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This paper aims to recognize whether government policy supervision or social network platform supervision can effectively promote the control of misconducts of web celebrity brand eWOM marketing and to identify the key factors influencing the unhealthy web celebrity marketing environment.

Theoretical research was employed to develop a practical approach for applying evolutionary game theory to eWOM marketing controlling strategies modeling via dynamic visualization, systematic simulation experiments.

Evolutionary game theory combined with dynamic simulation modeling can provide a formal approach to understanding web celebrity brand eWOM marketing decision-making in social media, which can thus support the control of unhealthy web celebrity marketing environment. The results demonstrate that the reasonable control of social platform control costs may be more effective than the government policy on web celebrity fake brand eWOM marketing behaviors.

The study enriches the research on the management and control of eWOM marketing as well as provides guidance for the sustainable development of the web celebrity economy in social media.

The aim of this research is to measure the impact of eWOM (electronic word of mouth) and brand celebrity use on the purchasing behavior of sports consumers.

To test the model hypotheses, sports consumers who use social media and have purchased at least one online sports product were selected as the research group. Online survey method was used, and 836 participants were reached. The model was tested with structural equation modeling (SEM) through smart PLS software.

As a result, the quality, credibility and usefulness of the information consumers encounter on online platforms cause them to adopt information about products or services, and then exhibit online purchase behavior. While the attractiveness and trustworthiness of celebrities are seen as important factors affecting consumers' online purchase of sports products, the effect of celebrity expertise was found to be ineffective in this study.

Marketers can develop more effective eWOM strategies by considering consumers' expectations. Businesses that want to implement an effective marketing strategy may prefer celebrities in product promotions or advertisements of their brands.

This research revealed the effect of eWOM and celebrity endorsement on the online purchase behavior of sports consumers in terms of the sports industry. Unlike previous studies, this study examined these variables together on sports consumers and contributed to the development of models.

The purpose of this paper is to explore customer engagement in Twitter via data mining.

This study’s intended contributions are twofold: to find a clear connection among customer engagement, presumption, and Web 2.0 in a context of service-dominant (S-D) logic; and to identify social networks created by prosumers. To this end, the study employed data mining techniques. Tweets about IKEA were used as a sample. The resulting algorithm based on 300 tweets was applied to 4,000 tweets to identify the patterns of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM).

Social networks created in IKEA’s tweets consist of three forms of eWOM: objective statements, subjective statements, and knowledge sharing. Most objective statements are disseminated from satisfied or neutral customers, while subjective statements are disseminated from dissatisfied or neutral customers. Satisfied customers mainly carry out knowledge sharing, which seems to reflect presumption behavior.

This study provides partial evidence of customer engagement and presumption in IKEA’s tweets. The results indicate that there are three forms of eWOM in the networks: objective statements, subjective statements, and knowledge sharing. It seems that IKEA successfully engaged customers in knowledge sharing, while negative opinions were mainly disseminated in a limited circle.

Firms should make more of an effort to identify prosumers via data mining, since these networks are hidden behind “self-proclaimed” followers. Prosumers differ from opinion leaders, since they actively participate in product development. Thus, firms should seek prosumers in order to more closely fit their products to consumer needs. As a practical strategy, firms could employ celebrities for promotional purposes and use them as a platform to convert their followers to prosumers. In addition, firms are encouraged to make public how they resolve problematic customer complaints so that customers can feel they are a part of firms’ service development.

Theoretically, the study makes unique contributions by offering a synergic framework of S-D logic and Web 2.0. The conceptual framework collectively relates customer engagement, presumption, and Web 2.0 to social networks. In addition, the idea of examining social networks based on different forms of eWOM has seldom been touched in the literature. Methodologically, the study employed seven algorithms to choose the most robust model, which was later applied to 4,000 tweets.

This study aims to expand the understanding of the implicit exposure of brands in Web dramas with congruent branding messages shared on social media Moments. This study also aims to examine the mediating role of word of mouth (WOM) and brand love in the relationship between Web-drama connectedness and viewers’ intention to spend and spending per week.

A total of 657 usable questionnaires were gathered from Chinese participants who watch the famous weekly drama “My Huckleberry Friends” and make weekly purchases from McDonald’s. Partial least squares regression was used to test the theoretical model of the study.

Results of this study reveal that WOM and brand love mediate the relationship between Web-drama connectedness and intention to spend on the exposed brand. Intention to spend mediates the relationship between brand love and spending. WOM mediates the relationship between Web-drama connectedness and spending.

Tencent’s WeChat is a well-known Chinese social media platform with a history of forbidding advertising. Users constantly flood social media with Web-drama content, influencing consumers’ spending habits. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is one of the first attempts to develop an understanding of Web-drama connectedness, brand love, WOM and behavioural intention by tracing the spending on advertised brands. This study highlights how brands maintain consumer spending by enhancing brand love via Web-drama advertising and instigating ticklish moments as “print screens” of WOM on social media.

In light of Facebook-based viral marketing and social commerce, the purpose of this paper is to test the moderating role of social identification with the Facebook profile owner (celebrity as aspirational reference group vs ingroup member (college student, same school) vs outgroup member (college student, different school)) in Facebook-based fashion brand marketing and management.

A randomized between-subjects experiment (celebrity’s Facebook profile vs ingroup member’s Facebook profile vs outgroup member’s Facebook profile vs control condition, n=73) was conducted. The sample was composed of college students recruited from a subject pool in a US university.

Results of multiple regression analyses indicate that social identification with the Facebook profile owner and ingroup vs outgroup perception moderate the influence of consumers’ materialism, fashion involvement and opinion leadership on interpersonal attraction to the celebrity, wishful identification with the celebrity, emotional quotient, involvement with the ads, advertising believability and willingness to buy the advertised fashion products. Furthermore, the results of structural equation modeling analyses show that source credibility perception (both the celebrity who endorses her own brand and the Facebook profile owner) mediates the relationship between experimental conditions (celebrity as aspirational outgroup vs same school student as an ingroup member vs different school student as an outgroup member) and the outcome variables (interpersonal attraction to the celebrity, involvement with ads, and advertising believability) in viral marketing leveraging a social media platform.

This study makes several theoretical contributions to consumer psychology and provides managerial implications for Facebook-based fashion marketing and fashion brand management.

Through two experiments, this study assessed source and message effects of Instagram-based pro-veganism messages.

Experiment 1 (N = 294) examined effects of organization (brand vs nonprofit) and message types (egoistic vs altruistic) on consumer responses to Instagram-based pro-veganism content. Experiment 2 (N = 288) examined effects of source type (celebrity vs noncelebrity) and message valence (positive vs negative) on consumer responses to Instagram-based pro-veganism content.

Results demonstrated significant main effects of organization type, with consumers indicating more positive attitudes and higher credibility toward the brand. Significant main effects of message type were also found, with altruistic messages eliciting higher perceived information value than egoistic messages. Subjective norms had moderating effects on attitude toward the organization, while attitude toward veganism had moderating effects on perceived information value. Results also indicated significant main effects of message valence on perceived information value of pro-veganism Instagram posts and significant interaction effects of the two manipulated factors on intention to spread electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) about pro-veganism.

Implications for use of Instagram-based health marketing communication about veganism were discussed. Specifically, organizations looking to use social media to influence attitudes and behavioral intentions toward health issues should seek to reach their target audiences through selecting endorsers and messages that will optimally present the health issue in a relatable and engaging way.

In the past few years fashion blogs have become a popular form of user‐generated content, and consequently, the fashion industry has shown great interest in fashion blog marketing. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze consumer‐to‐consumer (C2C) electronic word‐of‐mouth (eWOM) in fashion blogs, and especially to compare naturally‐occurring, i.e. organic eWOM with marketer‐influenced, i.e. amplified eWOM.

The study takes a netnographic approach to the phenomenon of fashion blogs. The empirical material consists of observational data including blog texts and audience comments of six popular fashion blogs in Finland.

Findings indicate that although not as varied as organic, amplified eWOM content in consumer fashion blogs resembles organic content. The main topics discussed in organic eWOM include personal style, brands, designers and retailers, tips and advice as well as purchases. Amplified topics concerned products received by the blogger, brands, designers and retailers, tips given to the audience, and competitions.

The findings indicate that for blog marketing to be effective and credible, the marketed fashion items, designers, or retailers need to fit the blogger's personal style.

Social media, especially blogs, play an important role in contemporary fashion marketing. This study addresses the emerging, yet scarce area of research into how marketer influence on fashion bloggers can be seen in user‐generated content.

In spite of the increasing organic and interactive marketing activities over social media, a general understanding of the source credibility of voluntary user-generated content (UGC) is still limited. In line with the social identity theory, this paper examines the effects of consumers' perceived source credibility of UGC in YouTube videos on their attitudes and behavioral intentions. Additionally, source homophily theory is included to predict the antecedent of source credibility.

Three hundred and seventy two Generation Y respondents were interviewed using snowball sampling. Data were analyzed with component-based structural equation modeling technique of partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Findings confirmed that perceived source credibility indirectly affects purchase intention (PI) and electronic word-of-mouth via attitude toward UGC. Besides, perceived source credibility mediates the effect of perceived source homophily on attitude toward UGC.

Since today's consumers have begun to trust and rely more on UGC than company-generated content on social media when making purchase decisions, companies may reconsider democratizing certain aspects of their branding strategies. Firms may fine-tune their marketing communication budgets – not only just by sponsoring public figures and celebrities but also by nurturing coproductive engagements with independent content creators who are ordinary consumers. Endowed with their imposing credibility, these micro-influencers and prosumers have high potentials to be uplifted to brand ambassadors.

While consumers' purchase outcome can be measured easily using metrics and analytics, the roles of source homophily in stages leading up to the purchase is still elusive. Drawing on the rich theoretical basis of source homophily may help researchers to understand not only how credibility and attitude are related to PI but also how this nexus generates positive word of mouth among UGC followers within the social media circles.

The digital relationship between brand and users, and brand and endorsers has been analyzed from different angles. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how these three elements co-create online the brand personality of the firm, through user-generated content.

This study gathered data from the hotels’ websites, Facebook, Twitter and TripAdvisor accounts, examining the content posted by the hotel, by tourists and by the celebrity endorsing some of the hotels. To pursue the aims, the brand personality dimensions communicated online were assessed through content analysis for the global presence and for each social network by user typology to establish the alignment of brand personality traits communicated.

Digital communication was found to vary significantly between the hotels and tourists in different social networks. The amount of content created by tourists is significantly higher than the ones produced by the hotel. The sincerity dimension of brand personality was confirmed in both communications. However, tourists’ brand image impacts brand personality differently than the hotels themselves. Furthermore, an analysis of the influence of customers on social networks indicates that celebrity personality traits seem to impact on the image of a hotel brand.

This research can be used to help brand managers to understand better the digital co-branding with clients and celebrity, as well as to identify gaps in their brand personality strategy. It could also assist future researchers focusing on digital celebrity endorsement since few researchers have analyzed digital communication in different social networks.

O relacionamento das marcas com os consumidores e das marcas com os endorsers tem sido analisado por diversos prismas. O objectivo deste trabalho é analisar como estes três elementos se relacionam e co-criam a personalidade de marca da empresa, através dos conteúdos digitais criados por estes.

Neste trabalho foram recolhidos os conteúdos e comentários com origem na empresa, nos clientes e nos endorsers existentes nas páginas web oficiais dos hotéis, bem como no Facebook, Twitter e TripAdvisor. Através da análise de conteúdo foram determinadas as dimensões da personalidade de marca existentes em cada uma das redes e para cada tipo de utilizador, com vista a determinar a consistência e o alinhamento da comunicação de marca existente.

Os resultados desta investigação apontam para a existência de diferenças significativas entre a comunicação com origem nos hotéis e a originada pelos turistas, nas redes sociais: os turistas criam mais conteúdos que os hotéis; e as dimensões da personalidade de marca comunicadas não são coincidentes, embora a dimensão sinceridade tenha sido encontrada nos conteúdos de ambos. As evidências sugerem que os traços de personalidade do endorser tendem a influenciar a personalidade da marca.

Este trabalho ajuda os gestores a se consciencializarem da importância da co-criação da imagem de marca que ocorre no domínio digital, bem como permite que identifiquem as lacunas existentes na comunicação da personalidade de marca das suas empresas. Este trabalho pode ser útil também para os investigadores que queiram analisar o papel das celebridades na comunicação digital.