Antecedents and consequences of word of mouth - Consumer evaluation context, individualism, personality and defense of companies

People often share word of mouth (WOM) with their friends, family, and colleagues, and they increasingly also share WOM with strangers through various Internet channels. Since WOM has been found to have an important impact on consumer behavior, businesses worldwide are eager to understand the intricacies of the phenomenon. In particular, businesses are interested in understanding how positive WOM can be stimulated and how negative WOM can be stopped. This dissertation presents four papers that extend the current knowledge on these two issues. The first paper tests the effects of perceived quality and satisfaction on positive WOM intentions in both transaction-specific and cumulative evaluative contexts. Results reveal that different factors drive positive WOM intentions, depending on the context of the study. When consumers’ evaluations are related to a specific transaction, perceived quality is the dominating predictor of positive WOM intentions. When the evaluations are cumulative, satisfaction is the dominating predictor of positive WOM intentions. The second paper examines the relationship between individualism and WOM and factors moderating this relationship. The results reveal that high-individualism consumers are more willing than low-individualism consumers to transmit WOM in relation to satisfactory (versus unsatisfactory) consumption experiences, when WOM is unsolicited (versus solicited) and when the context involves high perceived social risk (versus low perceived social risk). These moderating effects may indicate that self-enhancement is the underlying motive in the relationship between individualism and WOM. The third paper tests a model of personality trait predictors of WOM tendency. The model includes two situational personality traits: social and personal consumer confidence, and two fundamental personality traits: extraversion and neuroticism. The results show that higher levels of extraversion result in greater social consumer confidence, which again has a positive effect on WOM tendency. Moreover, higher levels of neuroticism result in lower personal consumer confidence, which again has a negative effect on the tendency to engage in WOM. The results also show that social consumer confidence partially mediates the relationship between extraversion and WOM, whereas personal consumer confidence fully mediates the relationship between neuroticism and WOM. The fourth paper explores consumer responses to negative WOM on the Internet. The objective was to test an a priori belief that many consumers defend companies in response to an initial negative WOM utterance. Results of a netnographic study confirm that the online defense phenomenon does exist. A typology of six defensive styles (advocating, justifying, vouching, stalling, trivializing, and doubting) was developed and the characteristics of each defense described. Furthermore, factors influencing consumers’ choices of defense styles were identified. The study also highlights the different outcomes of the various defense styles and illustrates that this consumer phenomenon can be effective in preventing the spread of negative WOM or in mitigating its impact

Merkeambassadører - Ditt sikreste kort i sosiale medier

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Self-presentation via electronic word of mouth - a reflective or impulsive activity?

Purpose - Previous research suggests that self-presentation causes people to have a reflective tendency to produce electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Drawing on the theory of the reflective-impulsive model (RIM), this paper aims to examine whether self-presentation also could motivate an impulsive tendency to produce eWOM. Self-monitoring is suggested as a possible moderator in the relationship between self-presentation and impulsive eWOM production. Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected based on an online survey of members from a consumer panel. The effective sample size was 574 respondents. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data. Findings - The findings show that self-presentation may drive both impulsive and reflective eWOM tendencies; however, that the relationship between self-presentation and impulsive eWOM tendency is contingent on high levels of self-monitoring. Originality/value - By including self-monitoring as a moderator, this study is the first to show a relationship between self-presentation and impulsive eWOM production. Moreover, the findings show that both impulsive and reflective eWOM tendencies are associated with an enhanced tendency to produce eWOM, thereby demonstrating the usefulness of the RIM theory in understanding eWOM behavior. Overall, the findings shed light on how companies may stimulate eWOM production, and consequently provide insight into creating more effective eWOM campaigns

The role of identity and gender in seafood cooking skills

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Preference for local food as a matter of helping behaviour: Insights from Norway

Consumption of local food is a fast-growing trend supported by local food advocates and governments. This trend has also captured the interest of researchers. The present study draws from the foundational principles of the theoretical perspective of helping behaviour with a view to enhancing the understanding of why people buy local food. This article tests a conceptual framework with proposed relationships between helping behaviour constructs and local food-buying behaviour within a Norwegian context. Local food consumers in Troms County are surveyed, and the results indicate that empathic concern and social concern influence their attitude towards, and preference for, local food. Local patriotism influences the preference for local food even if such consumers evaluate it as being of lower quality and less desirable than other food products. This study is among the first to examine local food-buying behaviour through the lens of prosocial helping behaviour theory. The recommendations for local food producers and local food advocates regarding appealing to consumers’ prosocial helping behaviour propose communication strategies emphasizing the difficulties that local food producers face, portraying local food producers as people deserving of help against national competition and imports, and depicting them as being as loyal to the local community as the local food consumers are

Influence of human versus AI recommenders: The roles of product type and cognitive processes

Previous research suggests that consumers would listen more to product recommendations from other consumers (human recommenders) than from systems based on artificial intelligence (AI recommenders). We hypothesize that this might depend on the type of product being recommended, and propose an underlying process driving this effect. Three experiments show that, for hedonic products (but not for utilitarian products), human recommenders are more effective than AI recommenders in influencing consumer reactions toward the recommended product. This effect occurs because, when compared to AI recommenders, human recommenders elicit stronger mentalizing responses in consumers. This, in turn, helps consumers self-reference the product to their own needs. However, humanizing AI recommenders increases mentalizing and self-referencing responses, thus increasing the effectiveness of this type of recommenders for hedonic products. Together, these findings provide insight into when and why consumers might rely more on product recommendations from humans as compared to AI recommenders

A framework for categorizing social media posts

Abstract: Brand posts are concise and recurrent updates created by brands and sent out to their followers on social media. Brand posts play a crucial linking role by connecting brands to their customers and fans on a daily basis. Brand posts represent a rich form of communication that convey various brand meaning and experiences using multiple media formats. Despite this, however, brand posts have not been subjected to formalized analyses in the literature. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to conduct a formalized analysis of brand posts and propose a systematic framework to categorize them. With this aim, the study performed qualitative content analysis involving three interrelated coding procedures. First, the study reviewed the relevant literature to identify pre-existing coding categories (deductive coding). Second, the study drew together systematic inferences from a purposive sample of brand posts (n = 371) to derive new coding categories (inductive coding). Finally, the study implemented a double-coding procedure on a probabilistic sample of brand posts (n = 249) to validate the initial coding categories (validation coding). Together, the three coding procedures produced 12 exhaustive and mutually exclusive categories of brand posts. The proposed categorization offers a comprehensive framework to think about brand posts. For marketers, it provides guidance to create the stream of content necessary to stimulate daily customer interaction on social media. For researchers, it offers a solid conceptual foundation to categorize, code and model brand posts

Producing word of mouth – a matter of self-confidence? Investigating a dual effect of consumer self-confidence on WOM

Several researchers emphasize the importance of consumer self-confidence in the production of word of mouth (WOM). However, most focus has been on consumer self-confidence as a positive WOM predictor, and a possible negative relationship between consumer self-confidence and WOM remains largely unexplained. Here, we aimed to elucidate the possibility of both a positive and a negative effect of consumer self-confidence on WOM production, attributed to different dimensions of consumer selfconfidence. Our results support this idea, demonstrating a positive effect of social consumer confidence on WOM and a negative effect of personal consumer confidence on WOM. Furthermore, we identify unique personality roots for each of the two dimensions of consumer self-confidence that provide explanations for their differential effects on WOM. In addition, this study shows that the dual effects of social and personal consumer confidence on WOM happen due to a suppression effect. Hence, we provide a statistical explanation that could be crucial in understanding the relationship between the multiple dimensions of consumer self-confidence and WOM. The findings have implications for the targeting of consumers for WOM marketing campaigns

Evoking premiumness: How color-product congruency influences premium evaluations

Green is commonly used in marketing to evoke utilitarian and environmental cues, whereas red is regularly found on food logos to induce arousal and excitement. This paper investigates how these colors may contribute to consumer evaluations of premiumness through congruence and incongruence between the marketing message and color on product packages. The literature suggests that, although congruence between product elements and the marketing message often is evaluated as more appropriate, a “moderate incongruence effect” may result in consumer preferences for a moderate incongruence between design elements. Two between-subject experiments suggest that the premise of congruity or incongruity applies to explaining how colors may evoke higher premium evaluations. Study 1 demonstrates that for a product of hedonic nature, consumers will evaluate the product as more premium when the color and product framing are congruent (e.g., red on a package framed as “tasting delicious” or green on a package sold as “healthy”). Study 2 demonstrates the opposite effect by suggesting that when a product is primarily utilitarian, it will be perceived as more premium when the framing of the product and the color are incongruent (e.g., green on the package marketed for its “delicious taste” or red on the package sold as “healthy”). The study adds a novel understanding of how the mechanism of congruence and incongruence between color and a hedonic versus utilitarian marketing message can lead to premium associations. It also has practical implications for marketing managers as to how one can enhance the premium evaluations through color and marketing message