Social Media and Strategic Communications

Kenneth A. Loparo, J. Hendricks, Hana S. Noor Al-Deen, J. Hendricks

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137287052
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Scienze della comunicazione

Social Media and Strategic Communications provides truly comprehensive and original scholarly research that exhibits the strategic implementation of social media in both advertising and public relations.

Part I

Social Media and Advertising

1

Advertising in Social Network Games: How Consumer Persuasion Knowledge and Advertiser Sincerity Impact eWOM of Marketer-Generated Messages

Jin Kyun Lee and Sara Steffes Hansen

Popular social network games (SNGs), casual online games played via social network sites (SNSs) like Facebook, offer an appealing channel for advertisers to reach hundreds of millions of consumers globally (Baker, 2012). In the U.S., SNGs drew 53 million players in 2010, representing 24 percent of the online population (Verna, 2011). By 2011, half of Americans aged 18 to 44 played social games daily, a habit intensified with a growing use of tablets and smartphones (Web users, 2011). Such trends show good news for SNG advertisers like McDonald’s, BestBuy, and DreamWorks (Shields, 2012). Two in five SNG players prefer online games for new product knowledge, outpacing traditional media advertising (Web users, 2011).

SNG play is free. However, players seeking enhanced status or enjoyment may purchase game currency and virtual goods; or consumers may be given currency and goods in exchange for clicking on an SNG advertisement and taking an advertiser’s survey, watching a product video, or engaging in another activity. At times, advertisers also make requests enabled by the SNG being nested within social media: asking consumers to pass along advertiser messages to their Facebook friends. As such, consumers are sharing marketer-generated electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) or “exogenous WOM” (Godes & Mayzlin, 2009, p. 723).

Ample studies have explored the determinants of eWOM. However, there has been limited examination of eWOM behavior related to consumer persuasion knowledge – knowledge consumers use to cope with marketer attempts (Friestad & Wright, 1994). Persuasion knowledge and eWOM have been studied in virtual consumer communities (Hung & Li, 2007) and online video sharing (Hsieh, Hsieh, & Tang, 2012). Within the context of social gaming, this study examines eWOM stemming from the persuasion knowledge model (PKM), and extending into sincerity, consumer product knowledge, and game involvement. Consumers playing SNGs regularly encounter engagement advertisements. Though game motivations may spark advertisement activities and eWOM, consumer behavior may differ depending on levels of persuasion knowledge.

Past studies have found connections between persuasion knowledge and consumer feelings of sincerity toward advertisers (Campbell & Kirmani, 2000). Understanding and coping with advertiser messages in persuasive environments, such as SNGs, is a major effort for consumers (Friestad & Wright, 1994). Consumers assess what advertisers are attempting to achieve, and their persuasion tactics to achieve ulterior goals. In SNGs, consumers might be suspicious of advertisers’ underlying motives (Fein, 1996) and may not understand any economic incentives related to advertiser requests. If consumers perceive advertiser insincerity, they may be less likely to forward marketer-generated messages.

Also, consumer product knowledge is an important variable that affects eWOM behavior. According to Feick and Price (1987), opinion leaders tend to have high product class-specific information and act as disseminators of product information, thus playing an essential role in influencing others’ purchases. Opinion leaders may be considered more credible than salespeople, print, or broadcast media (Gremler, Gwinner, & Brown, 2001). Further, as consumers are overloaded with information and products, reliable and valid information from others with high product knowledge lessens cognitive elaboration (Walsh, Gwinner, & Swanson, 2004).

In the SNG context for eWOM, game involvement is also key, defined as “a motivational state to exert cognitive effort at playing a game, and that its primary antecedents are a game player’s desire to beat the game or improve his/her game score” (Lee & Faber, 2007, p. 77). Consumers may be more likely to engage in eWOM related to game incentives to enhance game performance.

Though many different studies have attempted to understand impacts of these constructs, this work is the first to examine how persuasion knowledge, sincerity, product knowledge, and game involvement affect eWOM behavior. The objectives of this study are (a) to help broaden academic understanding of this consumer behavior and (b) to provide implications for practitioners embracing the highly popular new media channel of SNGs for marketer-generated eWOM.

Literature Review

Persuasion Knowledge

Persuasion has been extensively researched for several decades. Friestad and Wright (1994) first examined how consumers develop and employ their knowledge about persuasion to cope with marketers’ persuasion attempts. When consumers experience marketing messages, their awareness of marketer intentions may impact how they interpret these messages and respond. This awareness, or persuasion knowledge, is conceptualized in Friestad and Wright’s (1994) persuasion knowledge model. The PKM outlines how people develop personal awareness or knowledge, and in turn, use it to cope with persuasion attempts.

Persuasive attempts, such as an advertisement, a salesperson’s greeting or a product message, aim to “influence someone’s beliefs, attitudes, decisions, or actions” (Friestad & Wright, 1994, p. 2). Consumers who are aware of persuasion tactics coming from an agent – such as a salesperson or an advertising vehicle – may not be persuaded, or counteract the attempt. As consumers cope with marketing attempts, they activate personal persuasion knowledge, agent knowledge, or topic knowledge about the product or service (Friestad & Wright, 1994).

Individuals structure beliefs about marketers’ psychological approaches and tactics, and self-views of how they cope with persuasive attempts. These beliefs are operationalized into effects that individuals think advertisers are trying to achieve via different tactics (Boush, Friestad, & Rose, 1994; Wright, Friestad, & Boush, 2005). For example, middle school students with higher persuasion knowledge were more likely to be skeptical of advertising (Boush et al., 1994). Higher persuasion knowledge among adolescents with more exposure to television also aligned with higher skepticism (Mangleburg & Bristol, 1998).

Past experimental studies show how consumers may develop attitudes and take actions related to marketer interactions in different marketing scenarios. Pertinent to SNGs, several studies have conducted experiments in video games and interactive environments that include billboard advertisements and product placements (Chaney, Lin, & Chaney, 2004; Lee & Faber, 2007; Nelson, 2002; Nelson, Yaros, & Keum, 2006). Chaney et al. (2004) found immersion, even with multiple product placements of brands, limiting brand recall in games. Lee and Faber (2007) saw brand memory influenced by location of placements, involvement with the game, and prior play experience. However, improved recall emerged when brands were key to game play, relevant to players, or showing unique qualities (Nelson, 2002). Further, Nelson et al. (2006) found higher brand recall for product placement among game watchers versus players, who extended more cognitive demand during play.

Related to the few studies of marketer-generated eWOM, persuasion knowledge has been acknowledged as a potential contributor to consumer attitudes and behaviors (Godes & Mayzlin, 2009). Persuasion knowledge, developed via interactions in a virtual consumer community with messages from marketers and consumers, impacted ways consumers share information (Hung & Li, 2007). Also, persuasion knowledge negatively related to online video sharing of marketer messages (Hsieh et al., 2012).

Given previous findings, consumers bring persuasion knowledge to SNG play. Cognitive capacity may be demanded by the game experience. When seeing a marketer-generated eWOM message, consumers use persuasion knowledge and agent knowledge to understand the message as a tactic. Past research found that consumers tend to show greater compliance to advertisers’ attempts when they did not perceive tactics to achieve ulterior goals (Friestad & Wright, 1994). Also, it was found that priming consumers’ awareness of an advertisement would negatively affect advertisement effectiveness in traditional and non-traditional media (Yoo, 2009). In other words, increased awareness of advertisers’ ulterior motives and tactics negatively impacted advertising effectiveness.

Deeper knowledge may be involved as a consumer decides whether to forward the marketer-generated message, and potentially become a persuasion agent carrying the message to others. Consumers would be expected to decrease opinion passing and opinion giving when persuasion knowledge is heightened about marketer-generated messages in SNG play, leading to the following hypotheses:

H1: Higher levels of persuasion knowledge will negatively impact opinion passing.

H2: Higher levels of persuasion knowledge will negatively impact opinion giving.

Sincerity

Perceived sincerity that consumers feel about the ulterior motives behind a marketer’s attempt closely relates to their persuasion knowledge (Campbell & Kirmani, 2000). In the PKM literature, consumers access and use agent knowledge in persuasive attempts. The concept of sincerity emerges as a factor in how consumers evaluate the motives of persuasion agents.

Related to SNGs, sincerity may play a part in consumer decisions about clicking on game advertising, engaging in advertising activities, and spreading marketer-generated eWOM. When consumers play SNGs, accessing persuasion knowledge could raise suspicions of the sincerity of advertisers’ ulterior motives. When exposed to embedded advertising messages in SNGs, consumers may wonder why advertisers repeatedly ask them to take a survey or watch a video. Consumers may infer that advertisers have ulterior motives and perceive them to be less sincere.

The PKM framework depicts a consumer who processes persuasion attempts based on multiple pieces of information about the message, agent, and topic (Friestad & Wright, 1994). In this processing, with activated persuasion knowledge and ample cognitive capacity, consumers in experimental studies were more likely to rate an agent as less sincere (Campbell & Kirmani, 2000; Tuk, Verlegh, Smidts, & Wigboldus, 2005). These consumers may suspect ulterior motives of a persuasion agent, which lessens perceived sincerity (Campbell & Kirmani, 2000). However, Campbell and Kirmani (2000) emphasized that findings may differ depending on situations in which consumers value particular attributes, and cognitive demands vary. Tuk et al. (2005) studied relationship norms between consumers and agents, finding that when different norms were activated with limited cognitive capacity, sincerity levels changed.

Alternatively, Carl (2008) found consumers expressing higher feelings of credibility toward human agents who disclosed that they were communicating marketer-generated messages. In fact, motives may not be as much of an issue as the honesty of marketers – who make intentions clear to gain credibility and lessen skepticism (Forehand & Grier, 2003). The consumer playing an SNG may experience a marketer-generated eWOM attempt, viewing the persuasive agent as the advertiser. Marketer-generated messages in SNGs from different advertisers tend to follow similar mechanisms that make it easy for consumers to pass them along to their social networks.

SNGs are a new channel for the study of advertiser sincerity. Based on previous findings, consumers who experience an advertiser message in SNGs may decide to forward a marketer-generated message based on judgments of the sincerity of the advertisers. Further, consumers in the SNG eWOM situation may rely more on sincerity judgments because they are, in turn, passing along the marketer-generated message. Also, SNGs are within social media, which represent transparent qualities of communication and may enhance perceptions of advertiser sincerity. When consumers believe that advertisers do not have hidden motives, they are more likely to pass along and give information to their Facebook friends. Hypotheses support a positive direction of consumer perceptions of sincerity on eWOM behavior:

H3: Higher levels of sincerity will positively impact opinion passing.

H4: Higher levels of sincerity will positively impact opinion giving.

Consumer Product Knowledge

Consumer product knowledge is also an important factor that affects eWOM behavior. Knowing a person or an object means increased knowledge structure, affecting consumer information processing activities in several ways (Alba & Hutchinson, 1987, 2000; Rao & Monroe, 1988; Wood & Lynch, 2002). Product knowledge stored in a consumer’s memory tends to facilitate easier and more efficient processing of information (Johnson & Russo, 1984). Additionally, knowledgeable consumers are able to make more refined product class or category-related judgments, allowing them to compare products and brands. As such, knowledgeable consumers are more likely to identify and choose products of relatively superior quality than consum...