6.7 Articles
Empirical evidence
- contagion in consumer packaged goods (Du and Kamakura 2011)
Interesting stat:
“Articles by business academics, psychologists, and economists, for example, are more likely to be shared than articles by physicists, geneticists, and biochemists” (Milkman and Berger 2014)
“Specifically, men see the same scientific summaries as more comprehensible (P < 0.001), interesting (P < 0.001), and useful” hence they share more than women (Milkman and Berger 2014)
“though intentionally outrageous videos command attention (Tellis 2004), an ad design of this type ultimately detracts from the ad’s persuasiveness” (Tellis, 2004)
(Godes and Mayzlin 2009) the impact of dispersion declines over time; hence should measure WOM early in a product’s life. Main finding: higher WOM dispersion leads to higher future ratings. WOM is both precursors and consequences of consumer behavior.
Promotional giveaways increase WOM (Berger and Schwartz 2011)
Berger and Milkman (2012)
Positive emotional valence content is more likely to be shared
Activation = physiological arousal induces action.
Low arousal = deactivation = relaxation (Feldman Barrett and Russell 1998)
HIgh arousal = activation = activity (Heilman 1997)
Examine 7000 articles from thew New York Times
Examine emotionality, prominent features, interest evoked can affect likelihood to make the most email list. (controlling for practically content usefulness, interestingness, surprise, release timing and author fame (using hits for first author’s full name from the number of Google hits), writing complexity, author gender, article length and day dummies).
Robustness: control for article’s general topic.
Lab experiments
Amusement case (fictitious): high arousal
Anger case (real): high arousal
Sadness (real vs. fictitious): low arousal
All hypotheses are confirmed
Potential confounders: structural virality
How likely they would share a story? (no social risk involved - risk to other weak ties, hence the effect might be inflated, the same thing with the New York Times study )
All experiments have low participant numbers
Tellis et al. (2019)
Two field studies
Information-focused content is less likely to be shared (exception risky contexts)
Positive emotions (e.g., amusement, excitement, inspiration, warmth) are more likely to be shared
Drama elements (e.g., surprise, plot, characters, babies, animals, celebrities) increase arousal, which in turn increases sharing.
Prominent placement of brand name (brand prominence)
Emotional ads are shared more on general platforms (Facebook, Twitter) as compared to professional one (e.g., LinkedIn), while informational ads are more likely to be shared on professional ones.
Optimal length is 1.2 to 1.7 min ads.
Third study: identifies predictors of sharing
(Trusov, Bodapati, and Bucklin 2010)
- How to determine Influential users in online social networks