Advertising and Consumers' Communications

Abstract

U ntil recently, brand identities were built by firms via brand image advertising. However, the flourishing consumer communication weakened the firms' grip on their brands. The interaction between advertising and consumer communications and their joint impact on brand identity is the focal point of this paper. We present a model in which consumer preference for functional attributes may correlate with the identity they desire to project of themselves. This correlation is known to the firm but not to the consumers. Both the firm and the consumers can communicate their desired brand identity, although the actual brand identity is determined endogeneously by the composition of consumers who purchase it (i.e., what types of people consume the brand). We find that sometimes the firm can strengthen the identity of its brand by refraining from advertising. This result is based on the following intermediate finding: advertising can diminish the endogeneous informativeness of consumer communications by making it one-sided. Furthermore, it turns out that refraining from brand image advertising may be optimal for the firm when the product is especially well positioned to create a strong identity-i.e., when consumer preferences for functional and self-expressive attributes are highly correlated.

Managing Brands in the Social Media Environment

“…These findings suggest that, for some brands, reducing their own branding efforts and relying on consumer-generated brand stories can be valuable. However, Kuksov, Shachar, and Wang (2013) also note that this will not be the case for many brands.…”

“…Kuksov, Shachar, and Wang (2013) examine the interaction between firm-generated brand stories (i.e., image advertising) and consumer conversations and their joint effect on brand image.…”

“…While consumers have always appropriated and modified these firm-generated brand stories to create their own versions of relevant brand stories, their voices were not strong in the past and could be safely ignored by brand managers if they chose to do so. But with the advent of social media, brand managers have lost their pivotal role as authors of their brands' stories (Kuksov, Shachar, and Wang 2013). Instead, consumers who are now empowered to share their brand stories easily and widely through social networks have gained a more important voice that brand managers can no longer afford to ignore -even for firms that decide not to actively participate in social media themselves.…”

Usage of Social Media Systems in Customer Service Strategies

“…Theoretical evidence for a differential impact of customer satisfaction in a hotline and social media service channel is expected, given the different communication settings within the channels. Social media are informal in nature and provide a high level of interconnectedness [17], facilitating the sharing of content within product and service groups such as brand communities [35]. They are also an important enabler of customer socialization and communication, because they provide an easy and convenient way for people to communicate over the internet [36].…”

The Secret of Internet Celebrities: A Qualitative Study of Online Opinion Leaders on Weibo

“…First, practitioners need to provide very attractive content for audience, no needs to be knowledgeable but be interesting, which is consistent with the importance of content in blogosphere [8]. Moreover, changes in the social media platforms caused by technological developments have affected how social media users produce content [53,54], fame-seeking practitioners should gain a full understanding of the unique technological characteristics of the selected social media platform in order to achieve a successful presence. Furthermore, fame-seeking practitioners should not ignore the influence of social media messages, comments, and reviews.…”