Should We Feed the Trolls? Using Marketer-Generated Content to Explain Average Toxicity and Product Usage

Nowadays, consumers spend more time on and pay more attention to information on social media. Thus, firms are constantly concerned if marketer-generated content (MGC), consumers’ engagement with MGC and WOM could promote purchases; and if so, what kinds of MGC could grab the attention of consumers. The present study establishes a framework based on the Hierarchy of Effects model to determine the effects of two types of MGC, retweets and word-of-mouth (WOM), on consumers’ purchase intention. Data about 28 firms from 4 industries were collected, and a three-stage least squares model was employed to estimate the coefficients. Empirical results show that product-related content (PMGC) and social-related content (SMGC) could increase retweets. Retweets of PMGC could boost positive and negative WOM and also facilitate purchase intention. Retweets of SMGC could increase positive WOM and purchase intention. This study identifies the mechanism of how consumers form purchase intention from MGC, and provides new evidence for the classification of MGC.

The growing academic and professional literature on content marketing sets it as the fastest-emerging digital marketing tool. Yet, the reasons why customers follow (or unfollow) brands on social media sites are unknown to marketers. An extensive literature review was conducted to identify factors that improve consumers’ attitudes toward marketer-generated content (MGC). The study uses communication theories, resource-based theories, motivation theories, and psychological concepts as method theories to explore the domain of consumer attitude. Results show that consumers’ attitude toward MGC is positively affected by Trust, E-entertainment, Brand activism, social orientation, and self-esteem factors. A conceptual model and propositions are developed, drawing upon the identified factors. The model will give good insight to those who want to conduct empirical research in the area and will be a stepping-stone for digital marketers, policymakers, and content writers.

Twitter is a social media (SM) platform that rapidly generates electronic word of mouth (e-WOM). Marketer-generated content (MGC) is controllable and could enhance the positive e-WOM. Hence, in this study, the author examined the characteristics of MGC and reactions from followers based on Thai banks' Twitter accounts. The author collected a total of 10,000 tweets from nine banks in Thailand—both high- and low-performing banks. The author conducted research with natural language processing (NLP) to uncover intents using an open application programming interface (API). The author used three data-mining techniques—association, clustering, and classification. The Twitter strategies of banks with high and low performances are quite similar. The sentiment is the intent type that dominates Thai banks' intent strategies. Several intents could be combined to draw e-WOM in terms of favorites (FAV) and retweets (RT). Six intent patterns (clusters) were extracted. Some of these clusters are classifiers for FAV and non-FAV tweets. This study guides the application of data mining in business research and suggests MGC strategies for marketers.

Purpose This study leverages theories of social influence to explore how “likes” for consumption-related content on social media fulfill consumers’ needs for social acceptance, subsequently affecting their repurchase and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions. It aims to understand the extent to which social media engagements, specifically likes, serve as markers of social validation in the context of consumer behavior. Design/methodology/approach Our mixed-methods approach incorporated two experiments and an analysis of an archival dataset from a popular Chinese social media platform. This comprehensive methodology allowed for empirical validation of our hypotheses, combining experimental control with real-world relevance to scrutinize the impact of likes on consumption behavior. Findings The results of Studies 1 and 2 revealed that the number of likes significantly enhanced behavioral intentions regarding repurchase and positive word-of-mouth by fulfilling consumers’ need for social acceptance. Moreover, this effect was observed only under conditions of high (vs low) ideal social self-congruity. Study 3, conducted in a natural social media context, further validated these findings, demonstrating that likes positively influenced behavioral intention, with ideal social self-congruity acting as a boundary condition. Originality/value This study provides a novel perspective by directly linking social media likes to consumer behavioral intentions, specifically repurchase and WOM, through the mediating role of social acceptance and the moderating effect of ideal social self-congruity. By focusing on user-generated content (UGC) rather than marketer-generated content (MGC), it addresses a critical gap in the literature, emphasizing how receiving likes on consumer-shared content impacts content creators’ post-purchase behaviors, with practical implications for marketers on leveraging aspirational self-congruity to optimize promotional strategies.

PA/LTC Goes Around the World in Online Communities

Social media is widely used in the field of tourism. And without the role of technology, it is unimaginable to travel these days, it would be like candy without sugar. Thus, social media plays a vital role in marketing and promotion of food tourism. The focus of the study is to analyze the role of information technology in food tourism marketing and to critically review the various social media channels that are used for food tourism marketing. The study was conducted over 45 tourists who have traveled to Delhi for the purpose of food tourism. The data has been analyzed using SPSS. The study clearly shows that social media platforms and food tourism has a positive relationship. Social media channels highly influence the perception, choices and decision of the food tourist at all the stages of travel. The study also reviews the various social media channels used by the food tourists to view the food related travel content.

Amaç: İnternet kullanımının yaygınlaşmasıyla birlikte insanların etkileşimli iletişim kurmasına olanak tanıyan sosyal medya mecraları kişilerin günlük hayatının bir parçası haline gelmektedir. Kişilerin sosyal medya mecralarında varlık gösterme arzuları artış gösterirken bu artışa bağlı olarak farklılaşma istekleri de kişisel markalama kavramını hayatımızın bir parçası haline getirmektedir. Sosyal medya mecraları, kişisel markalama çalışmaları için hem maliyet açısından hem de amaç açısından en uygun platformalardır. Bu nedenle, araştırmada sosyal medya mecralarının kişisel markalama üzerindeki rolünün gözlenmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Gereç ve Yöntem: Araştırma amacı doğrultusunda, örnek olay çalışması deseni tercih edilerek nitel araştırma yöntemlerine başvurulmuştur. Son zamanlarda popülerlikleri artan seyahat fenomenleri içerisinden amaçlı örnekleme tekniğiyle belirlenen 12 seyahat fenomeni ile derinlemesine görüşmeler gerçekleştirilmiştir. İçerik analizi ve betimsel analiz yöntemleri ile veriler analiz edilmiştir. Bulgular: Araştırma sonucunda seyahat fenomenlerinin sosyal medyada kişisel markalama çalışmalarına önem verdikleri, takipçilerinden gelen geri bildirimleri dikkate alarak sosyal medyayı kişisel markalarına katkı sağlayacak şekilde kullandıkları belirlenmiştir. Bununla birlikte sosyal medyada paylaştıkları içeriklerin kişisel markalama çalışmalarına katkı sağladığı sonucuna varılmıştır. Sonuç: Bu araştırma ile sosyal medyada kişisel markalamanın önemine dikkat çekilmiştir. Kişisel markalamada öne çıkan temalar kişisel değerler, kişisel farkındalık, kişisel imaj, hedefler, seyahat etmek ve iletişim olmaktadır.

Social Media has changed the communication process for people. It has become a two-way communication facilitator to share information, create awareness, purchase products, etc. Social Media is encouraging consumers to easily interact with the brands, forming an unbreakable bond known as relationship marketing. However, when it comes to menstrual health and hygiene, many studies have shown that there are various taboos and stigmas associated with it which hold consumers back from communicating or interacting openly. Although digital and social media channels are helping to increase consumer engagement and interaction, marketers or brands working in this sector, are still struggling to maintain the right relationship with their consumers due to these taboos. This has developed the need to study consumer engagement or interaction with Indian Menstrual Brands via social media channels. The data was collected through questionnaires among social media users and Whisper, Sirona, Nua, Pee Safe, and Sanfe were the menstrual brands selected for the study. The results highlighted that people do interact or engage with menstrual brands through social media to give feedback, and to purchase their products, but the popular reason is to get informed about the menstrual products. It was also found that Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are popular social media platforms for interaction or engagement among respondents. This study contributes to the understanding of consumer engagement and interaction via these channels in the menstrual hygiene sector.&nbsp

The chapter discusses social media within the context of Africa’s public sector. This chapter suggests that social media usage by governments and public sector organizations on the African continent displays remarkably different characteristics than how such communication and media channels are deployed within commercial settings. The chapter illustrates how social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, and LinkedIn are deployed by public sector organisations across Africa to achieve strategic communication objectives. The chapter argues that social media channels are pivotal in enhancing public sector communication due to their characteristics such as interactivity, participation, and user-generated value. Social media strategies adopted by government agencies on the African continent may involve a push strategy, which focusses on providing information to the public; a pull strategy, which seeks to engage and interact with target audience, and a networking strategy that focusses on information sharing. This chapter suggests that the use of social media vehicles among public sector organisations on the continent of Africa may go through diverse stages. These include an initial stage of using social media to provide information to target audiences, very much akin to propagandist, press agentry, and public information models. This is followed by an intermediary stage that involves employing using social media channels to engage and interact with the target publics in a manner that ensures receiving some feedback. Then, there is an advanced stage where public sector organizations employ social media use for two-way communication, collaboration and co-creation, but also for boosting service delivery. This chapter contributes to the relatively nascent literature streams on the nature of social media in the public sector in Africa.

As we know internet and social media usages are increasing day by day. Sometimes users take social media as a medium to use hateful and abusive comments that may rude and dis-respectful for others. So it is important to detect the toxicity and remove it from the social media. As social media users are in millions so it is impossible for filtering out the toxic comments manually, and hence there is a need for a method to filter out the toxic comments and make social media cleaner and safer to use. This paper aims to detect toxic comments in social media using cellular automata based LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) model. Our approach produces 97.43% of F1_score without using any kind of pre-trained word embeddings or language models.KeywordsCellular automata (CA)Toxic text classificationMachine learningLong Short-Term Memory (LSTM)

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate customers’ motivations and the decision-making process when choosing a channel in a “social” multichannel environment that includes social media channels, and the complementary and competitive effects compared to traditional channels within the multichannel strategy of a major European telecoms provider. A conceptual framework of multichannel customer behaviour in a “social” multichannel environment is proposed. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts an exploratory approach through 74 semi-structured interviews with customers of a major European telecoms provider who have also used social media channels to contact the company (customer-initiated contact, CIC). Findings – Users of distinct social media channels are driven by different motivations. For instance, the social motivation for using social media is evident for Facebook users, while Twitter users are mainly driven by utilitarian considerations. Although users of different social media channels represent distinct segments in terms of behaviours and motivations, complementary effects among channels (new and traditional) are generally detected in the sense that a better customer experience is driven by the presence of multiple channels. Research limitations/implications – Data collection was performed for only one company in one industry and should be extended to other industries, although our results were confirmed by discussions with social media managers of other companies. Practical implications – The research offers suggestions to develop multichannel strategies in a “social” multichannel environment. Originality/value – This study advances knowledge in the multichannel management field by investigating why and how customers utilize channels in a multichannel environment that includes social media channels. The authors develop a conceptual framework of multichannel customer behaviour for CIC in a “social” multichannel environment.

A hybrid deep learning approach for Assamese toxic comment detection in social media

This research aims to investigate the impact of social media channels on consumer behavior. This research is quantitative and qualitative; the data is collected by conducting a survey and interview. Primary data is collected by questionnaires distributed to social media users and interviews with social media page owners conducting their business on the following platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram). A questionnaire was distributed to measure the variables of social media channels (SMC) and consumer Behavior (CB) from the consumer's perspectives. The data helps to understand platform users' interactions with social media. This is the first research to experimentally analyze the concept of social media channels and consumer behavior on a social media platform using the impacts of customization, content, and entertainment; also, a close relationship between social media channels and consumers allows them to transfer their trust in the former to the suggested items. Future research should focus on other platforms such as TikTok, which has high user traffic, and consumer behavior that is affected by different needs and priorities.

Nowadays social media data has grown very rapidly by producing a huge amount and variety of data everyday. Those data can be analyzed and processed to deliver useful information especially for public needs. However, most of the data available in social media are unstructured. This paper proposes a recommendation system for public facilities by utilizing both structured and unstructured data gathered from multi-channel data sources. The system uses single-criteria rating, multi-criteria-rating, and text data as the inputs. The challenge is how to handle data variety such that any kind of data from any channel can be integrated. The second challenge is how to extract location-related data from the raw data. There are four data channels used in the system. Three of them are social media channels, i.e. Twitter, Instagram, and Foursquare, while the other is internal data channel built as a part of the system itself. The system deals with three categories of public facility, i.e. park, hospital, and mosque. The whole system consists of two sub systems, i.e. the extractor system including the rating input module and the recommendation system. The recommendation system is implemented as end-user mobile application such that the users are able to use it anytime and anywhere. The system successfully integrate data from different social media channels and in different format to provide users with useful information concerning public facilities in the form of recommendation (rating) and popularity of the facilities. The experiment has shown that above 90% of the data collected from the social media contains location-related information that is useful for further processing. The system has been tested using usability test, and it obtained an average users score 3.9 on a scale of 1 to 5.

From Obama's success to the Arab spring, from Kolaveri Di in India to Gangnam style, social media is omnipresent. We no longer go to the news, news finds us; we no longer visit merchandise, merchandise find us; social media has shrunk the globe beyond imagination. Social media is based on the combined notion of influence and participation -.tools that synchronize their voice with the company's voice and that combined voice affects the next customer. The development of social media networks have made it feasible for the customers to speak to thousands of other customers concerning a particular brand or a company. This communication between one to several additionally referred to as word-of-mouth marketing, isn't new to marketing, but the distinction is that currently these communications are on the far side boundaries. With the growing effect of social media on consumer buying behavior, it becomes imperative for a business to understand the competitive advantages of assorted social media avenues across diverse markets. As the world of online marketing is continuously progressing, the marketers must understand how these changes may influence buyer practices, and consequently promotional programs and strategies. Choices on how and when to successfully use the traditional as well as the social media alternatives require careful thought and consideration. This paper aims to throw light on the recent social media marketing strategies and demonstrates how this platform of online networking helps organizations to captivate their clients in a finer manner, thus building a stronger relationship with them. Also the present paper offers significant understanding to the marketers in knowing the vital role social media marketing plays in the formation of a strong brand. The present paper is conceptual in nature, and through the intensive literature review identifies the latest social media practices being adopted by the 21st century marketers. The study is an endeavor to see how advertisers are utilizing social networking as a strategic tool for advancement. The study finds that enhanced presence and communication on various social media channels help the firms in creating a better brand image while reducing promotional budgets. The paper additionally indicates how the exceptional attributes of correspondence by means of online networking help organizations not only in building a superior connection with their customers but also in converting them into their brand advocates. Thus, these network platforms are helping the businesses to engage with the purchasers, influencing them, connecting with them and finally changing them into their evangelists.