Is Distance Really Dead in the Online World? The Moderating Role of Geographical Distance on the Effectiveness of Electronic Word of Mouth

Abstract

We investigate how the geographical distance between online users is associated with electronic WOM effectiveness. Our research leverages variation in the visibility of eWOM messages on the social media platform of Twitter to address the issue of correlated user behaviors and preferences. We find the likelihood that followers who are exposed to users' WOM subsequently make purchases increases with their geographic proximity to them. We propose social identification as a potential mechanism for why geographical distance still matters online in eWOM. Because consumers may form a sense of social identity based on their physical location, information regarding the spatial proximity of users could trigger online social identification with others. The findings are robust to alternative methods and specifications, such as further controlling for latent user homophily by incorporating user characteristics and embeddings based on advanced machine-learning and deep-learning models and a corpus of 140 million messages. We also rule out several alternative explanations. Our findings have important implications for platform design, content curation, and seeding and targeting strategies.

The effect of Emotional Contagion on Electronic Word of Mouth: An Applied study on Mobile Phone Brand Customers of Social Network Sites in Egypt

“…Electronic word of mouth (E-WOM) plays a key role in shaping consumer attitudes and behaviors. More consumers digitally share information, research what others say about products and services, and rely on E-WOM to gain knowledge (Todri et al, 2021). Lim, (2015 defined E-WOM as Any positive or negative statement made by existing and potential customers about a product, service, or company, which is made available to a multitude of people on the Internet; for example, this can include online communication in social networking sites, micro-blogging sites, forums, and consumer review sites.…”

“…Lim, (2015 defined E-WOM as Any positive or negative statement made by existing and potential customers about a product, service, or company, which is made available to a multitude of people on the Internet; for example, this can include online communication in social networking sites, micro-blogging sites, forums, and consumer review sites. Scholars have also examined how certain features of disseminators (senders) and recipients shape the effect of E-WOM (Todri et al, 2021).…”

Appeal of word of mouth: Influences of public opinions and sentiment on ports in corporate choice of import and export trade in the post-COVID-19 era

“…Under the evolution of “stimulus-organic-response” ( Cheng et al, 2021 ), behavioral motivation is gradually strengthened ( Wang et al, 2021 ). In general, WOM has been abstractly considered as a social “connection” to shorten the physical distance ( Todri et al, 2021 ), which can not only achieve the viral marketing path of enterprises ( Donthu et al, 2021 ), but also effectively enhance the instant experience of consumers or audiences ( Chao et al, 2021 ). However, it should be noted that WOM does not have a consistent positive effect on behavior, and the understanding of WOM by different individuals or different groups is generally mixed with the coexistence of positive and negative aspects ( Talwar et al, 2021 ).…”

The moderating effect of agglomeration on horizontal differentiation and online reviews: the case of Paris hotels

“…Finally, although the previous literature has provided evidence that competitive intensity can transfer to the online environment (You et al , 2015), there are few previous studies that address this issue (Gutt et al , 2019; Liu et al , 2018) and these do not take into account how physical distance can play a relevant role in OCRs, since the physical distance between users conditions the effectiveness of OCR and, as a consequence, of the advertising and communication strategy (Todri et al , 2021) and based on the literature of spatial competition, a shorter distance between competitors can intensify rivalry (Lee, 2015) even in the online environment (Mayzlin et al , 2014).…”