A Woke Approach to User-generated Content: How Product Involvement and Gender Influence What We Post

Although gender is often utilized as a dummy control variable in user-generated content research, studies are often conducted in online communities of products that are disproportionately used by male users. In a similar fashion, existing studies also concentrate on communities of high-involvement products, even though online communities of low involvement products are emerging. In continuation of Soylemez’s work (2021a), this study utilized ELM and the equity theory and investigated how two personal factors (gender and product involvement) influence the relative generation of brand-oriented and community-oriented content. The study found that members of high-involvement product communities generate more brand-oriented content than community-oriented content, whereas members of low-involvement product communities generate more community-oriented content than brand-oriented content. A significant gender-product involvement interaction exists. Managerial and theoretical implications are also discussed.

Keywords:

user-generated content, online brand communities, product involvement gender,

PDF

___

Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 267-299). Academic Press.
Akar, E., & Topçu, B. (2011). An examination of the factors influencing consumers' attitudes toward social media marketing. Journal of Internet Commerce, 10(1), 35-67.
Bowen, G. (Ed.). (2014). Computer-mediated marketing strategies: social media and online brand communities: social media and online brand communities. Igi Global., 1-27.
Awad, N. F., & Ragowsky, A. (2008). Establishing trust in electronic commerce through online word of mouth: An examination across genders. Journal of Management Information Systems, 24(4), 101-121.
Bae, S., & Lee, T. (2011). Gender differences in consumers’ perception of online consumer reviews. Electronic Commerce Research, 11(2), 201-214.
Barreto, A. M., & Ramalho, D. (2019). The impact of involvement on engagement with brand posts. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing. 13(3), 277-301.
Carvalho, A., & Fernandes, T. (2018). Understanding customer brand engagement with virtual social communities: A comprehensive model of drivers, outcomes and moderators. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 26(1-2), 23-37.
Chang, A., Hsieh, S. H., & Tseng, T. H. (2013). Online brand community response to negative brand events: the role of group eWOM. Internet Research. 23(4), 486-506.
Chung, J., & Monroe, G. (1998). Gender differences in information processing: an empirical test of the hypothesis‐confirming strategy in an audit context. Accounting & Finance, 38(2), 265-279.
Cova, B., & Pace, S. (2006). Brand community of convenience products: new forms of customer empowerment–the case “my Nutella The Community”. European Journal of Marketing. 40(9/10), 1087-1105
Dholakia, U. M. (2001). A motivational process model of product involvement and consumer risk perception. European Journal of Marketing. 35 (11/12), 1340-1362
Elliot, R. & Percy, L. (2007), Strategic Brand Management, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Fan, Y. W., & Miao, Y. F. (2012). Effect of electronic word-of-mouth on consumer purchase intention: The perspective of gender differences. International Journal of Electronic Business Management, 10(3), 175.
Felix, R. (2012). Brand communities for mainstream brands: the example of the Yamaha R1 brand community. Journal of Consumer Marketing. 29(3), 225-232
Friedmann, E., & Lowengart, O. (2019). Gender segmentation to increase brand preference? The role of product involvement. Journal of Product & Brand Management. 28(3), 408-420
Haikel-Elsabeh, M., Zhao, Z., Ivens, B., & Brem, A. (2019). When is brand content shared on Facebook? A field study on online Word-of-Mouth. International Journal of Market Research, 61(3), 287-301.
Hammedi, W., Kandampully, J., Zhang, T. T. C., & Bouquiaux, L. (2015). Online customer engagement: Creating social environments through brand community constellations. Journal of Service Management. 26(5), 777-806
Hassan, M., & Ariño, L. V. C. (2016). Consumer devotion to a different height: How consumers are defending the brand within Facebook brand communities. Internet Research. 26(4), 963-981
Herring, S. C. (1996), Gender Differences in CMC: Bringing Familiar Baggage to the New Frontier., CyberReader, Allyn & Bacon, Boston, Massachusetts, 144-454.
Heinze, T. (2010). Cue congruency and product involvement effects on generation Y attitudes. In Research in Consumer Behavior. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Islam, J. U., & Rahman, Z. (2017). The impact of online brand community characteristics on customer engagement: An application of Stimulus-Organism-Response paradigm. Telematics and Informatics, 34(4), 96-109.
Itani, O. S., El Haddad, R., & Kalra, A. (2020). Exploring the role of extrovert-introvert customers’ personality prototype as a driver of customer engagement: does relationship duration matter?. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 53, 101980.
Kamboj, S., & Rahman, Z. (2017). Understanding customer participation in online brand communities: Literature review and future research agenda. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal. 20(3), 306-334
Kim, Y., Moon, H. S., Kim, J. K., Lim, S. H., Sung, J., Kim, D., & Noh, G. Y. (2017). Analyzing the effect of electronic word of mouth on low involvement products”. Asia Pacific Journal of Information Systems. 27, 139-155.
Krishnapillai, G., & Ying, K. S. (2017). The Infl uence of Electronic-Word-of-Mouth on Travel Intention among Foreign Students in Malaysia: Does Gender Really Matter?. International Review of Management and Marketing, 7(1), 475-483.
Laroche, M., Habibi, M. R., Richard, M. O., & Sankaranarayanan, R. (2012). The effects of social media based brand communities on brand community markers, value creation practices, brand trust and brand loyalty. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), 1755-1767.
Lawler, E. J., & Thye, S. R. (1999). Bringing emotions into social exchange theory. Annual Review of Sociology, 25(1), 217-244.
Lee, J., & Hong, I. B. (2016). Predicting positive user responses to social media advertising: The roles of emotional appeal, informativeness, and creativity. International Journal of Information Management, 36(3), 360-373.
Liao, J., & Wang, D. (2020). When does an online brand community backfire? An empirical study. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing. 14(4), 413-430
Lou, C., & Xie, Q. (2021). Something social, something entertaining? How digital content marketing augments consumer experience and brand loyalty. International Journal of Advertising, 40(3), 376-402.
Lou, C., Xie, Q., Feng, Y., & Kim, W. (2019). Does non-hard-sell content really work? Leveraging the value of branded content marketing in brand building. Journal of Product & Brand Management. 28(7), 773-786
Lüdicke, M. K., & Giesler, M. (2007). Brand communities and their social antagonists: insights from the Hummer case. Consumer Tribes, 275-295.
Madupu, V., & Cooley, D. O. (2010). Cross-cultural differences in online brand communities: An exploratory study of Indian and American online brand communities. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 22(4), 363-375.
Mangold, W. G., & Faulds, D. J. (2009). Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix. Business Horizons, 52(4), 357-365.
Mason, E. S., & Mudrack, P. E. (1996). Gender and ethical orientation: A test of gender and occupational socialization theories. Journal of Business Ethics, 15(6), 599-604.
Mansour, O., & Farmanesh, P. (2020). Does gender matter? Acceptance and forwarding of electronic word of mouth: A moderated mediation analysis. Management Science Letters, 10(7), 1481-1486.
McMillan, S. J., Hwang, J. S., & Lee, G. (2003). Effects of structural and perceptual factors on attitudes toward the website. Journal of Advertising Research, 43(4), 400-409.
Muniz, A. M., & O'guinn, T. C. (2001). Brand community. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(4), 412-432.
Park, S. C., & Keil, M. (2019). The moderating effects of product involvement on escalation behavior. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 59(3), 218-232.
Pedersen, S., & Macafee, C. (2007). Gender differences in British blogging. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1472-1492.
Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In Communication and persuasion (pp. 1-24). Springer, New York, NY.
Rialti, R., Zollo, L., Pellegrini, M. M., & Ciappei, C. (2017). Exploring the antecedents of brand loyalty and electronic word of mouth in social-media-based brand communities: do gender differences matter?. Journal of Global Marketing, 30(3), 147-160.
Sarathy, P. S., & Patro, S. K. (2013). The role of opinion leaders in high-involvement purchases: An empirical investigation. South Asian Journal of Management, 20(2), 127.
Schau, H. J., Muñiz Jr, A. M., & Arnould, E. J. (2009). How brand community practices create value. Journal of Marketing, 73(5), 30-51.
Schler, J., Koppel, M., Argamon, S., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006, March). Effects of age and gender on blogging. In AAAI spring symposium: Computational approaches to analyzing weblogs (Vol. 6, pp. 199-205).
Soylemez, K. C. (2021a). Impact of individual and brand level factors in generation of different user-generated content. Journal of Consumer Marketing. 38(4), 457-466.
Soylemez, K. C. (2021b). 4W of user-generated content: why who we are and where we post influence what we post. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.15(3), 386-400
Suh, J. C., & Youjae, Y. (2006). When brand attitudes affect the customer satisfaction-loyalty relation: The moderating role of product involvement. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 16(2), 145-155.
Wang, C. L. (2021). New frontiers and future directions in interactive marketing: inaugural Editorial. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing. 15(1),1-9
Wang, Y. C., Burke, M., & Kraut, R. E. (2013, April). Gender, topic, and audience response: An analysis of user-generated content on Facebook. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 31-34).
Van Doorn, N., & Van Zoonen, L. (2008). Theorizing gender and the Internet: Past, present, and future. In Routledge handbook of internet politics (pp. 277-290). Routledge.
Viskovich, J. (2018). Online Brands and Social Media Communities How Brands Can Engage and Establish Relationships with Customers via Online Brand Communities. Journal of Accounting & Marketing. 7 (4), 299.
Zaichkowsky, J. L. (1994). The personal involvement inventory: Reduction, revision, and application to advertising. Journal of Advertising, 23(4), 59-70.
Zaichkowsky, J. L. (1986). Conceptualizing involvement. Journal of Advertising, 15(2), 4-34.