Mana Farshid

Making sense of online consumer reviews : a methodology

Online consumer reviews have become an increasingly important source of information for both consumers (i.e. about whether to buy) and marketers (i.e. about product strengths and weaknesses). However, online consumer reviews are unstructured and unsystematic in nature, making interpretation of these reviews an enormous challenge. The current paper sheds light on a particular methodology that can be used to investigate what consumers say about companies, brands or products. Consumer reviews of the four best-selling games available on Apples App Store were compiled. Leximancer, a content analysis package, was used to compare comments from users who provided games with a five-star rating versus a one-star rating. Results from the Leximancer analysis reveal the most common themes and concepts that consumers use to describe their experience with these games. Specifically, five-star reviewers describe games as fun, awesome, amazing and addictive; one-star reviewers describe games as boring, easy and stupid. Additionally, negative reviews include themes regarding the presence of ads, technological difficulties and value. Future research should explore how consumers and marketers use this information.

A sweet face man: using Chernoff faces to portray social media wine brand images

The rise of social media and its resultant impact on brand management has become a critical factor in guarding the reputation of the firm. Consumer-generated content has the potential to spread rap ...

The brand personalities of brand communities: an analysis of online communication

Purpose Online brand communities provide a wealth of insights about how consumers perceive and talk about a brand, rather than what the firm communicates about the brand. The purpose of this paper is to understand whether the brand personality of an online brand community, rather than of the brand itself, can be deduced from the online communication within that brand community. Design/methodology/approach The paper is empirical in nature. The authors use community-generated content from eight online brand communities and perform content analysis using the text analysis software Diction. The authors employ the five brand personality dictionaries (competence, excitement, ruggedness, sincerity and sophistication) from the Pitt et al. (2007) dictionary source as the basis for the authors’ analysis. Findings The paper offers two main contributions. First, it identifies two types of communities: those focusing on solving functional problems that consumers might encounter with a firm’s offering and those focusing on broader engagement with the brand. Second, the study serves as a blueprint that marketers can adopt to analyze online brand communities using a computerized approach. Such a blueprint is beneficial not only to analyze a firm’s own online brand community but also that of competitors, thus providing insights into how their brand stacks up against competitor brands. Originality/value This is the first paper examining the nature of online brand communities by means of computerized content analysis. The authors outline a number of areas that marketing scholars could explore further based on the authors analysis. The paper also highlights implications for marketers when establishing, managing, monitoring and analyzing online brand communities.

The Use of Social Media in Higher Education

The use of social media in the university classroom is growing in popularity and is transforming learning and teaching in significant ways (Li and Pitts 2009; Tess 2013). According to Lee and McLoughlin (2008), social networking sites have become educational tools onto themselves. However, while students have both developed and embraced the use of social media in their personal lives, little research has been done into the mix of social media used by teachers and students in their traditional courses (Li and Pitts 2009). Instead, most research to date is social media specific. Modritscher (2010) states that both educators and learners need to rethink the way they teach and learn. Li and Pitts (2009) discuss that there is much to learn about the use of web-based communication tools and the impact they have on traditional measures of students’ success in higher education. Yet research has not explored the effects of the characteristics of social networks used primarily by students (Mazer et al. 2007), and more empirical research is needed (Barcayk 2013; Tess 2013).

There’s a Silver Lining: Information Quality, Trust, and Positive Meaning After a Crisis

Communication and public relations play a pivotal role in crisis management (Tirkkonen and Luoma‐aho 2011). Due to the high levels of uncertainty created during a crisis, stakeholders have a strong need for fast and accurate information (Seeger and Griffin Padgett 2010). For public sector organizations, crisis communication is perhaps even more challenging and complex, given that government agencies have democratic obligations to serve and communicate with all citizens (McCoy 2014). A main goal of crisis communication is to restore reputation and regain customers’ trust (Utz et al. 2013). It seems likely that individuals have different perceptions of the information quality of crisis communication, which in turn may influence their trust in government. We also suggest that the level of perceived information quality is related to the extent to which people find positive meaning in a crisis (Fredrickson et al. 2003), and to their level of crisis involvement (Claeys and Cauberghe 2014). In this chapter, we identify segments of citizens based on their perceptions of the information quality of local governments’ crisis communication, and assess whether there are differences between these segments in terms of their post‐crisis trust in government, perceptions of positive meaning, and crisis involvement.

Salesperson’s Personality and the Relationship Quality Differences Between Customers and Friends

This paper sheds light on the quality of relationships between salespeople and their customers and friends as well as how their personality traits affect these relationships. The findings revealed that salespeople’s personality traits do not influence relationship quality with customers in the same way as with friends, and significant differences exist.

Role of Anti-Brand Websites on Brand Image

Since customers are facilitated through the internet and many-to-many communication, they can easily and conveniently share their opinions with others. Anti-brand websites operate as forums for high-level empowered electronic word-of-mouth exchanges. This study has investigated the role of anti-brand websites on brand image. The scripted data of focus group discussions have been analyzed using Leximancer, a textual analysis tool, because it can recognize themes and concepts that show customers’ perspectives and determine the core concepts that are most highlighted or criticized by complainers and activists.