Commercialized Content on Social Media Platforms: Exploring the Drivers of the Viewership of Paid Q&A

Paying to view others’ answers is an emerging business model happening on Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter. Yet, little is known about what drives people to pay to view others’ answers. Based on signaling theory and related literature, we develop a model to predict the viewership of paid-for answers. Using unique panel data of 417 question-to-answers, we find that answer providers’ Weibo level, the number of comments that the paid-for answer receives, as well as the question price positively affect the viewership of the paid-for answer. Our findings contribute to the literature and enlighten content providers and platform organization on how to facilitate individual users to commercialize content for profits

Classification of Online Customer Reviews for Digital Product Innovation: A Motivation Perspective

With rapid technological advances, digital products are becoming increasingly prevalent. Although past studies have examined the contribution of online reviews extensively in the context of physical products, there is limited understanding of the contribution of online reviews in digital product innovation. To this end, this study reviews previous work related to online reviews of physical and digital products in an attempt to reclassify online reviews of digital products from the perspective of consumer motivation. Taking game-related app reviews as an example, we employed a topic modeling model to extract insights related to consumer motivation. An in depth appreciation of consumers’ motivation from analyzing online reviews can yield invaluable insights in driving digital product innovation

Value Cocreation for Service Innovation: Examining the Relationships between Service Innovativeness, Customer Participation, and Mobile App Performance

Service innovation is critical to firms’ competitive advantage and, thus, firms desire to make their services increasingly innovative. However, the relationship between the innovativeness and performance of a new service is unclear. Conflicting findings and the related literature suggest that service innovativeness is multidimensional and its impact on performance could be nonlinear. However, limited research has studied these aspects, both theoretically and empirically. Furthermore, prior research has mainly considered customers as inputs to value creation, which may not capture their precise role. Drawing on service-dominant logic, we propose two dimensions of service innovativeness, namely novelty and intensity, which differentially influence the performance of a new service. We further posit that customers are part of the value cocreation process, thereby directly and indirectly affecting new service performance. The model was tested using a panel dataset of 234 mobile apps over 14 months. Results indicate important asymmetries in the impacts of novelty and intensity on mobile app performance: novelty shows a curvilinear relationship with mobile app performance whereas intensity shows a positive linear relationship. Furthermore, customer participation positively impacts mobile app performance and positively moderates the effects of intensity and novelty on mobile app performance

Enhancing Mobile Data Services Performance via Online Reviews

The prevalence of portable computational devices like smartphones and tablets has increased the popularity and importance of mobile data services (MDS). However, the flood of new MDS in the market has caused hyper-competition among MDS providers and only a few of them profit. Past studies suggest that online reviews can help MDS providers gain market attention and provide information for improving MDS applications. As a result, MDS providers can leverage reviews to innovate and profit. However, little research has empirically investigated the influences of online reviews on MDS innovation and profitability. This paper studies MDS profitability (popularity) from two angles. We posit that one strategic advantage of certain MDS providers is their ability to rapidly innovate and that innovation inspiration can be derived from reviews ubiquitous in MDS download sites. Our results show that online reviews positively impact MDS popularity directly and indirectly via increasing MDS innovation