How the Source of the Blog and Comments of Other Consumers on the Blog, Influence Consumers Attitude

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How the Source of the Blog and Comments of Other
Consumers on the Blog, Influence Consumers
Attitudes and Intentions

• Jean-François Bélisle, Concordia University
• Lionel Bohbot, HEC Montréal
• Sylvain Sénécal, HEC Montréal

Presented by Jean-François Bélisle
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Game Plan

• Introduction
• Theoretical Framework
• Hypotheses development
• Method
• Results
• Conclusion Discussion
• One Step Further

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Introduction

• February 2008 8 of the 10 websites with the
  highest growth for the last year in the United
  States (US) were UGC websites (eMarketer 2008).
• UGC Various kinds of media content that is
  produced by users.
• 37 of television channels are present on MySpace
  and 14 of them broadcast videos on YouTube.
  Among diffusion partners of content on YouTube,
  we can find CBS, BBC, NBC, Spike, NBA and NHL.
• Question How corporate presence (the
  recommendation source) on UGC websites and the
  valence of comments posted towards this presence,
  can influence users attitudes towards the source
  and therefore purchase intentions towards this
  product and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions?

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The entire process of WOM communications on the
internet

• Arndt (1967) defines WOM as an oral
  communication, between a communicator and a
  receptor, concerning a brand, a product or a
  service.
• On the internet, comments can be qualified as WOM
  if they are posted on a website by a communicator
  and read by a receptor.
• Opinions expressed on UGC websites are considered
  as WOM (Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh, Gremler,
  2004).
• The entire process of WOM communications starts
  by the user attitude formation and attribution
  processes that occurs when he/she reads (act as a
  receptor) a UGC on a website and last when this
  user decides to recommend or not (act as a
  communicator) the product to another user.

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Theoretical Framework

• Based on Attribution Theory (Heider, 1958 Jones
  Davis, 1965 Kelley, 1967).
• An adaptation to UGC websites of the MacKenzie
  and Lutz (1989) framework which proposes an
  empirical examination of the structural
  antecedents of attitude toward the advertisement.
• 7 hypotheses that take into account relationships
  concerning the entire process of WOM are
  proposed.

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Hypotheses Development

• Consumers infer two types of motivations
  intrinsic (e.g., the celebrity has confidence in
  the product) and extrinsic (e.g., the celebrity
  endorses the product because of financial
  motives).
• Eagly, Wood and Chaiken (1978) identified two
  biases that could influence attributions inferred
  by an observer.
• Knowledge bias which means that the source is
  not as knowledgeable as it should be.
• Discounting bias the information transmitted by
  the source might not necessarily reflect reality.
   
• H1 On UGC websites, when the source is a
  third-party rather than a corporation, users
  attitude towards the source will be more
  positive.

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Recommendation UGC source
H1
Attitude towards the UGC source
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Hypotheses Development (2)

• Research shows that consumers exposed to
  positive WOM towards a product, will tend to rate
  the product higher than those exposed to negative
  WOM (Bone 1995 Burnkrant and Cousineau 1975
  Burzynski and Bayer 1977 Cohen and Golden 1972
  Pincus and Waters 1977 Schlosser 2005).
• H2 On UGC websites, when users are exposed to
  positive comments towards the source compared to
  when they are exposed to negative ones their
  attitude towards the source will be more
  positive.

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Valence of UGC comments
Recommendation UGC source
H2
H1
Attitude towards the UGC source
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Hypotheses Development (3)

• Past research investigating the relationship
  between the attitude towards the advertiser and
  its advertisement show that it is also present on
  the Internet (Sicilia, Ruiz and Reynolds 2006).
• We suggest that this relationship could also be
  present in the context of UGC websites.
• H3 On UGC websites, users attitude towards the
  recommendation source will be positively related
  to their attitude towards the content.

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Valence of UGC comments
Recommendation UGC source
H2
H1
Attitude towards the UGC source
H3
Attitude towards the UGC article
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Hypotheses Development (4)

• Past research indicates the presence of a
  positive relationship between consumers attitude
  towards an advertisement, its attitude towards
  the brand presented in the advertisement, and its
  purchase intentions (Dröge 1989 MacKenzie, Lutz
  and Belch 1986 Mitchell and Olson 1981).
•  
• H4 On UGC websites, users attitude towards the
  posted content about a product will influence
  their attitude towards a product.
•  
• H5 On UGC websites, users attitude towards a
  product will influence their purchase intentions.

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Valence of UGC comments
Recommendation UGC source
H2
H1
Attitude towards the UGC source
H3
Attitude towards the UGC article
H4
Attitude towards the product
H5
Purchase intentions
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Hypotheses Development (5)

• WOM intentions could be influenced by consumers
  involvement and by satisfaction towards a product
  (Brown, Dacin and Gunst 2005).
• Attitude towards an advertisement on attitude
  towards products associated with the
  advertisement, impacted on the behavior
  (MacKenzie et al. 1986) and on propagation
  effects generated by viral marketing (Phelps,
  Lewis, Mobilio, Perry, and Raman 2004 Watts and
  Peretti 2007).
•  
• H6 On UGC websites, users attitude towards the
  posted content about a product will influence
  positively their intentions to recommend the
  product to others.
•   
• H7 On UGC websites, purchase intentions will
  influence positively WOM intentions.

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Valence of UGC comments
Recommendation UGC source
H2
H1
Attitude towards the UGC source
H3
Attitude towards the UGC article
H4
Attitude towards the product
H5
H6
WOM intentions
Purchase intentions
H7
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Method Sample

• Sample size 228 participants
• Design 3 (recommendation source independent vs.
  corporate-positive vs. corporate-negative) X 2
  (valence of comments towards the source positive
  vs. negative) between-subjects design
• Product a hand warming mouse for computers.
• Task Participants were first invited to read a
  blog article that included the description of a
  hand warming mouse for computers.
• In the third-party source condition, participants
  were informed that the article was written by a
  technology products expert user named Pat
  (independent).
• In the case of both corporate sources,
  participants were informed that the article was
  posted by Pat, an associate (employee) of
  Wal-Mart (corporate-negative attitude) or of
  Future Shop (corporate-positive attitude), and
  coming from a blog that these companies were
  currently testing.

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Method Measures
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Results

• ANOVA 3 (recommendation source third-party vs.
  corporate-positive vs. corporate-negative) X 2
  (valence of comments towards the source positive
  vs. negative) between-subjects ANOVA.
• DV The mean of the three items representing
  attitude towards the recommendation source.
• H1 and H2 were confirmed

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Results (Conted)

• To test H3 to H7, we employed Structural Equation
  Modeling (SEM)
• Convergent and discriminant validity were
  respected (Anderson and Gerbing 1988)
• H3 to H7 were supported

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Valence of UGC comments
Recommendation UGC source
p lt .001
p .001
H2
H1
Attitude towards the UGC source
.73 p lt .001
H3
Attitude towards the UGC article
.64 p lt .001
H4
Attitude towards the product
.44 p lt .001
.62 p lt .001
H5
H6
WOM intentions
Purchase intentions
.60 p lt .001
H7
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Conclusion Discussion Theoretical Implications

• Results obtained concerning the influence of
  comments on the attitude towards the product,
  makes a contribution in the field of
  interpersonal influence, and more precisely,
  concerning the evaluations and comments on the
  attitude towards the product (Cohen and Golden
  1972 Pincus and Waters 1977). Thus, blogs are no
  exception.
• Support for results found by MacKenzie and Lutz
  (1989), showing a positive and significant effect
  between attitude of a consumer towards a company
  or a brand and attitude towards its associated
  message.

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Conclusion Discussion Managerial Implications
Future Research

• Managerial Implications
• A company who would plan to use a blog to
  communicate the benefits of its companys
  products should be aware that his communications
  would not be perceived as favorably as those
  provided by a user with no explicit link to the
  company.
• Future Research
• Replication and extension using other types of
  UGC content and websites such as videos presented
  on YouTube, a UGC website on which there is an
  increasing corporate presence.
• Manipulation of the uniformity of comments

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Next step

• Add another product which would double the sample
  size
• Start Study 2 with another UGC

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Questions? Comments? Bashing?