Search results

Actor engagement (AE) literature shows inconsistent understandings of engagement intensity. However, a holistic picture of the nature of AE intensity is foundational to advance empirical AE models and measurement frameworks. This paper provides a nuanced understanding of what engagement intensity is and how it unfolds on different network levels.

This conceptual study draws from a literature review and offers a comprehensive classification scheme of AE intensity. The literature review extends beyond marketing and service research and draws from the etymology of AE intensity in management and social science, specifically, the fields of student, employee and civic engagement.

The classification scheme clarifies that AE intensity at the individual level refers to actors' affective and cognitive tone and varying magnitudes (i.e. efforts, duration, activeness) of resource investments. At the dyad level, AE intensity represents relational strength, and at the network level, it refers to the degree of connectedness in the network.

The research reconciles conceptual inconsistencies in the AE literature. Our classification scheme goes beyond the individual actor and actor–actor dyad and offers a holistic overview of possible ways to operationalize AE intensity in networks.

The classification scheme can be used as a strategic checklist to include AE intensities of individual actors (e.g. customers and employees), relationships between these actors and network connectedness, when further developing engagement measurement tools and benchmarks.

This is the first study providing a comprehensive understanding of AE intensity from an individual, dyadic and network perspective.

Although governments have used social media platforms to interact with the public in an attempt to minimize anxiety and provide a forum for public discussion during the pandemic, governments require sufficient crisis communication skills to engage citizens in taking appropriate action effectively. This study aims to examine how the National Health Commission of China (NHCC) has used TikTok, the leading short video–based platform, to facilitate public engagement during COVID-19.

Building upon dual process theories, this study integrates the activation of information exposure, prosocial interaction theory and social sharing of emotion theory to explore how public engagement is related to message sensation value (MSV), media character, content theme and emotional valence. A total of 354 TikTok videos posted by NHCC were collected during the pandemic to explore the determinants of public engagement in crises.

The findings demonstrate that MSV negatively predicts public engagement with government TikTok, but that instructional information increases engagement. The presence of celebrities and health-care professionals negatively affects public engagement with government TikTok accounts. In addition, emotional valence serves a moderating role between MSV, media characters and public engagement.

Government agencies must be fully aware of the different combinations of MSV and emotion use in the video title when releasing crisis-related videos. Government agencies can also leverage media characters – health professionals in particular – to enhance public engagement. Government agencies are encouraged to solicit public demand for the specific content of instructing information through data mining techniques.

Social media platforms are highly visible platforms, so politicians try to maximize their benefits from their use, especially during election campaigns. On the other side, people express their views and sentiments toward politicians and political issues on social media, thus enabling them to observe their online political behavior. Therefore, this study aims to investigate user reactions on social media during the 2016 US presidential campaign to decide which candidate invoked stronger emotions on social media.

For testing the proposed hypotheses regarding emotional reactions to social media content during the 2016 presidential campaign, regression analysis was used to analyze a data set that consists of Trump’s 996 posts and Clinton’s 1,253 posts on Facebook. The proposed regression models are based on viral (likes, shares, comments) and emotional Facebook reactions (Angry, Haha, Sad, Surprise, Wow) as well as Russell’s valence, arousal, dominance (VAD) circumplex model for valence, arousal and dominance.

The results of regression analysis indicate how Facebook users felt about both presidential candidates. For Clinton’s page, both positive and negative content are equally liked, while Trump’s followers prefer funny and positive emotions. For both candidates, positive and negative content influences the number of comments. Trump’s followers mostly share positive content and the content that makes them angry, while Clinton’s followers share any content that does not make them angry. Based on VAD analysis, less dominant content, with high arousal and more positive emotions, is more liked on Trump’s page, where valence is a significant predictor for commenting and sharing. More positive content is more liked on Clinton’s page, where both positive and negative emotions with low arousal are correlated to commenting and sharing of posts.

Building on an empirical data set from Facebook, this study shows how differently the presidential candidates communicated on social media during the 2016 election campaign. According to the findings, Trump used a hard campaign strategy, while Clinton used a soft strategy.

In marketing research, it is widely acknowledged that customer engagement leads to higher reputation, lower costs and increased revenues for firms. However, there are still open questions on how sport sponsorship can drive customer engagement. It is hypothesized that sponsors' activations correlate with customer engagement toward the sponsor. Specifically, the roles of sponsorship authenticity and attitudes toward the sponsor have received little attention in this context. Accordingly, this study aims to test the effects of sponsors' activations on customer engagement disposition (CED) and customer engagement behavior (CEB) by considering the roles of sponsorship authenticity and attitudes toward the sponsor.

An online experiment with a factorial between-subjects design with 529 total participants was conducted. Data were analyzed through analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and binary regression analysis.

Sponsors' activations can lead to positive or negative CEB, depending on how sport consumers evaluate the activation. Sponsorship authenticity reduces or enhances CEB following a sponsor's activation. Moreover, consumers' prior attitudes toward the sponsor influence the relationship between sponsors' activations and CED. The findings further showed that CED leads to CEB.

This research contributes to the sport sponsorship literature by empirically proving that sponsors' activations increase customer engagement toward the sponsors. Moreover, this is the first study testing consequences of sponsors' activations in relation to sponsorship authenticity and consumers' attitudes. Furthermore, the authors enrich the customer engagement literature by discussing the sponsors' activations as a marketing strategy to increase customer engagement and consequently firms' performance.

Given inconsistent results in prior studies, this paper applies the dual process theory to investigate what social media messages yield audience engagement during a political event. It tests how affective cues (emotional valence, intensity and collective self-representation) and cognitive cues (insight, causation, certainty and discrepancy) contribute to public engagement.

The authors created a dataset of more than three million tweets during the 2020 United States (US) presidential elections. Affective and cognitive cues were assessed via sentiment analysis. The hypotheses were tested in negative binomial regressions. The authors also scrutinized a subsample of far-famed Twitter users. The final dataset, scraping code, preprocessing and analysis are available in an open repository.

The authors found the prominence of both affective and cognitive cues. For the overall sample, negativity bias was registered, and the tweet’s emotionality was negatively related to engagement. In contrast, in the sub-sample of tweets from famous users, emotionally charged content produced higher engagement. The role of sentiment decreases when the number of followers grows and ultimately becomes insignificant for Twitter participants with many followers. Collective self-representation (“we-talk”) is consistently associated with more likes, comments and retweets in the overall sample and subsamples.

The authors expand the dominating one-sided perspective to social media message processing focused on the peripheral route and hence affective cues. Leaning on the dual process theory, the authors shed light on the effectiveness of both affective (peripheral route) and cognitive (central route) cues on information appeal and dissemination on Twitter during a political event. The popularity of the tweet’s author moderates these relationships.

This article explores how firms' unresponsiveness to Black customer feedback influences Black (vs. White) customers' perceived firm-based discrimination and brand engagement.

Two experimental studies (Study 1(N1) = 254) and Study 1(N2) = 484) are conducted to test the modeled relationships. The data are analyzed using ANOVA, PROCESS Model 4 and PROCESS Model 7.

The findings suggest that though perceived discrimination remains modest in all conditions, Black (vs. White) respondents report higher perceived discrimination when the firm fails to respond to a Black customer's negative or neutral (but not positive) brand-related feedback on social media. The results also indicate that Black (vs. White) customers exhibit lower engagement through perceived discrimination in the case of the firm's unresponsiveness to a Black customer's negative and neutral (but not positive) brand-related feedback regardless of the manager's race.

Prior research on intercultural service encounters and ethnic differences in consumer engagement on social media are combined to examine the relationship between customer race and perceived discrimination based on the firm's unresponsiveness to customers' social media posts.

Manipulations were created based on a fictitious e-tailer. Thus, it is recommend that future researchers examine the extent to which the findings hold for existing (r)etailers. In addition, future studies using secondary data could provide additional evidence for the findings.

Managerial attention is accentuated among customer feedback responsiveness, engagement and perceived firm discrimination. Managers are encouraged to adopt communication strategies that complement the firm's strategy and social media presence.

This study aims to distinguish between service arguments and communication arguments within a home-sharing review and to investigate their roles in consumer purchase decision-making.

Based on the setting of Airbnb, a 3 (service argument valence: positive, neutral, and negative) × 3 (communication argument valence: positive, neutral, and negative) online experiment was conducted. Data collected from 379 participants were used to test the hypotheses.

The three main determinants of purchase intention: perceived host service quality, perceived facility service quality, and perceived social value, are affected by both service arguments and communication arguments. Service arguments positively influence perceived host service quality and perceived facility service quality, while communication arguments contribute significantly to perceived host service quality and perceived social value. However, perceived facility service quality is affected by the combination of service arguments and communication arguments rather than by the service arguments only, because service argument trustworthiness, a factor influencing the effect of service arguments, varies across the combination of two types of arguments.

This research helps home-sharing platform managers to understand how to facilitate transaction success through displaying different review arguments needed by consumers. Additionally, the dual role of communication arguments emphasizes a necessity for hosts to encourage positive communication arguments and provide additional cues on the facility service quality.

The service arguments and communication arguments in home-sharing reviews are distinguished, and their distinct roles in consumers' purchase intention have been uncovered.

This study aims to develop and test an integrative model that examines the effects of customization and perceived employee authenticity on customer delight, which in turn influences customers’ willingness to recommend (WTR) and willingness to pay a premium (WTPP) as outcomes in a hotel context. The moderating role of online review valence in this process is also examined.

This study adopts a 2 (customization: low vs high) × 2 (perceived employee authenticity: low vs high) × 2 (online review valence: negative vs positive) experimental design. A total of 409 US consumers were recruited and randomly assigned to a hotel check-in scenario. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships.

Findings confirmed the role of customer delight in mediating customization and employee authenticity on WTR and WTPP. In addition, perceived employee authenticity was a stronger driver of customer delight for consumers exposed to negative online reviews than for those exposed to positive reviews.

The findings provide useful guidance in designing efficient service strategies for generating a delightful customer experience. Hotel practitioners should provide customized services and manage employees in a way that helps them deliver authentic services that achieve customer delight. Understanding that customer expectations formed through online reviews play a significant role in service evaluations, hotel managers make an extra effort to monitor online reviews and manage customer expectations.

Although existing research suggests that customer delight plays an important role in positive consumer outcomes, there is still potential space to explore the theoretical mediational mechanisms underlying this effect and the moderating effect on this relationship between customer delight and consumer responses. This study contributes by testing the moderating impact of online review valence and the mediating impact of customer delight.

Wine producers and marketing professionals increasingly recognize the significance of online wine reviews. Emotions have long been acknowledged as influential in online review behaviors. However, considering the multisensory nature of the wine experience, consumers’ wine expertise also plays a substantial role. Hence, this study aims to examine the online review behaviors exhibited by wine consumers through the dual lens of wine expertise and emotionality.

Two studies were conducted to address the research question. Study 1 explored the relationship among expertise, emotionality and review behaviors using a panel data model, with a data set consisting of 4,600,922 reviews from Vivino.com. Study 2 used a multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis using data obtained from an online survey. Study 2 aimed to investigate the interactive impact of emotionality and expertise on online review intention mediated by customer engagement.

The findings from Study 1 demonstrated a positive correlation between emotionality and online wine reviews. In addition, expertise displayed a bell-shaped relationship with both emotionality and online wine reviews. Study 2, in turn, uncovered that novices and experts experienced a direct influence of emotionality on their review intentions. In contrast, for those classified as ordinary, the influence of emotionality on review intention occurred indirectly through the mediation of customer engagement.

This paper extends the current literature on online wine review by integrating the effect of emotion and expertise on online wine review behaviors, expanding the examination of Dunning–Kruger effect in the wine literature. It also adds value by introducing emotionality and the Evaluative Lexicon into the hospitality literature, extending the measurement of emotion from valence and extremity to a third dimension, emotionality, in hospitality and wine domains.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic study of important research trends and published electronic word of mouth (eWOM) studies over the past 20 years in the emerging economy. This research is designed to identify the key areas of eWOM based on the Antecedents-Consequence-Intervention (ACI) framework. This paper is also aimed to analyze the current research status of each WOM area and critically review each area for developing future research directions.

616 articles were selected from 112 journals for in-depth review analysis. For the systematic review of articles, an ACI framework was adopted. This paper used systematic review analysis methodology to critically analyze important research studies in each area of the ACI framework with a set of research questions.

Results identify six significant areas of eWOM, i.e. WOM antecedents, outcomes, senders, receivers, eWOM platform and eWOM management representing the whole environment. The result highlights increasing research interest on mixed eWOM and rich eWOM content and market-level source credibility factors. Research also identifies research gaps based on the ACI framework.

Analyzing the recent trends in the eWOM environment with the SLR approach and linking these trends to the ACI framework with a future research agenda in the emerging market indicated a pioneering attempt in eWOM research.