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Despite the extensive academic interest in electronic word of mouth (eWOM) communication, consumer attitudes toward eWOM communication have been neglected. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for attitudes toward eWOM communication across digital channels.

Data were collected through a web-based survey on seven major digital communication channels. ANOVA was applied in order to analyze their differences. In addition, structural equation modeling was used to test the eWOM attitude model, using a sample of 864 participants who have had prior experience with the channels under study.

Findings indicate that both attitude toward eWOM and its antecedents significantly differ across channels. Additionally, a path analysis model reveals that the original integrated model applies to eWOM communications. Yet, in the case of eWOM, irritating messages may be positively related to attitude toward the channel, and credibility serves as a mediator of message value.

This paper supports the notion that attitude toward eWOM communication significantly differs across media channels. Future research should examine additional implications of attitude toward eWOM, and explore new and evolving channels.

Practitioners should adjust their eWOM media strategy to their objectives; blogs and social networks are more effective for brand attitude formation, whereas web forums enhance message credibility.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study that tests attitudinal differences toward eWOM across digital channels. As such, it contributes to the understanding of people’s perception of these platforms.

Social media sites facilitate electronic word of mouth (eWOM) communication among consumers of diverse cultures and ethnicities. Based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the present research proposes a conceptual framework for minority consumers' engagement in eWOM associated with the mainstream culture. The model incorporates social capital and social interaction as key factors that affect cross-cultural eWOM communication between minority and mainstream consumers. This research also aims to explore the responses of minority consumers to eWOM communications originating with members of the majority group.

A structural equation modelling (SEM) procedure was applied to data collected from social media (Facebook) users (N = 539) from two minority communities: Israeli Arab and Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Jewish minorities.

The findings show that: (a) minority consumers' engagement with eWOM is indirectly related to social capital, (b) this relationship is mediated by minority consumers' attitudes and their subjective norms regarding eWOM engagement with dominant cultural groups, (c) social interaction of minorities with the dominant culture enhances the influence of social capital on eWOM engagement and (d) behavioural engagement with eWOM varies across cultural minorities, depending on the minority group’s unique cultural characteristics.

The findings have managerial implications for practitioners who use social media in their marketing and business activities, as they demonstrate that the effectiveness of eWOM communication is contingent on the cultural characteristics of the ethnic minority consumer groups being targeted by managers.

The present research contributes to the theory of consumer engagement by demonstrating that engagement is contingent on the intercultural social context in which eWOM is communicated.

This paper aims to offer social marketers an innovative method to promote healthy foods. This method demonstrates the effectiveness of indirect communication in attracting consumers to healthy foods. Further, it aims to offer a way to promote food as healthier with no detrimental effects on its perceived appeal, which are a likely side effect of advertising food as healthy.

Four between-participant lab studies (N = 50, 80, 80, 102) included manipulations of food motion vs stillness and then compared ratings of food freshness, healthiness and appeal using self-report measures.

Motion increases healthiness evaluation. This increase in healthiness evaluation occurs without reductions in food appeal. These effects are mediated by evaluations of freshness. This occurred across three different food types and two mediums (still images and digital videos).

The paper provides an effective tool for social marketers wishing to encourage healthier eating. Specifically, it helps address two problems: low effectiveness of prevalent, information-based appeals to encourage healthy eating; and reduced evaluations of tastiness that normally occur when consumers are convinced food is healthy.

Social marketers can use motion as an effective tool to promote food as healthy. Importantly, this indirect communication avoids the potential pitfall of reduced food appeal. This should help encourage healthier eating. The findings also supports the use of indirect cues as an effective approach to promoting social ends.

Offering a novel, indirect method of enhancing judgments of food healthiness via a simple visual cue. Demonstrating the effect and its underlying mechanism. Providing a way to counter the prevalent “unhealthy = tasty” intuition, a major obstacle to promoting healthy eating. Supporting social marketers’ use of indirect communication to increase the appeal of desirable societal goals. Finally, showing that sensory visual cues can serve as a source of heuristic thinking.

The nature of digital media channels are important factors in explaining consumers’ behavior over the Web, and specifically on social network sites (SNS). The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework explaining consumer engagement with electronic word of mouth (eWOM) communication via SNS, based on key attributes of this media channel.

Based on the expectancy value theory (EVT), a conceptual framework is proposed to model the effect of eWOM channel attributes on eWOM engagement process. Consumer eWOM engagement is conceptualized as a second-order construct. A structural equation modeling procedure was employed to empirically test the model using data collected from two social media communication channels.

First, results suggest that engagement with eWOM can be conceptualized as a second-order construct based on user tendency to receive or share eWOM with other network members. Second, the path analysis model supports the employment of EVT and shows that two key attributes of eWOM channels, social capital and credibility, significantly affect consumer attitude toward eWOM via SNS. Attitude toward eWOM, in turn, affects eWOM engagement. Third, SNS channel type moderates the effect on attitude.

Marketing communication practitioners should note that the strength of social ties plays a key role in spreading eWOM on SNS effectively. This insight should be employed a part of social media marketing strategy.

This is first research that models the effect of social media attributes on eWOM engagement and demonstrates the moderating role of channel type. The model is highly valuable in light of the importance of the concept of engagement in internet research.

This study aims to examine whether companies’ donations to political parties can impact product experience, specifically taste.

Research design consists of four studies; three online, one in person. Participants were shown a cookie (Studies 1-3) or cereal (Study 4) and told that the producing company donated to either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party (Studies 1-3) or an unspecified party (Study 4).

Participants rated food products as less tasty if told they came from a company that donated to a party they object to. These effects were shown to be mediated by moral disgust (Study 3). Effects were restricted to taste and willingness to buy (Study 4), with no effects on other positive product dimensions.

The studies provide a first piece of evidence that political donations by companies can negatively impact product experience. This can translate to purchase decisions through an emotional, rather than calculated, route.

Companies should be careful about making donations some of their consumers may find objectionable. This might impact both purchase and consumption decisions, as well as post-consumption word-of-mouth.

Companies’ political involvement can negatively impact subjective product experience, even though such information has no bearing on product quality. The current findings demonstrate that alterations in subjective product quality may underlie alterations in consumer decision-making because of ideologically tinged information, and reveals moral disgust as the mechanism underlying these effects. In this, it provides a first demonstration that even mild ideological information that is not globally bad or inherently immoral can generate moral disgust, and that such effects depend on consumers’ own attitudes.

This paper aims to examine the association between the perceived values of information (economic, hedonic, functional, psychological) and the actual use of social networking channels (Instagram/Facebook groups/SNS personal profiles or messaging) for seeking information on accommodations.

879 respondents aged 18–55, who travel abroad as individual tourists at least once a year and are responsible for their own accommodation choice, were surveyed.

The study shows that all the values of information are more likely to be provided through posting a question on one's profile/messaging options (i.e. friends and relatives), than through Facebook groups and Instagram. The multivariate findings show that different values are associated with different SNS channel choices for seeking information.

The study provides an innovative approach to the motivations behind the use of different SNS platforms for travel information search by consumers. It offers practical implications, suggesting how to provide the relevant content on each channel.