Understanding the Dynamic Interplay of Social Buzz and Contribution Behavior within and between Online Platforms – Evidence from Crowdfunding

Motivated by the growing interconnection between online platforms, we examine the dynamic interplay between social buzz and contribution behavior in the crowdfunding context. Since the utility of crowdfunding projects is usually difficult to ascertain, prospective backers draw on quality signals, such as social buzz and prior-contribution behavior, to make their funding decisions. We employ the panel vector autoregression (PVAR) methodology to investigate both intra- and cross-platform effects based on data collected from three platforms: Indiegogo, one of the largest crowdfunding platforms on the web, Twitter and Facebook. Our results show a positive influence of social buzz on project backing, but a negative relationship in the reverse direction. Furthermore, we observe strong positive feedback cycles within each platform. Our results are supplemented by split-sample analyses for project orientation (Social, Cause and Entrepreneurial) and project success (Winners vs. Losers), in which Facebook shares were identified as a critical success factor

Social media marketing across cultures: how does consumer behavior on Facebook brand pages differ between cultures

This dissertation explores the relationship between culture and social media marketing. Differences in consumer behavior on social media are analyzed. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are employed to predict these differences between cultures. The data was organically gathered from 6750 posts from 225 different Facebook brand pages and 15 different countries. The gathered data included the engagement metrics such as the amount of likes, shares and comments and the various versions of likes such as: love, wow, funny, angry and sad. To the author’s knowledge this is the first study that uses real world organic data to analyze differences between cultures on social media. Descriptive results are displayed through charts and then the statistical significance is measured through linear regressions. Interesting differences were found that could be explained by Hofstede’s dimensions. One of these is that countries low in individualism and/or high in power distance share posts more than comment on them. Also, the use of the funny and wow emoticon responses seems to be related to higher scores on individualism. These findings have theoretical and practical implications. Some academics posit that cultures are converging, and cultural dimensions are becoming obsolete, because of new communication platforms such as social media (Sobol, Cleveland, & Laroche, 2018). Findings from this dissertation imply that Hofstede’s dimensions could still be powerful predictors of some consumer behavior patterns, even on Facebook. Managers could adopt more viral marketing campaigns in countries where posts get shared more and use invitations to tag friends in the opposite countries. Furthermore, they could become more aware of cultural differences in emoticon sentiment that might influence their success and cater to these expectations accordingly.Esta dissertação explora a relação entre cultura e marketing de redes sociais. São analisadas as diferenças entre o comportamento do consumidor nas redes sociais. As dimensões culturais de Hofstede são utilizadas para prever as diferenças entre culturas. Os dados foram recolhidos organicamente de 6750 publicações de 225 diferentes marcas de páginas de Facebook e de 15 países diferentes. Os dados recolhidos incluíram as métricas de engajamento, como número de gostos, partilhas, comentários e as várias versões dos gostos, como: adoro, wow, riso, ira, triste. Para o conhecimento do autor, este é o primeiro estudo que usa dados orgânicos do mundo real para analisar as diferenças entre culturas nas redes sociais. Resultados descritivos são exibidos através de gráficos e, em seguida, a significância estatística é medida através de regressões lineares. Foram encontradas diferenças interessantes que poderiam ser explicadas pelas dimensões de Hofstede. Uma delas é que os países com baixo individualismo e/ou alto em distância ao poder, fazem mais partilha de publicações em vez de comentários. Além disso, o uso de reações como riso e wow parecem estar relacionadas com pontuações mais altas em individualismo. Estas descobertas têm implicações teóricas e práticas. Alguns académicos postulam que as culturas estão a convergir e as dimensões culturais estão a tornarse obsoletas, graças às novas plataformas comunicação como as redes sociais (Sobol, Cleveland, & Laroche, 2018). Os resultados desta dissertação indicam que as dimensões de Hofstede ainda podem ser poderosos indicadores de alguns padrões de comportamento do consumidor, mesmo no Facebook. Os gerentes podem adotar mais campanhas de marketing virais em países onde as publicações são mais partilhadas e usar os convites para identificar amigos em países opostos. Além disso, eles podem tornar-se mais conscientes das diferenças culturais no uso das reações emocionais que podem influenciar mais o seu sucesso e atender de acordo com essas expectativas

Detecting and Tracking the Spread of Astroturf Memes in Microblog Streams

Online social media are complementing and in some cases replacing person-to-person social interaction and redefining the diffusion of information. In particular, microblogs have become crucial grounds on which public relations, marketing, and political battles are fought. We introduce an extensible framework that will enable the real-time analysis of meme diffusion in social media by mining, visualizing, mapping, classifying, and modeling massive streams of public microblogging events. We describe a Web service that leverages this framework to track political memes in Twitter and help detect astroturfing, smear campaigns, and other misinformation in the context of U.S. political elections. We present some cases of abusive behaviors uncovered by our service. Finally, we discuss promising preliminary results on the detection of suspicious memes via supervised learning based on features extracted from the topology of the diffusion networks, sentiment analysis, and crowdsourced annotations

Predictive Analytics on Emotional Data Mined from Digital Social Networks with a Focus on Financial Markets

This dissertation is a cumulative dissertation and is comprised of five articles. User-Generated Content (UGC) comprises a substantial part of communication via social media. In this dissertation, UGC that carries and facilitates the exchange of emotions is referred to as “emotional data.” People “produce” emotional data, that is, they express their emotions via tweets, forum posts, blogs, and so on, or they “consume” it by being influenced by expressed sentiments, feelings, opinions, and the like. Decisions often depend on shared emotions and data – which again lead to new data because decisions may change behaviors or results. “Emotional Data Intelligence” ultimately seeks an answer to the question of how all the different emotions expressed in public online sources influence decision-making processes. The overarching research topic of this dissertation follows the question whether network structures and emotional sentiment data extracted from digital social networks contain predictive information or they are just noise. Underlying data was collected from different social media sources, such as Twitter, blogs, message boards, or online news and social networking sites, such as Xing. By means of methodologies of social network analysis (SNA), sentiment analysis, and predictive analysis the individual contributions of this dissertation study whether sentiment data from social media or online social networking structures can predict real-world behaviors. The focus lies on the analysis of emotional data and network structures and its predictive power for financial markets. With the formal construction of the data analyses methodologies introduced in the individual contributions this dissertation contributes to the theories of social network analysis, sentiment analysis, and predictive analytics

Evaluating the Perception of Luxury Brands in Today\u27s Marketplace and the Impact of the Digital Age on these Brands

“In spite of the global recession, luxury seems to be everywhere. Luxury is a term that is routinely used in our everyday life: a promise of decadence and a dream of an exclusive lifestyle, a key component of marketing management and a tagline in commercials and advertising campaigns…However, what does luxury really mean? The only consensus on the meaning of luxury is that there is little consensus” (Hennigs et al. 3). For an industry that once presented itself as so exclusive and definitive, it is hard to believe there is such uncertainty in defining this market. Much of this ambiguity can be contributed to the impact of globalization and conglomeration that previously impacted the economy, as well as trends in brand and product extensions. Regardless of how or why this industry evolved, a definitive consensus can be made that the luxury brand industry is different than it once was. However, as one can imagine, the understanding of consumers’ perceptions regarding luxury brands is key for creating appropriate strategies. Consumers’ varying perceptions towards luxury brands creates many questions in regards to what trait or traits really define a brand as “luxury”. Is it the price, the quality, the brand’s history or some other indicator that identifies a brand as a luxurious one to consumers? Furthermore, there tends to be hypocrisy in consumers’ perceptions towards luxury brands. In regards to consumers’ attitudes towards the concept of luxury, The Journal of Business & Economics Research claims “they are ambivalent across and within consumers, as consumer behavior is inconsistent with self-reported attitudes, as consumers can’t understand their own contradictions” (Stegemann 61). In addition to marketers’ struggle to understand what consumers perceive as a luxury brand, the impact of technology and the digital age has only enhanced the subject matter. Luxury brands that once prided themselves on premier customer service and providing a sort of “white –glove” experience for their customers, must be flexible and accepting in their marketing strategies or face the fear of abandonment. The consumer of today’s world not only views luxury brands differently but also shops differently. Instant gratification is a concept that has become prevalent in consumers buying habits and must be noted by marketers. As the European Financial Review recognizes “Luxury is everywhere”, and the fact of the matter is that these luxury brands must come to terms with today’s world of E-commerce (Hennigs 2). It is necessary to understand how consumers view luxury brands as well as their routine purchase habits, because these perceptions and preferences will be essential in establishing marketing strategies that ensure loyal customers

Spillover Effects of Management Companies in the Vtuber Market

학위논문(석사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 경영대학 경영학과, 2021.8. 윤혜리.Increasing usage of social media has given subsequent birth to micro-celebrities, or social media influencers (SMIs). Despite the fact that SMIs function as key opinion-leaders in society and the market, little is known about what traits make an SMI popular in the first place. While SMIs are generally considered to gain popularity from rock-bottom through individual endeavors alone, we find an exceptional media sector consisting of virtual YouTubers (vtubers). A vtuber, unlike the usual human YouTuber, is an artificially created figure strictly managed by sponsoring companies from the beginning of his/her debut. Finding a similarity between sponsor-vtuber relationships and parent-child relationships within brand extensions, we ran a random effects model against 560 company-owned vtubers to check whether similar spillover effects can be observed in a social media context as well. Our research yielded positive results, suggesting the existence of persistent spillover effects based on parent-brand popularity. An additional time series analysis was conducted against the weekly changes in the size of management agency influence on their affiliated vtubers. An ARIMA(1,2,0) model demonstrates a high fit with our data, and we find that the model confirms a constantly decreasing size of influence along with the passage of time.소셜미디어의 확산은 마이크로셀레브리티와 소셜미디어 인플루언서(SMI)의 등장을 초래했다. 이미 사회적, 경제적으로 SMI들이 오피니언 리더로서 큰 영향력을 행사하고 있음에도 불구하고 이들이 정확히 어떤 근본적 요인으로 인해 대중적 인기를 얻게 되었는지에 대해 알려진 바는 많지 않다. 많은 경우에 SMI들이 순수하게 자력으로만 팬덤을 구축하는 것으로 간주되는 것에 반해, 필자들은 버츄얼 유튜버(vtuber) 업계로부터 예외적인 상황을 목격했다. 일반적인 인간 유튜버와 달리, vtuber는 데뷔 이전부터 소속사로부터 엄격하게 관리당하고 통제 받는 가상의 디지털 캐릭터들이다. 본 연구에서는 소속사 대 vtuber의 관계가 브랜드 확장 상태의 모브랜드 대 신규 브랜드의 관계와 유사하다는 점에 착안하여, 후자의 경우에 관찰되는 스필오버 효과가 전자에서도 발현되는지 검증하기 위해 소속사와 계약을 맺고 있는 총 560 명의 vtuber에 대해 임의효과 모형을 적용시킨다. 그 결과, 소속사의 영향력이 vtuber의 인기에 대해 긍정적 스필오버 효과가 있음이 확인되었다. 또, 주차별 스필오버 효과 크기의 변화에 대한 시계열 분석을 통해 추세를 예측하는 데 적합한 모형으로 ARIMA(1,2,0) 모델을 특정해내어 시간이 지남에 따라 스필오버 효과가 감소하는 경향성을 지님을 검증했다.Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. Literature Review 3 Chapter 3. Research Model and Hypotheses 14 Chapter 4. Data Analysis and Methodology 18 Chapter 5. Results 21 Chapter 6. Discussion and Conclusion 29 Bibliography 32 Abstract in Korean 41 Appendices 42석