Maria Petrescu

Viral Advertising: A Field Experiment on Viral Intentions and Purchase Intentions

This study conducts an investigation of viral advertising by developing and testing a model to integrate the influence of three types of video ad appeals (humor, sex, or information), ad sources (known or unknown), attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, and demographics on intentions to forward an ad and purchase a brand. The model is tested by collecting data from a sample of national online consumers. The findings demonstrate the importance of ad appeals for both attitude toward the ad and viral intentions. Attitude toward the ad is also found to be a significant influencer of viral intentions, and mediator of the relationship between ad appeals and viral intentions. The study also found support for a positive relationship between viral intentions and purchase intentions.

Hispanic-Americans, Mobile Advertising and Mobile Services

The literature on marketing to Hispanics and the use of mobile-based marketing methods continues to grow. However, to our knowledge, no research has been published on Hispanic use and acceptance of mobile marketing channels; this research addresses that gap. The study investigates various aspects of mobile channel services including advertising among Hispanic-Americans and non-Hispanic-Americans. The results indicate significant differences between Hispanic-Americans and others in the usage of mobile services, satisfaction with mobile services, and attitudes toward mobile advertising, as well as within Hispanic-Americans based on their strength of ethnic identification. The managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.

Prosumer motivations for electronic word-of-mouth communication behaviors

Purpose “Prosumers” (combining “producer” and “consumers”) describes consumers’ ability to openly share their product/service experiences and thereby drive sales and digital marketing. Understanding what motivates active prosumers to engage in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and share or review their hotel experiences online can help organizations empathize with consumers and use their messages to co-create value. Identifying prosumers’ motivators can enable companies to properly target them as resources for review or consumer feedback studies. This paper aims to investigate the influence of motivators (intrinsic and extrinsic), service quality and age on consumers’ eWOM communication behaviors. Design/methodology/approach A panel of 204 travelers was surveyed regarding their hotel travel experiences, propensity to write online reviews, preferred review-writing platform, motivations for writing reviews and impressions of service quality. To test the hypotheses, a multivariate regression analysis was performed with eWOM as the dependent variable. Differences in eWOM as a function of preferred review platform were also tested using ANOVA, with a multiple comparison analysis that underlines the differences between prosumers who prefer different types of review platforms and their eWOM behaviors. Findings Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, as well as service reliability, had a significant influence on eWOM behavior, while service tangibility had a negative relationship. Additionally, prosumers’ engagement in eWOM about their hospitality experience differed according to their preferred review platform. Research limitations/implications The findings of the analysis underline the importance of consumer motivations and of satisfaction with service quality in the context of digital review behavior. For marketing and hospitality research, this shows the benefits of including not only individual characteristics and demographics when analyzing review behavior but also elements such as perceptions of service quality. Given the differences in how the dimensions of service quality affect consumers’ engagement in online review behavior, this represents a very important topic for research and can be included in future studies that analyze the consumer review behavior model. Practical implications Regarding the implications for practitioners, this study highlights the important role played by consumer satisfaction with service in the hospitality industry and its effect on their involvement in online reviews. Managers should be focused constantly on offering great service to their guests, while, at the same time, offering them motivations to engage in posting positive reviews about their vacation. Moreover, as the results of this study imply that various dimensions of service quality have a different impact, managers should focus especially on the aspects that consumers consider important and constantly include in their reviews, such as the tangibles dimension. The results of this study also have the potential to provide to businesses more information to improve the social aspects of vacationing, which can not only improve perceptions about service quality but can also have a positive influence on consumers’ motivations. Originality/value This paper develops a better understanding of what motivates people to engage in the eWOM communication behavior of writing online hotel reviews, by showing the effect of consumer motivations and service quality variables on prosumers’ engagement in online review behavior.

Online Piracy vs. Public Policy and Cultural Influencers

Online piracy is one of the most challenging problems faced by the software and entertainment industries today. Tens of billions of dollars of copyrighted commercial material is exchanged illegally annually due to peer-to-peer networking sites and other downloadable methods, while it is also estimated that digital theft of copyrighted content makes up over 20% of the Internet traffic worldwide (Envisional, 2011; RIAA, 2014). The objective of this study is the analysis of the key country level factors that influence the national piracy rate, which can help practitioners, academics and policy makers. We use a mixed-method approach, with a qualitative study to identify the key online piracy legal issues and macro level antecedents in online consumer discussions. Further, we use the Hunt-Vitell General Theory of Marketing Ethics as a theoretical basis and empirically analyze the importance of cultural, legal and policy variables that are part of different national institutions and systems. Overall, the significance found for our model underlines the fact that numerous factors that are related to a country’s cultural values, ethical system and legal system can contribute or deter individuals from illegally sharing and downloading copyrighted electronic content and information.

Online piracy in the context of routine activities and subjective norms

ABSTRACT Why do mainstream consumers who would not typically engage in illegal behaviour routinely resort to online piracy of copyrighted software? This paper provides answers to this research query by applying routine activity theory and the theory of reasoned action. The paper’s study analyses consumers’ role as possible offenders that can have the opportunity to engage in online software piracy as part of their routine online activities. Although it is problematic to measure the exact magnitude of the negative impact on the US economy, as stated by the Government Accountability Office it is sizeable. After analysing the conceptual model using a US national consumer sample of over 700 consumers, results show the influence of proximity to motivated offenders, target suitability, and capable guardianship on consumers’ attitudes and perceived subjective norms towards online software piracy, as well as their intentions to engage in this illegal behaviour on the Internet. By integrating routine activity theory, a criminology theory with the theory of reasoned action from psychology and analysing a widespread online software piracy phenomenon, several academic and practical contributions are made.

Five-Star Reviews: How Do Incentivized Product Reviews Impact Sales (An Abstract)

Shoppers are strongly influenced by Internet-based word of mouth (WOM) during the purchase decision process by engaging in activities such as reading and writing product reviews, forum discussions, blogs, and social media posts (Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006; Dellarocas 2006; Senecal and Nantel 2004). However, the impact of WOM has challenged the level of integrity and ethical conduct from businesses. This chapter studies the consequences of consumer reviews generated through third-party companies as a result of receiving a product for free. Exchange theory is applied as a theoretical framework (Gatignon and Robertson 1986; Ryu and Feick 2007) to analyze in a qualitative and quantitative study the relationship between incentivized reviews and the quality ratings assigned by reviewers to the product. In a qualitative study, we analyzed incentivized consumer reviews and their positive or negative tone, versus reviews posted by consumers who actually bought the product, in order to explore similarities and differences among them and identify any possible trends that might be further helpful in the analysis. In order to test the effect of the intervention and to see if an incentivized review campaign leads to an increase in organic reviews even after the campaign, we also performed an event study, a time-series analysis and a MANOVA analysis. Data included reviews posted on Amazon that also included a period of incentivized reviews through a third-party company. The results show that the intervention of the incentivized reviews campaign has created an effect that lasted within the period post-campaign, when the reviews posted on Amazon regarding the analyzed product came in majority from consumers who actually purchased the product. The campaign also could have influenced an increasing trend in sales, if we consider them correlated with the number of verified reviews posted online, which has led to a steady increase in the number of reviews even after the campaign has ended. The main contributions of the study note that incentivized campaigns, even managed by third-party companies, can contribute to a lasting increase in the number of reviews and have the potential to lead to higher sales. Moreover, this study also underlined the fact that electronic word of mouth, including in the form of consumer reviews, leads to increased consumer interest and desires to find out more about the product.

Piracy, Price, and Word of Mouth: An Equity Theory Examination of Consumer Digital Piracy Rates—An Abstract

Online piracy of digital content including that of music, movies, software, games, and other products continues to be a huge issue for businesses and public policy makers for a number of reasons. First, online piracy takes up significant amounts of Internet bandwidth—24 % globally, and 17.5 % in the USA. Additionally, a study from the Institute for Policy Innovation concluded that global music piracy causes

Assessing Consumer Confidence from Online Sources: An Abstract

12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 lost American jobs, and a loss of

Consumer Initial Trust towards Internet-Only Banks in France?

422 million in tax revenues (RIAA 2014). Given the economic and social impact of digital piracy, it is important to study what factors influence the piracy rate and especially whether key marketing mix elements, such as price, affect consumers’ decisions to engage in online piracy. This study uses equity theory as a framework in order to analyze the impact of price-, product-, and purchase-related experiences, as well as word of mouth, on digital piracy rates. Equity theory was created and popularized by Adams (1963) and is especially used in social exchange within organizations. We use equity theory in order to analyze how perceived inputs, such as price and information search, as well as outputs, including product quality and popularity, affect the rate of piracy for copyrighted products. This represents a different perspective compared to studies that focus only on the ethical side of consumers’ decisions and brings attention to product-related factors such as price and product quality. In order to measure the piracy rate for digital content, we downloaded the number of “leechers” (users downloading pirated content at a certain time) for the top 120 most downloaded games from Pirate Bay during a 10-day period. In order to test our model, we also downloaded data regarding the price for each game from Amazon, as well as the quality rating assigned in its reviews from Metacritic. We measured consumer interest in the digital product by using Google Insights and the search index provided for the exact name of the product. We performed a multiple regression procedure using SPSS, with piracy rate on a proxy showing the content from Pirate Bay as the dependent variable, with product price, review rating, search rating, and popularity index as independent variables.

Marketing research using single-item indicators in structural equation models

Consumer confidence indices are reliable indicators of the way consumers plan to spend their money and of the state or direction of the economy (Starr 2012; Toussaint-Comeau and McGranahan 2006; Wilcox 2007). In this context, the possibility of analyzing big data from social networks in order to assess consumer sentiment, behavior, and trends can have a significant impact on social sciences and economics and can help in nowcasting and forecasting not only at macrolevel but also for companies in creating their marketing strategies. However, not a lot has been done from this point of view in relating new ways of assessing consumer confidence and the relationship of consumer confidence with the stock market (Andruszkiewicz et al. 2013; Barsky and Sims 2012). In this exploratory study, we use the framework of “animal spirits” (Akerlof and Shiller 2009) to explore new ways of measuring consumer confidence through Google search popularity and establish its relationship with stock market fluctuations. Given the importance of consumer confidence indices and of consumer sentiment for markets and the economy, the objective of this study is to formulate and analyze indicators from social media consumer communications and online searches that can measure consumer sentiment, including the five dimensions of the Keynesian “animal spirit.”