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Understanding the differential effectiveness of marketer versus user-generated advertisements in closed social networking sites: an empirical study of WeChat

Teng Teng (School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China)
Huifang Li (School of Management, International Institute of Finance, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China)
Yulin Fang (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China)
Lingzhi Shen (Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK)

Internet Research

ISSN: 1066-2243

Article publication date: 17 March 2022

Issue publication date: 2 November 2022

743

Abstract

Purpose

In recent years, closed social networking sites (SNSs) have become popular advertising media. Marketer-generated advertisements (MGAs) and user-generated advertisements (UGAs) are the two pillars of advertising businesses. The objective of this research is to investigate and compare how these ad types (i.e. MGA versus UGA) affect advertising effectiveness in closed SNSs.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a scenario-based experiment of 403 WeChat users in China and used partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to examine the research model.

Findings

The study results indicate that UGAs perform better than MGAs in enhancing consumers' perceived informativeness, credibility and entertainment, while MGAs are more likely to make consumers feel irritated than UGAs in closed SNSs. Moreover, consumers' perceived informativeness, credibility and entertainment positively influence advertising effectiveness, whereas perceived irritation negatively affects it.

Originality/value

This study reveals consumers' psychological response mechanisms to MGA and UGA and sheds light on their differential effectiveness by extending the stimuli-organism-response model to the context of closed SNSs.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the senior editor, the associate editor, and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable guidance and insightful comments. This study was supported by MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences [Project No. 21YJC630058], the grant from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [Project No. 71601027], and the General Research Fund (GRF) offered by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [Project NO. 11509420].

Citation

Teng, T., Li, H., Fang, Y. and Shen, L. (2022), "Understanding the differential effectiveness of marketer versus user-generated advertisements in closed social networking sites: an empirical study of WeChat", Internet Research, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 1910-1929. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-04-2021-0268

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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