对消费者购买行为的影响以及感知价值所起的作用。得出下述结论：意见领袖影响力对消费者购买行为有正面影响、推荐信息特征对消费者购买行为有正面影响、买家评论口碑对消费者购买行为有正面影响、社区规范特征对消费者购买行为有正面影响、感知价值会加强买家推荐信息特征对消费者购买行为的正面影响、感知价值会加强买家评论口碑对消费者购买行为的正面影响。     

企业微博互动对消费者品牌态度的影响研究

基于"S-O-R"理论和使用与满足理论,以微博互动的信息互动和人际互动两个维度为自变量,社会临场感为中介变量,消费者品牌态度为因变量,构建了企业微博互动对消费者品牌态度影响的模型。通过采用问卷调查法进行研究,共收集有效问卷471份,并借助SPSS20.0统计软件对问卷信度进行检验,对于问卷效度的测量选用因子分析的方法,验证此研究中所有测量量表均达到标准,问卷具有良好效度。并通过回归分析,及对结果进行实证分析,得出结论:企业微博互动中信息互动和人际互动均对消费者品牌态度有正向影响关系,同时社会临场感在微博互动与消费者品牌态度之间起部分中介作用。     

人工智能算法推荐会增加消费者的品牌好感吗?

利用人工智能算法推荐相关产品或广告信息已成为企业普遍采用的方式，然而人工智能算法推荐会增加消费者的品牌好感吗?本研究基于心理抗拒理论，从消费者的心理特征视角切入，利用情景实验以及Bootstrap等回归统计分析方法，研究人工智能算法推荐的隐私性和侵入性负面特征如何影响消费者对品牌的态度，以及消费者对品牌的依恋是否会改善其品牌态度。研究发现：人工智能算法推荐的隐私性和侵入性特征对消费者品牌态度产生显著负面影响；人工智能算法推荐的隐私性和侵入性特征会导致消费者的心理抗拒进而影响消费者的品牌态度；品牌依恋在侵入性特征与心理抗拒的关系中具有显著的正向调节作用。     

基于品牌知晓度的内容营销与品牌忠诚研究

随着互联网影响力的增强,消费者更加趋向于在网上搜索有关产品的相关信息,而能否创造出激发消费者主动分享和传播的促销内容成为新的营销挑战。根据信息双重加工理论和SOR理论建立内容营销、品牌认同、品牌知晓度和品牌忠诚之间关系的理论模型,通过对广西部分企业发放问卷的方式收集样本数据,进行信效度的分析、相关性分析、模型的修正与拟合优度检验,发现内容营销对品牌认同有积极的正向作用,品牌认同对品牌忠诚(行为忠诚和态度忠诚)有积极的正向作用,品牌知晓度在内容营销和品牌认同之间发挥正向的调节作用。因此,组织管理者应有效运用内容营销策略,从加深消费者对品牌知晓度的角度营造有利于消费者品牌认同的环境氛围,进一步增强消费者的品牌忠诚。     

An Investigation of Brand-Related User-Generated Content on Twitter

The big data of user-generated content (UGC) on social media are laden with potential value for brand managers. However, there are many obstacles to using big data to answer brand-management questions. This article presents a framework that automatically derives latent brand topics and classifies brand sentiments. It applies text mining with latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and sentiment analysis on 1.7 million unique tweets for 20 brands across five industries: fast food, department store, footwear, electronics, and telecommunications. The framework is used to explore four brand-related questions on Twitter. There are three main findings. First, product, service, and promotions are the dominant topics of interest when consumers interact with brands on Twitter. Second, consumer sentiments toward brands vary within and across industries. Third, separate company-specific analyses of positive and negative tweets generate a more accurate understanding of Twitter users' major brand topics and sentiments. Our findings provide brand managers with actionable insights in targeted advertising, social customer relationship management (CRM), and brand management.     

The effect of social media communication on consumer perceptions of brands

Researchers and brand managers have limited understanding of the effects social media communication has on how consumers perceive brands. We investigated 504 Facebook users in order to observe the impact of firm-created and user-generated (UG) social media communication on brand equity (BE), brand attitude (BA) and purchase intention (PI) by using a standardized online survey throughout Poland. To test the conceptual model, we analyzed 60 brands across three different industries: non-alcoholic beverages, clothing and mobile network operators. When analyzing the data, we applied the structural equation modeling technique to both investigate the interplay of firm-created and user-generated social media communication and examine industry-specific differences. The results of the empirical studies showed that user-generated social media communication had a positive influence on both brand equity and brand attitude, whereas firm-created social media communication affected only brand attitude. Both brand equity and brand attitude were shown to have a positive influence on purchase intention. In addition, we assessed measurement invariance using a multi-group structural modeling equation. The findings revealed that the proposed measurement model was invariant across the researched industries. However, structural path differences were detected across the models.     

Showrooming,Webrooming, and User-Generated Content Creation in the Omnichannel Era

Omnichannel retailing characterizes a seamless and integrated approach of diverse retail channels. Showrooming and webrooming are prominent shopping trends among consumers in omnichannel retail. The purpose of this study was to examine (1) whether omnichannel consumers’ psychographic characteristics (i.e., information attainment, price comparison, social interaction, assortment seeking, and convenience seeking) had an influence on showrooming and webrooming, which then had an influence on omnichannel consumers’ user-generated content creation intention on social media and (2) whether the social-local-mobile (SoLoMo) experience moderated the links between omnichannel consumers’ showrooming/webrooming and user-generated content creation intention. An online survey was administered to a total of 680 omnichannel consumers with showrooming and webrooming experience from a U.S. consumer panel. This study found that omnichannel consumers’ showrooming and webrooming positively affected user-generated content creation intention on social media. Omnichannel consumers’ information attainment, price comparison, and social interaction positively affected showrooming. Information attainment, social interaction, and assortment seeking positively affected webrooming. The SoLoMo experience moderated the link between webrooming and user-generated content creation intention on social media. Managerial implications were discussed.     

Challenging Traditional Culture? How Personal and National Collectivism-Individualism Moderates the Effects of Content Characteristics and Social Relationships on Consumer Engagement with Brand-Related User-Generated Content

Consumers across the globe increasingly engage with user-generated content about brands on social networking sites (i.e., brand-related user-generated content [Br-UGC]). As online consumer behavior does not occur in a cultural void, the present study extends earlier research by explicitly examining how the collectivism-individualism dimension, both at the national and at the personal level, influences consumers’ engagement (“liking,” commenting on, and sharing) with different types of Br-UGC created by different sources. Results based on a diverse sample of participants from South Korea, Thailand, the Netherlands, and the United States (N?=?812) suggest that collectivism-individualism at the national level moderates the effects of content characteristics and social relationships on Br-UGC engagement. Moreover, consumers who hold the same values as others in their national culture are more comfortable sharing informative Br-UGC.     

Extracting brand information from social networks: Integrating image,text, and social tagging data

Images are an essential feature of many social networking services, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Through brand-related images, consumers communicate about brands with each other and link the brand with rich contextual and consumption experiences. However, previous articles in marketing research have concentrated on deriving brand information from textual user-generated content and have largely not considered brand-related images. The analysis of brand-related images yields at least two challenges. First, the content displayed in images is heterogeneous, and second, images rarely show what users think and feel in or about the situations displayed. To meet these challenges, this article presents a two-step approach that involves collecting, labeling, clustering, aggregating, mapping, and analyzing brand-related user-generated content. The collected data are brand-related images, caption texts, and social tags posted on Instagram. Clustering images labeled via Google Cloud Vision API enabled to identify heterogeneous contents (e.g. products) and contexts (e.g. situations) that consumers create content about. Aggregating and mapping the textual information for the resulting image clusters in the form of associative networks empowers marketers to derive meaningful insights by inferring what consumers think and feel about their brand regarding different contents and contexts.     

How special rewards in loyalty programs enrich consumer–brand relationships: The role of self-expansion

Although brands offer different kinds of rewards through their loyalty programs, little is known about how they can impact consumer–brand relationships and brand attitude. How do loyalty program rewards influence the consumer–brand relationship? And which kinds of rewards establish or maintain closer relationships between consumers and brands than others? To answer these questions, the present research makes use of self-expansion theory (Aron & Aron, 1986) and two experiments that manipulate the extraordinary character of rewards offered to consumers. Our findings show that special rewards produce higher self-expansion than mundane rewards. Moreover, the positive effect of the rewards’ extraordinary character on brand evaluation, recommendation, and identification is sequentially and fully mediated by self-brand inclusion and self-expansion. Finally, we show that consumer satisfaction moderates the impact of special and mundane rewards on self-brand inclusion.     

Brand loyalty evolution and the impact of category characteristics

A common managerial belief indicates that brand loyalty declines over the years, with consumers becoming more heterogeneous in their choices. The earlier research investigating the phenomenon of brand loyalty decline is, however, inconclusive and does not offer an answer to the reasons behind brand loyalty evolution. In this study, we investigate brand loyalty evolution and explore the impact that a number of category characteristics have on driving brand loyalty evolution. We use Danish panel data across 54 categories over a period of 6 years (2006–2011). Our findings show that at the aggregate level, brand loyalty declines, but this evolution is category-specific, with only a small number of categories showing a significant decline. We further demonstrate that an increase in category penetration results in a negative impact on brand loyalty evolution, whereas an increase in the share of private label brands has a positive impact. We discuss the implications for theory and practice.

     

Let Users Generate Your Video Ads? The Impact of Video Source and Quality on Consumers' Perceptions and Intended Behaviors

The advent of social media has challenged companies as sole creators of marketing messages. Whether intentionally branded or subconsciously promoted, users become ambassadors for products and brands by producing and disseminating user-generated content (UGC). Whereas previous studies on UGC have mainly considered verbal peer recommendations or written reviews, our research focuses on user-generated videos (UGVs). In our 2 (source: user vs. agency) × 2 (technical quality: low vs. high) experimental study, we explore the impact of user-generated videos (UGVs) vs. agency-generated videos (AGVs) on spectators' perceived source credibility and their intention to visit the tourist destination Tyrol in Austria, as promoted in the video. In addition, we explore the moderating role of video quality. In contrast to conventional wisdom, our results indicate that there is no general superiority of UGVs over AGVs. Rather, the influence of different video generators (user vs. agency) on spectators' perception and intended behavior depends on the technical quality of the video. In the case of low technical quality, users as generators have a significantly stronger positive effect on source trustworthiness and expertise – and thereby on consumers' intended behaviors – than AGVs. However, no impact from the generating source on trustworthiness has been found under the condition of highly technical quality. Concerning source expertise, videos generated by users are rated more highly than agency-generated videos under both low and high technical qualities, but the advantage is significantly lower under high technical quality. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of user-generated content overall and relativize the widely assumed general superiority of user-generated content over commercial, firm-generated content, at least in the case of videos.     

Do green packages lead to misperceptions? The influence of package colors on consumers’ perceptions of brands with environmental claims

Consumers need accurate information about brands’ environmental impacts to guide their purchase decisions. Researchers have studied consumers’ perceptions of green products and marketers’ environmental claims. Policy makers provide guidelines to minimize deceptiveness of environmental claims. Yet, little attention has been paid to what contextual cues can influence consumers’ judgments of environmental claims and green products. Drawing on conceptual fluency theory, the current research proposes that a color that matches the content of a message makes the information easier to process, thereby increasing the appeal of the message. The authors demonstrate that using the color green on a product’s package can enhance consumers’ perceptions of the brand’s environmental impact. Ironically, this positive effect of green can also lead to consumers’ misperceptions of the brand’s environmental impact if green is used for brands that are not environmentally superior. Implications and suggestions for policy makers, marketers, and consumers are provided.