Abstract
The expansion of the Internet and social media have triggered a differentiation of the word-of-mouth (WOM) concept, with consumer communication about brands and products now taking place in various settings and forms. Two important digital WOM types are microblogs and consumer reviews. To clarify their differential roles for product success, this study offers a theoretical framework of the influence of these two types of WOM, drawing from consumer information search theory and diffusion theory. The tests of the proposed framework use a longitudinal data set of video game sales and weekly information gathered from microblogs (i.e., over 13 million tweets from Twitter) and consumer reviews (i.e., more than 17,000 Amazon consumer reviews). Analyzing a system of equations provides evidence that the influence of microblogs and consumer reviews on new product success changes over time. Prior to launch, the volumes of microblogs and consumer reviews, together with advertising, represent primary sales drivers. After launch, the volume of microblogs is initially influential, then loses impact, whereas the impact of the volume of consumer reviews continues to grow. The valence of consumer reviews gains significance only near the end of the observation period, but the valence of microblogging is never influential.
Highlights
Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication is a well-established determinant of new product success (Berger & Schwartz, 2011; Godes & Mayzlin, 2004)
Most WOM research centers on two types of digital WOM: consumer reviews of products on retail platforms such as Amazon.com (Floyd, Freling, Alhoqail, Cho, & Freling, 2014; Purnawirawan, Eisend, De Pelsmacker, & Dens, 2015) and comments posted to microblogs that get shared in real time among connected members of a social network, such as Twitter (HennigThurau, Wiertz, & Feldhaus, 2015; Toubia & Stephen, 2013)
To the best of our knowledge, no published research includes different types of WOM in a joint model. It is unclear which effects of consumer reviews or microblogs can be attributed to their respective type and which digital WOM types exert an impact on sales at the respective time
Summary
Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication is a well-established determinant of new product success (Berger & Schwartz, 2011; Godes & Mayzlin, 2004). If the conceptual differences between WOM types influence how consumers use the conveyed WOM information in their adoption decisions, understanding the differential effects of these WOM types is critical for avoiding erroneous judgments about the sources of new product success (or failure) and achieving a better allocation of scarce resources across WOM types in marketing efforts (e.g., Godes & Mayzlin, 2004). Because microblogs and consumer reviews, with their unique characteristics, carry specific information (social versus functional), they should affect different types of consumers (early versus later adopters) differently throughout the diffusion process, in conjunction with the specific information carried by their WOM volume and valence To test these arguments, we collect rich data about both consumer reviews and microblogs and study their respective influences on the success of 100 video games released for the Microsoft Xbox 360 console between October 2011 and November 2012. Our findings have important implications for WOM research, as well as for marketing management, because they can help companies focus on monitoring and managing the WOM types that consumers use most when making their purchase decisions at different points in time
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