34.11 Digital marketing and WOM
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
Lovett, Peres, and Shachar (2013)
Melumad and Pham (2020)
Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral (2018)
Moore (2012)
Naylor, Lamberton, and West (2012)
P. Nguyen et al. (2020)