Online social media (OSMs) have become a popular and growing phenomenon on the Internet, as exemplified by the millions of followers of websites like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Given the ease of access and high competition over the Internet to attract users, a question that arises is whether...

With the proliferation of social media, questions have begun to emerge about its role in providing marketing insights. In this research, we investigate the potential to “listen in” on social media conversations as a means of inferring brand sentiment. Our analysis employs data collected from...

While recent research has demonstrated the impact of online product ratings and reviews on product sales, we still have a limited understanding of the individual’s decision to contribute these opinions. In this research, we empirically model the individual’s decision to provide a product...

This study explores use of the social network site Facebook for online political discussion. A computer-mediated discourse analysis is applied to examine discussion occurring within a Facebook group concentrated on the contentious issue of state-sanctioned torture. Online political discussion...

Online product reviews are an important resource for consumers in online marketplaces because they provide a useful source of support information during the purchase of goods. Furthermore, in some online marketplaces consumers have the opportunity to evaluate the usefulness of a review by using...

Online consumer reviews play an important role in the decision to purchase services online, mainly due to the rich information source they provide to consumers in terms of evaluating “experience”-type products and services that can be booked using the Internet, with online travel services...

We investigate the drivers of social media rebroadcasting behavior by jointly examining the effects of message content, user heterogeneity (both observed and unobserved), the fit between message content and individual users, and the influence of prior rebroadcasting activity. We focus on the...

Online consumer reviews constitute an integral aspect of electronic transactions as they play a part in lowering customer uncertainty during purchase decision making. This paper studies the aspect of negativity exhibited on the justification of its valence by the review text (as a dependent...

Customers often rely on peers’ opinions and experiences when forming expectations and evaluating a service provider. New media channels such as consumer review platforms and social networking sites help customers obtain firsthand information from other customers to evaluate a service. Prior...

The authors test six theoretically-derived hypotheses about ad characteristics that influence digital sharing. Two completely independent field studies test these hypotheses using over 11 measures of emotions and over 60 ad characteristics. The results are consistent with our theory and robust...