Over the past 15 years, digital media platforms have revolutionized marketing, offering new ways to reach, inform, engage, sell to, learn about, and provide service to customers. As a means of taking ...stock of academic work's ability to contribute to this revolution, this article tracks the changes in scholarly researchers' perspectives on three major digital, social media, and mobile (DSMM) marketing themes from 2000 to 2015. The authors first use keyword counts from the premier general marketing journals to gain a macro-level view of the shifting importance of various DSMM topics since 2000. They then identify key themes emerging in five-year time frames during this period: (1) DSMM as a facilitator of individual expression, (2) DSMM as decision support tool, and (3) DSMM as a market intelligence source. In both academic research to date and corresponding practitioner discussion, there is much to appreciate. However, there are also several shortcomings of extant research that have limited its relevance and created points of disconnect between academia and practice. Finally, in light of this, an agenda for future research based on emerging research topics is advanced.
The future of social media in marketing Appel, Gil; Grewal, Lauren; Hadi, Rhonda ...
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,
01/2020, Letnik:
48, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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Social media allows people to freely interact with others and offers multiple ways for marketers to reach and engage with consumers. Considering the numerous ways social media affects individuals and ...businesses alike, in this article, the authors focus on where they believe the future of social media lies when considering marketing-related topics and issues. Drawing on academic research, discussions with industry leaders, and popular discourse, the authors identify nine themes, organized by predicted imminence (i.e., the immediate, near, and far futures), that they believe will meaningfully shape the future of social media through three lenses: consumer, industry, and public policy. Within each theme, the authors describe the digital landscape, present and discuss their predictions, and identify relevant future research directions for academics and practitioners.
Chatbots have become common in digital customer service contexts across many industries. While many companies choose to humanize their customer service chatbots (e.g., giving them names and avatars), ...little is known about how anthropomorphism influences customer responses to chatbots in service settings. Across five studies, including an analysis of a large real-world data set from an international telecommunications company and four experiments, the authors find that when customers enter a chatbot-led service interaction in an angry emotional state, chatbot anthropomorphism has a negative effect on customer satisfaction, overall firm evaluation, and subsequent purchase intentions. However, this is not the case for customers in nonangry emotional states. The authors uncover the underlying mechanism driving this negative effect (expectancy violations caused by inflated pre-encounter expectations of chatbot efficacy) and offer practical implications for managers. These findings suggest that it is important to both carefully design chatbots and consider the emotional context in which they are used, particularly in customer service interactions that involve resolving problems or handling complaints.
In Mobile We Trust Grewal, Lauren; Stephen, Andrew T.
Journal of marketing research,
10/2019, Letnik:
56, Številka:
5
Journal Article
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In the context of user-generated content (UGC), mobile devices have made it easier for consumers to review products and services in a timely manner. In practice, some UGC sites indicate if a review ...was posted from a mobile device. For example, TripAdvisor uses a "via mobile" label to denote reviews from mobile devices. However, the extent to which such information affects consumers is unknown. To address this gap, the authors use TripAdvisor data and five experiments to examine how mobile devices influence consumers' perceptions of online reviews and their purchase intentions. They find that knowing a review was posted from a mobile device can lead consumers to have higher purchase intentions. Interestingly, this is due to a process in which consumers assume mobile reviews are more physically effortful to craft and subsequently equate this greater perceived effort with the credibility of the review.
We empirically study the motivations of users to contribute content to social media in the context of the popular microblogging site Twitter. We focus on noncommercial users who do not benefit ...financially from their contributions. Previous literature suggests that there are two main types of utility that motivate these users to post content: intrinsic utility and image-related utility. We leverage the fact that these two types of utility give rise to different predictions as to whether users should increase their contributions when their number of followers increases. To address the issue that the number of followers is endogenous, we conducted a field experiment in which we exogenously added followers (or follow requests, in the case of protected accounts) to a set of users over a period of time and compared their posting activities to those of a control group. We estimated each treated user's utility function using a dynamic discrete choice model. Although our results are consistent with both types of utility being at play, our model suggests that image-related utility is larger for most users. We discuss the implications of our findings for the evolution of Twitter and the type of value firms may derive from such platforms in the future.
Marketers distinguish three types of media: paid (e.g., advertising), owned (e.g., company website), and earned (e.g., publicity). The effects of paid media on sales have been extensively covered in ...the marketing literature. The effects of earned media, however, have received limited attention. The authors examine how two types of earned media, traditional (e.g., publicity and press mentions) and social (e.g., blog and online community posts), affect sales and activity in each other. They analyze 14 months of daily sales and media activity data from a microlending marketplace website using a multivariate autoregressive time-series model. They find that (1) both traditional and social earned media affect sales; (2) the per-event sales impact of traditional earned media activity is larger than for social earned media; (3) because of the greater frequency of social earned media activity, after adjusting for event frequency, social earned media's sales elasticity is significantly greater than traditional earned media's; and (4) social earned media appears to play an important role in driving traditional earned media activity.
Online social networks are used by hundreds of millions of people every day, but little is known about their effect on behavior. In five experiments, the authors demonstrate that social network use ...enhances self-esteem in users who are focused on close friends (i.e., strong ties) while browsing their social network. This momentary increase in self-esteem reduces self-control, leading those focused on strong ties to display less self-control after browsing a social network. Additionally, the authors present evidence suggesting that greater social network use is associated with a higher body mass index and higher levels of credit card debt for individuals with strong ties to their social network. This research extends previous findings by demonstrating that social networks primarily enhance self-esteem for those focused on strong ties during social network use. Additionally, this research has implications for policy makers because self-control is an important mechanism for maintaining social order and well-being.
Abstract This article reflects on the study of consumer-related emerging topics in the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) and looks ahead to consider what the next generation of emergent issues might ...be that capture consumer researchers’ attention and interest. Drawing on conversations with eminent scholars who have made major contributions to JCR by introducing emerging topics to our literature, the author (i) provides a commentary of past approaches to researching novel emerging topics, (ii) suggests some domains from which new emerging topics for consumer research can be sourced, such as new digital technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence) and major societal challenges (e.g., climate change, sustainability, and health), and (iii) offers guidance on how to approach research on important emerging topics.
Consumers frequently express themselves by posting about products on social media. Because consumers can use physical products to signal their identities, posting about products on social media may ...be a way for consumers to virtually signal identity. The authors propose that there are conditions in which this action can paradoxically reduce a consumer's subsequent purchase intentions. Five experiments demonstrate that posting products on social media that are framed as being identity-relevant can reduce a consumer's subsequent purchase intentions for the same and similar products, as this action allows consumers to virtually signal their identity, fulfilling identity-signaling needs. Fortunately for retailers, the authors suggest theoretically and managerially relevant moderators that attenuate this negative effect on intent to purchase. These findings have important implications for how firms can conduct social media marketing to minimize negative purchase outcomes.
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