The interplay of motivations and emotions in consumer engagement: Exploring eWOM communication amidst online review fraud

Purpose This study aims to deepen the understanding of consumer engagement and satisfaction within the health and wellness tourism sector, a rapidly growing niche in the global tourism industry. It focuses on identifying key elements that influence consumer perceptions and experiences in this domain. Design/methodology/approach Employing a quantitative approach, this research utilizes Dynamic Correlated Topic Models (DCTM) and sentiment analysis techniques to analyze user-generated content from TripAdvisor. The methodology involves parsing through extensive online reviews to extract thematic patterns and emotional sentiments related to various wellness tourism experiences. Findings The findings reveal that wellness and relaxation, spa and therapy services, and cultural immersion are significant factors influencing consumer satisfaction in health and wellness tourism. These elements contribute to a more profound and emotionally satisfying tourist experience, highlighting the shift from traditional tourism to more holistic, wellness-focused travel. Research limitations/implications The study is limited by its focus on user-generated content from a single platform, which may not fully represent the diverse range of consumer experiences in health and wellness tourism. Future research could expand to include other platforms and cross-reference with qualitative data. Practical implications The study offers valuable implications for destination managers and marketers in the health and wellness tourism industry, suggesting that enhancing and promoting wellness-centric experiences can significantly improve consumer satisfaction and engagement. Social implications The research underscores the growing importance of health and wellness in societal values, reflecting a shift in consumer preferences towards travel experiences that offer mental, physical, and spiritual benefits. This has broader implications for how destinations can cater to the evolving demands of socially conscious travelers. Originality/value This research contributes original insights into the evolving field of health and wellness tourism by integrating advanced text mining techniques to analyze consumer feedback, offering a novel perspective on what drives engagement and satisfaction in this sector.

The rapid advancement of digital technology has transformed the way consumers engage with brands and make purchase decisions. Social commerce platforms, which integrate social media and e-commerce, have emerged as powerful tools influencing consumer behavior. Today’s youth, being highly active on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Telegram, rely on user-generated content, reviews, influencer recommendations, and peer feedback to evaluate products and services before making a purchase. This study examines consumer perceptions towards social commerce platforms and their impact on purchase decisions among youth. It explores the factors that drive consumer trust, engagement, and purchase intentions, including the credibility of online reviews, brand interactions, and personalized recommendations. Additionally, the study investigates how demographic factors such as age, gender, and income level shape consumer attitudes toward social commerce. With the increasing popularity of social commerce, understanding these behavioural patterns is crucial for businesses looking to enhance their digital marketing strategies. The findings of this research will provide insights into the key elements that influence young consumers’ decision-making processes, helping brands optimize their engagement strategies and improve customer experiences on social commerce platforms.

Sosyal ağ sitelerinin tüketicilerin günlük hayatının vazgeçilmez bir parçası haline gelmesi, markaların tüketici bağlarını güçlendirmek için bu platformlarda temaslarını arttırmalarına neden olmuştur. Böylelikle, tüketiciler markalar hakkında daha fazla içerik üretir ve paylaşır hale gelmiş ve bu da elektronik ağızdan ağza iletişim (e-AAİ) mesajlarında artışa yol açmıştır. Markaların iletişim süreçlerindeki bu değişim, sosyal ağlarda tüketici bağı ve e-AAİ arasındaki ilişkinin önemine işaret etmektedir. Mevcut araştırma ile sosyal ağlarda tüketici bağının, e-AAİ üzerindeki etkisinin ölçülmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Araştırma kapsamında, tüketicilerin sosyal ağlarda markalar ile kurdukları bağın; elektronik ağızdan ağza iletişim mesajlarına inanma (e-AAİ inanırlığı), bu mesajlardan etkilenme düzeyleri (e-AAİ etkisi) ve bu mesajlara yönelik gösterdikleri tutumlar (e-AAİ tutumu) üzerinde olumlu ve anlamlı bir etkisi olduğu sonucuna ulaşılmıştır.

Social network sites (SNS) facilitate eWOM communication among consumers of different cultures. Building on contact theory and the theory of planned behavior, we propose a conceptual framework that integrates intercultural factors as predictors of minority consumers’ engagement with eWOM communicated by and to individuals of the dominant culture on social media. A partial least squares (PLS) analysis on data collected from the Israeli-Arab minority shows that intercultural factors (i.e., acculturation, social interaction, and language proficiency) are antecedents of minority consumer engagement with eWOM. However, this relationship is mediated by consumer beliefs (attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) concerning this behavior, and moderated by the cultural distance between minority and dominant culture consumers. The findings help marketers plan marketing communications that engage audiences meaningfully and generate positive eWOM when targeting ethnic-cultural minorities. The current study contributes to our understanding of minority consumers’ engagement with eWOM communicated by and to members of the hegemonic culture. It further contributes to consumer engagement theory and acculturation research by supporting the post-assimilationist view. The proposed model is highly valuable in light of the importance of the concept of consumer engagement in marketing research.

PurposeThis study aims to find how can fashion micro-influencers and their electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) messages increase consumer engagement on social media, focusing on micro-influencers’ influence, typology, eWOM content and consumer engagement.Design/methodology/approachA total of 20,000 microblogs were collected from Irish fashion micro-influencers and analyzed through keyword classification and content analysis in NVivo. The determinants of eWOM persuasiveness for consumer engagement on social media were investigated based on Sussman and Siegal’s information adoption model.FindingsThe study finds that among the four types of micro-influencers, market mavens and their eWOM messages have the highest impact on consumer engagement on social media, and it presents a repetitive and persuasive eWOM model of market mavens to increase consumer participation. Also, the study discovers that micro-influencers’ occasion-related microblogs have an increasing impact on consumer interactions whereas microblogs with brands have a decreasing engagement with consumers on social media.Originality/valueThis study advances prior studies on the relationship between influencers’ eWOM messages and consumer participation on social media by the development of a persuasive eWOM model of micro-influencers to increase consumer engagement and fill in the lack of relevant literature. Also, findings provide actionable insights for marketing communication practitioners to persuade consumers to participate in eWOM communications and establish strong consumer-brand relationships on social media.

People are now attempting to develop an ideology for the digital transformation of contemporary consumers, which requires a deep understanding of the basic constructs or variables behind this type of migration. The current research model is based on nearly 61 research papers from top marketing journals to understand the impact of variables like technology, social media, online reviews, consumer engagement, and marketing ethics on the digital transformation of online consumers. A thorough analysis of the literature was conducted to identify independent and dependent variables, along with their supporting components, and then distributed a questionnaire reflecting these variables to 1187 participants for data collection. PLS-SEM, with its robust and reliable measuring standards, was incorporated owing to its ability to manage complex models with multiple variables and indicators. Research predictions has aimed to find out the digital shift amongst modern consumers, checking the impact of extracted variables, i.e. technology, social media, online reviews, consumer engagement, and marketing ethics. The results clearly validates that customer engagement through customer reviews and social media has a priority influence on the digital shift of online consumers, backed up by the attributes of marketing ethics and technology.

Digitization has led to emergence of many platforms-based markets. In this dissertation I focus on three different design problems in these markets. The first essay relates to augmented-reality platforms. Pok\'emon Go, an augmented-reality technology-based game, garnered tremendous public interest upon release with an average of 20 million active daily users. The game combines geo-spatial elements with gamification practices to incentivize user movement in the physical world. This work examines the potential externalities that such incentives may have on associated businesses. Particularly, we study the impact of Pok\'emon Go on local restaurants using online reviews as a proxy for consumer engagement and perception. We treat the release of Pok\'emon Go as a natural experiment and study the post-release impact on the associated restaurants. We find that restaurants located near an in-game artifact do indeed observe a higher level of consumer engagement and a more positive consumer perception as compared with those that have no in-game artifacts nearby. In addition, we find that the heterogeneous characteristics of the restaurants moderate the effect significantly. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to examine the economic implications of augmented-reality applications. Thereby, our research lays the foundations for how augmented-reality games affect consumer economic behavior. This work also builds insights into the potential value of such associations for business owners and policymakers. <br>The second essay focuses on the platform design problem in sponsored seaerch ad-market.Recent advances in technology have reduced frictions in various markets. In this research, we specifically investigate the role of frictions in determining the efficiency and bidding behavior in a generalized second price auction (GSP) -- the most preferred mechanism for sponsored search advertisements. First, we simulate computational agents in the GSP setting and obtain predictions for the metrics of interest. Second, we test these predictions by conducting a human-subject experiment. We find that, contrary to the theoretical prediction, the lower-valued advertisers (who do not win the auction) substantially overbid. Moreover, we find that the presence of market frictions moderates this phenomenon and results in higher allocative efficiency. These results have implications for policymakers and auction platform managers in designing incentives for more efficient auctions.<br>The third essay is about user-generated content platforms. These platform utilize various gamification strategies to incentivize user contributions. One of the most popular strategy is to provide platform sponsorships like a special status. Previous literature has extensively studied the impact of having these sponsorships user contributions. We specifically focus on the impact of losing such elite status. Once their contributions to the platform reduce in volume, elite users lose status. Using a unique empirical strategy we show that users continue to contribute high quality reviews, even though they lose their status. We utilize NLP to extract various review characteristics including sentiment and topics. Using an empirical strategy, we find that losing status does not modify the topic of the reviews written by the users, on average. <br>

ABSTRACTWe explore the interplay between social currency (SC) and consumer engagement on social networks. We use text analyses based on both human coding and machine learning asisted sentiment analysis on reviews collected from Facebook pages, and we show that SC has a positive effect on ratings and visitor loyalty. First, we find that attractions have varying makeup of SC as represented in the six dimensions of SC. Second, repeat visits increase SC. Third, SC positively impacts revisit intentions even in the absence of prior experience. We also find that prior experience does not appear to yield better ratings, however, it predicts revisit intentions. This study represents the first use of SC in the tourism domain. Theoretical and practical implications alongside limitations and future research are discussed.

There has been a significant shift in the purchase of media by brands in the last decade. Brands have moved from spending money on the ever-present television and print media to the ubiquitous digital media of today. Consumers, however, are wary of marketing communications from companies and prefer reviews and opinions from friends or other consumers. In the new hyperconnected world, they are online reviews (i.e., electronic word-of-mouth or eWOM). Consequently, it has become imperative for marketers to measure and manage eWOM, and several companies today rely on social media command centres (SMCCs) for this. Companies use SMCCs to unearth fans and reveal influencers. The prevalent thinking is that by actively interacting with these influencers, eWOM can be positively impacted, which, in turn, may enhance the engagement of prospective customers with the brand. The present study proposes a model for the relationship between eWOM and consumer engagement (CE). Additionally, it details a comprehensive classification framework of CE and reveals both the experts’ and consumers’ perspectives in this field by adopting a grounded theory–content analysis approach. The findings suggest that eWOM leads to CE.

Online reviews reflect consumer needs and generate an electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) effect influencing businesses’ financial performance. Existing literature on online reviews largely assumes consumers have a consistent conversion rate of writing and posting online reviews after a consumption experience. Using dual-source data of consumers’ footprints and online restaurant reviews, we challenge this assumption and quantify the online review conversion rate by depicting a comprehensive pathway from consumers’ visitation to their review writing. We find that consumer overall satisfaction has a nonlinear impact on the online review conversion rate. Extremely dissatisfied consumers are more likely to post online reviews to complain than generally dissatisfied consumers. In contrast, generally satisfied consumers are more likely to post online reviews than extremely satisfied consumers. Additionally, consumer engagement in the platform stimulates their online review behavior. Further, consumers’ geographical distance from providers has a U-shaped impact on online review conversion rate. Local nearby consumers and consumers from a relatively long distance have a higher chance to post online reviews than consumers from a moderate distance. Moreover, price promotions from providers facilitate consumers’ review behavior. The findings guide businesses to prioritize reading and responding to online consumer reviews based on these influential factors. Companies thus can use more targeted actions to encourage consumers to post positive reviews and spread a positive eWOM effect to attract consumers and enhance financial performance

Consumers' online information adoption behavior: Motives and antecedents of electronic word of mouth communications

The advances of the Internet and social media allow consumers to access more channels and sources of information to inform their purchase decisions. This has also given rise to micro-influencers, who generate content and gradually form a community following and interacting with their social accounts. Micro-influencers differ with traditional celebrities in that the latter become renown through sporting, art or the like (De Veirman et al. 2017). Micro-influencers are perceived as more reflective of their followers (Jin et al. 2019), and are argued to wield powerful influence over consumer choice, despite their much less popularity and followings than traditional celebrities (Boerman 2020). This study examines the relationships among social communication variables relating to micro-influencers on social platforms: online opinion leadership (OOL) and parasocial interaction (PSI) as personal and interpersonal source characteristics, respectively (Sweeney et al. 2008); message quality as a message characteristic (Le et al. 2020); online interaction propensity (OIP) as a receiver characteristic (Labrecque 2014); and consumer engagement behaviours (CEBs) as responses with respect to product review elements including the content, the micro-influencer, and the product/ brand embedded in the post (Casaló et al. 2020). An online survey was conducted with a convenience sample of Vietnamese consumers who have previously purchased or planned to buy a mobile phone within 6 months and have viewed online reviews about mobile phones as part of their information search. A valid data of 371 responses was analysed using smartPLS 3.3.3. Findings reveal that OOL and PSI have significant impact on message quality (p < 0.05), which in turn affects significantly CEBs (p < 0.05): Intention to interact with the post; intention to follow advice of the micro-influencer; and intention to recommend the micro-influencer to others. While the result only finds OIP elevates the impact of message quality on consumers’ intention to interact with the post at p < 0.10; findings show significant direct impact of OIP on CEBs, though not hypothesised. This research contributes to communication literature concerning consumers’ processing of persuasive cues and information exposed to them through the online environment. The research highlights the importance of essential factors requiring attention in micro-influencer marketing: OOL, PSI, message quality and OIP. The study also contributes to consumer engagement literature with evidence concerning the focal object as micro-influencers’ online product reviews. Practically, insights from this research suggest marketers need to detect micro-influencers, target them with appropriate communication strategies so as to influence their generated and disseminated content. Marketers can take the findings of effects on intention with the post and intention to recommend the micro-influencers in approaching micro-influencers for a win-win collaboration. The study also demonstrates OIP as an important individual trait in segmenting consumers for effective consumer engagement.KeywordsMicro-influencerOpinion leadershipParasocial interactionConsumer engagementOnline product reviewsOnline interaction propensity

This study looks into how internet reviews influence how perceived convenience and trust interact to influence consumers' online buying decisions. Convenience has emerged as a major factor in consumer engagement with e-commerce, but trust is still essential for making final purchase decisions because of the inherent risks of online purchasing. Online reviews serve as a third-party validation method, lowering perceived risks and fostering trust by offering social evidence and insights into previous customers' experiences. The purpose of this study is to investigate how online reviews, which eventually affect customer behavior, mediate the relationship between the ease of use of online platforms and the growth of trust. The study used a quantitative methodology to investigate whether the existence of online reviews enhances the correlation between convenience and trust, as well as the impact of this mediation on consumer choice. For e-commerce platforms looking to boost consumer satisfaction and trust through better user experiences and review systems, the findings offered insightful information.

Pokemon Go, a mobile game that utilizes the augmented reality (AR) technology, garnered tremendous public interest upon release with an average of 20 million active daily users. The game combines geo-spatial elements with gamification practices to incentivize user movement in the physical world. In this study, we examine the potential externalities that such incentives may have on associated businesses. Particularly, we study the impact of Pokemon Go on local restaurants by using online reviews as a proxy for consumer engagement and perception. We treat the release of Pokemon Go as a natural experiment and study the post-release impact on associated restaurants. We find that restaurants associated with Pokemon Go do indeed enjoy a higher level of consumer engagement and more positive consumer perception. In addition, we find that the characteristics of a restaurant moderate these effects significantly. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to examine the economic implications of augmented-reality applications. Therefore, our research lays the foundations for future studies that examine how augmented-reality applications affect consumer economic behavior. Our study also provides insights for business owners and policymakers regarding the potential value of being associated with AR-based applications.

As time goes by, retail progresses faster and faster, so how does Essity keep up? This case study outlines how the leading global hygiene and health company has utilized the idea to bring its washable, absorbent underwear to market in six European countries – from the decision to launch the Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) business model in late 2020, to a first sale and delivery just six months later. The DTC model is helping Essity to not only learn and improve quickly but also to provide the best sustainable hygiene products and consumer experience to a growing audience of environmentally conscious women and girls. We discuss how the DTC model started to change the market and how Essity joined several smaller, innovative brands to populate a new eCommerce world, where quick decisions, experience and data are all-important. Today, in contrast to as little as 10 years ago, a brand’s relevance and success relies on an excellent consumer experience, from order to delivery, as much as product and performance. We will dig into how consumer engagement and data insights are necessary tools for success. See how the DTC model allows Essity to test, innovate and change, while connecting with the women and girls we’re passionate about supporting, through social media, online reviews and other feedback channels. In addition, launching DTC has not all been smooth sailing. We reveal the challenges Essity faced using DTC and how we overcame them. Plus, we look toward our future with next steps and innovation.