Consumers' endorsement effects on marketer and user-generated content in a social media brand community

Abstract

The effects of marketer-generated content (MGC) and user-generated content (UGC) on inducing consumers' responses have been widely studied as stand-alone main effects. Extending these research, this paper studies the interaction effects of consumers' endorsements on MGC and UGC posts in a social media brand community (SMBC) of a popular Asian fashion retailer. We examined if passive and active consumers' endorsements have enhancement effects on MGC/UGC and if they are also effective in inducing consumers' expenditure by themselves. Passive endorsement refers to "likes" on social network sites (SNS), while active endorsement refers to the more involved act of "commenting" on a post. We found evidence that active endorsements positively moderate the effects of MGC in inducing consumers' expenditure. However, passive endorsements negatively moderated MGC, making it less effective in inducing expenditure. Interestingly, the results were reversed for UGC whereby passive endorsements positively moderated UGC, while active endorsements negatively moderated UGC in inducing expenditure. Meanwhile, active endorsements through social-tagging on brand fans were found to be very effective, with recipients of social-tags spending $6 more than nonrecipients in a particular week. Additional robustness checks on selection bias were conducted, and results remain qualitatively similar.