City Research Online

Abstract

Consumer-to-consumer brand message sharing is pivotal for effective social media marketing. Even as companies join social media conversations and generate millions of brand messages, it remains unclear what, how, and when brand messages stand out and prompt sharing by consumers. With a conceptual extension of speech act theory, this study offers a granular assessment of brands’ message intentions (i.e., assertive, expressive, or directive) and the effects on consumer sharing. A text mining study of more than two years of Facebook posts and Twitter tweets by well-known consumer brands empirically demonstrates the impacts of distinct message intentions on consumers’ message sharing. Specifically, the use of rhetorical styles (alliteration and repetitions) and cross-message compositions enhance consumer message sharing. As a further extension, an image-based study demonstrates that the presence of visuals, or so-called image acts, increases the ability to account for message sharing. The findings explicate brand message sharing by consumers and thus offer guidance to content managers for developing more effective conversational strategies in social media marketing.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Consumer Research following peer review. The version of record Villarroel Ordenes, F., Grewal, D., Ludwig, S., de Ruyter, K., Mahr, D. & Wetzels, M. (2018). Cutting through Content Clutter: How Speech and Image Acts Drive Consumer Sharing of Social Media Brand Messages. Journal of Consumer Research, is to be available online at: https://academic.oup.com/jcr
Publisher Keywords:	Consumer Sharing, Brand Communications, Social Media, Speech Act Theory, Rhetoric, Image Acts, Text Mining, Message Dynamic
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

Export

Downloads