Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

Doing Qualitative Research

As more and more marketers incorporate social media as an integral part of the promotional mix, rigorous investigation of the determinants that impact consumers’ engagement in eWOM via social networks is becoming critical. Given the social and communal characteristics of social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, MySpace and Friendster, this study examines how social relationship factors relate to eWOM transmitted via online social websites. Specifically, a conceptual model that identifies tie strength, homophily, trust, normative and informational interpersonal influence as an important antecedent to eWOM behaviour in SNSs was developed and tested. The results confirm that tie strength, trust, normative and informational influence are positively associated with users’ overall eWOM behaviour, whereas a negative relationship was found with regard to homophily. This study suggests that product-focused eWOM in SNSs is a unique phenomenon with important social implications. The implications for research...

Determinants of consumer engagement in electronic word-of-mouth in social networking sites

Word of mouth marketing — the intentional influencing of consumer-to-consumer communications — is an increasingly important technique. The authors overview and synthesize extant word of mouth theory and present a study of a marketing campaign in which mobile phones were seeded with prominent bloggers. Eighty-three blogs were followed for six months. Findings reveal the complex cultural conditions through which marketing “hype” is transformed by consumers into the “honey” of relevant, shared communications. Four word of mouth communication strategies are identified — evaluation, embracing, endorsement and explanation. Each is influenced by communicator narrative, communications forum, communal norms and the nature of the marketing promotion. An intrinsic tension between commercial and communal interests plays a prominent, normative role in message formation and reception. This “hype-to-honey” theory shows that communal word of mouth does not simply increase or amplify marketing messages. Rather, marketing messages and meanings are systematically altered in the process of embedding them. The theory has implications for how marketers should plan, target and benefit from word of mouth and how scholars should understand word of mouth in a networked world.

Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities

The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web (WWW) also allows for the rapid dissemination of unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories that often elicit rapid, large, but naive social responses such as the recent case of Jade Helm 15––where a simple military exercise turned out to be perceived as the beginning of a new civil war in the United States. In this work, we address the determinants governing misinformation spreading through a thorough quantitative analysis. In particular, we focus on how Facebook users consume information related to two distinct narratives: scientific and conspiracy news. We find that, although consumers of scientific and conspiracy stories present similar consumption patterns with respect to content, cascade dynamics differ. Selective exposure to content is the primary driver of content diffusion and generates the formation of homogeneous clusters, i.e., “echo chambers.” Indeed, homogeneity appears to be the primary driver for the diffusion of contents and each echo chamber has its own cascade dynamics. Finally, we introduce a data-driven percolation model mimicking rumor spreading and we show that homogeneity and polarization are the main determinants for predicting cascades’ size.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/113/3/554.full.pdf

The spreading of misinformation online

https://apgsweden.typepad.com/apgsweden/files/viralzzz.pdf

Jo Brown

Papers

Word of mouth communication within online communities: Conceptualizing the online social network