Journal of Interactive Marketing

Viral advertising videos are a prominent form of viral marketing, yet little is known about which factors influence an online video's virality or likelihood to be shared and viewed. A content analysis of 155 viral ad videos found that average shares and views were higher for videos with full story development versus videos with less than full story development as measured via a five-point drama scale based on Freytag's Pyramid. An incremental story development effect on shares and views was also found. Time duration and company size did not significantly influence the results for shares but did have some effect on the results for views. The role of story in viral videos, the relationship between drama theory, narrative theory, story grammar theory and transportation theory, and managerial implications of story development in viral marketing are also discussed.

Prior research has focused on analyzing the content and intent of celebrity social media communications. By observing that the linguistic style of such celebrity communications drives consumer word of mouth, the main goal of the current research is to broaden this limited perspective. An automated text analysis of narrative/analytical, internally/externally focused, and negative/positive emotional styles in tweets by celebrity chefs, personal trainers, and fashion bloggers was conducted to this effect. The findings are threefold. First, across celebrity categories externally focused, narrative styles are more effective in terms of word of mouth. Second, emotional styles are not effective. Third, angry outbursts are an exception; they are effective drivers of word of mouth for personal trainers. As such, this research furthers scholarly and practitioner understanding of the state-the-art of celebrity social media communication: the effect of tweets’ linguistic styles on consumer word of mouth.

Past empirical studies have analysed the influence of manifest online review content factors and the reviewer-related factors on online review helpfulness. However, the influence of latent content factors, which are implied from the text and that result in the differential helpfulness perceptions of review receivers, have been ignored. Hence, using the lens of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), we develop a comprehensive model to study the influence of content- and reviewer-related factors on review helpfulness. This study not only includes the manifest content-related and reviewer-related factors, but also the latent content factors consisting of argument quality (comprehensiveness, clarity, readability and relevance) and message valence. The study initially employs a manual content analysis to analyse the argument quality of ∼500 TripAdvisor reviews (Study 1). Subsequently, model testing techniques are used to study the holistic and relative influence of these different factors on review helpfulness. In the validation study (Study 2), Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing techniques are used to extract latent content information and test the above model with 50,000 reviews from Yelp.com. The results show that latent review content variables like argument quality and valence influence the helpfulness of the reviews better and beyond the previously studied, manifest review content- and reviewer-related factors.

Online product review forums commonly provide consumers with averages of product ratings given by reviewers. Some also provide frequency distribution of ratings in the form of a histogram. The authors argue that consumers use these statistics as search aids when reading reviews. Provision of the average rating statistic affects consumers’ reading of reviews through confirmation or disconfirmation of their expectancies about the product in question. However, provision of the distribution statistics attenuates this effect because it alerts consumers to divergent opinions. An eye-tracking experiment that simulated a forum visit demonstrates these effects. The experiment also shows that as a result of these effects, average rating provision causes consumer attitude toward the product to be more extreme, whereas rating distribution provision reduces this polarization. Further, supporting the expectancy confirmation account, results show that consumers with a high need for cognition exhibit a greater response to average rating provision than those with a low need. The findings suggest the benefits to marketers of tracking the number of negative reviews read by consumers and displaying positive reviews and negative reviews separately. The findings also identify circumstances that call for greater effort by marketers when responding to reviews.

Augmented Reality (AR) holograms are 3D digital objects projected into a customer's physical environment through mobile technology. Applied as potential substitutes to physical products, AR holograms pose a unique challenge for conventional configurations of product ownership. Taking a socially situated cognition perspective, we demonstrate how customers’ shared experience of AR holograms leads to distinct perspectives on psychological ownership. In Study 1, we demonstrate how customization of AR holograms lets customers feel psychological ownership of digital products. In Study 2, we highlight the mechanisms of social adaptation related to assimilation and differentiation that drive the relationship between customization and psychological ownership of AR holograms in social settings. In Study 3, we illustrate how these mechanisms are influenced by the affordances of AR technology when customers switch between personal or shared devices. We discuss implications for theory and marketing practice of this potentially novel class of digital consumer products.

Consumers can use alternative methods to interact with or access a brand through their mobile devices. They can type a response using a touchscreen keyboard (touch interaction) or use voice response while holding a mobile device (combined voice and touch interaction). In this study, we look at the impact of these different types of interaction on personal engagement and the effect on brand trust as relevant concerns to managers in the digital, mediated context. Using a framework based on sensory marketing and Dual Coding Theory, we conducted 2 one-way between-subjects experiments with a two-level interface interaction considering a hedonic product (Experiment 1) and utilitarian product (Experiment 2). Findings confirm a three-way interaction such that the impact of privacy concern on the relationship between personal engagement and trust depends on the nature of the platform interaction; touch vs. combined touch and voice. We also find that adding voice to the platform interface has the counterintuitive effect of reducing engagement with that platform. All in all, our results provide novel insights into the role of touch and voice in the online context when it comes to consumers’ decision-making.

The essential issue currently challenging marketing managers in the virtual world is: How can a virtual world feature be designed to elevate consumers’ purchase of virtual items and usage in the virtual world? Previous scholars have investigated the issue and have published their predictions on the individual level. Yet, they have done so without specifically addressing endogeneity or carryover effect among users and their activities. To alleviate this omission and potential methodological bias, we probe the impact of virtual world technological features on two performance criteria at the platform level. In addition, we differentiate two types of users (new vs returning users) and probe their distinct impact on purchase of virtual items and usage patterns in the virtual world. When using data from one virtual world and applying the vector auto regression model, results show that virtual world managers can elevate performance through promotion of both types of users’ activities. The effects of these activities, however, are varied. Specifically, for returning users, interactivity leads to a more significant impact on consumers’ purchase of virtual goods than sociability, while the opposite effect is applicable to usage in the virtual world. For new users, interactivity is more efficient for promotion of users’ purchase of virtual goods than sociability, while the results are the opposite for usage in the virtual world.

Auctions are receiving increasing attention from both practitioners and researchers in the TV advertising market. This paper studies advertisers’ willingness to pay (WTP) in Hong Kong television commercial slot auctions, defined as overlapped, multiple-winner auctions with discrete, ascending, semi-sealed bids. We specify advertisers’ WTP as a parametric function of their valuations of slot-specific attributes and the valuations that depend on the context of the focal auction and on the competition from other auctions of similar commercial slots. We extend the two “no-regret” bidding principles (first proposed by Haile and Tamer 2003) to obtain informative boundary conditions for asymptotical identification. The estimation results suggest that advertisers’ WTP increases with the TV rating of the program in which the advertisement is embedded and decreases with the bidder's bidding experience and the number of similar slot options available. The WTP also depends on the number of bidders classified into the same product category, as two directly competing advertisers are not allowed to advertise in the same commercial break. In the current practice, advertisers submit discrete bids using price levels set by the TV station. Based on the recovered bidder's WTP, we investigate how the TV station can set adjacent price levels and examine the resulting revenue implications.