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Emoji marketing: Toward a theory of brand paralinguistics
Abstract
Emojis, or pictographs that supplement or replace written language, have become ubiquitous in contemporary communication, including emoji marketing. Drawing on insights
from linguistics and sign theory, the current research proposes an emoji marketing framework in which emoji symbolism (symbolic vs. iconic emoji use) affects consumers’ message appraisals (perceived message intimacy and clarity), which in turn influence brand cultural relevance (propositions P1 and P2). Emoji syntax (i.e., whether emojis are supplemented with text or not) and marketer-consumer group relatedness (shared vs. unshared
group membership) moderate the relationship between emoji symbolism and consumers’ message appraisals. The framework suggests that messages that use emojis as symbols, relative
to no-emoji (text-only) marketing messages, evoke greater perceived message clarity (P3a) and greater perceived message intimacy (P4a) if those emojis are supplemented with
text, as well as greater intimacy if group relatedness is shared (P5a). In contrast, if messages use emojis as icons, again relative to no-emoji (text-only) marketing messages, they produce greater perceived message clarity if emojis are not supplemented with text (P3b) and higher perceived message clarity and intimacy regardless of marketer-consumer group relatedness (P4b and P5b). The authors present several implications and pertinent avenues for research that can leverage this novel emoji marketing framework.
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Facial emojis have increasingly permeated electronic word of mouth (eWOM), but the persuasive consequences of this phenomenon remain unclear. Drawing on emotions as social information (EASI) theory, this research reveals that facial emojis influence persuasion (e.g., product choice) by affecting emotional arousal and perceived ambiguity. While the effect through emotional arousal is generally positive, the effect through ambiguity depends on the emojis’ function in eWOM: facial emojis that replace a verbal expression increase ambiguity and therefore reduce persuasion, whereas those that reiterate a verbal expression decrease ambiguity and therefore enhance persuasion. Both the emotional-arousal and ambiguity pathways determine the net persuasive effect. This research also explores two situations (high verbal context richness and eWOM from strong ties) where replacing facial emojis can increase persuasion. Finally, the authors show that facial emojis’ persuasive power is generalizable to online brand communications, influencing key management outcomes such as click-through rates for digital ads.
Non-face (NF) emojis are increasingly used to complement or substitute words in digital marketing messages, yet the effects, mechanisms, and contingencies of this communication strategy remain underexplored. In a large-scale longitudinal study
of Airbnb listings, we show that NF emojis (vs. simple text) lead to an increase in eWOM volume, an effect we replicate experimentally. This effect is qualified by important boundary conditions whose underlying mechanisms are investigated
in two additional experimental studies. At the message level, using multiple substitutive (vs. complementary) NF emojis reduces message evaluations and eWOM volume due to reduced processing fluency. At the source level, seller quality further moderates the interaction between emoji function and emoji number: for premium sellers, using multiple NF emojis reduces message evaluations and eWOM volume irrespective of their function due to reduced perceptions of competence. We distill these findings into detailed managerial guidelines for using NF emojis in digital marketing.
Brands and consumers alike have become creators and distributors of digital words, thus generating increasing interest in insights to be gained from text-based content. This work develops an algorithm to identify textual paralanguage, which are nonverbal parts of speech expressed in online communication. The paralanguage classifier (PARA) is developed and validated utilizing social media data from Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram (N = 1,241,489 posts). Based in auditory, tactile, and visual properties of text, this tool detects nonverbal communication cues, aspects of text often neglected by other word-based sentiment lexica. This work is the first to reveal the importance of textual paralanguage as a critical indicator of sentiment valence and intensity. Automatically detected textual paralanguage is further demonstrated to predict consumer engagement over and above existing text analytic tools. The algorithm is designed for researchers, scholars, and practitioners seeking to optimize marketing communications and offers a methodological advancement to quantify the importance of not only what is said verbally, but how it is said nonverbally.
This article presents a social semiotic analysis of emoji-language semiosis. Combining the theoretical architecture of Systemic Functional Linguistics and methodology of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, we propose an analytical framework that can identify how emoji make meaning both individually and in interaction with language. Using the web-based coding software WebAnno, we apply this framework to a dataset of text messages and social media posts. The results identify typical realisations of particular semiotic features by emoji as well as noteworthy dynamics in how emoji interact with language to realise meaning. We observe (1) how emoji and language jointly construing ideational meaning realise intermodal taxonomies (where hyper/hyponyms are distributed across modes) and particular fields of discourse (domains of experiential meaning), (2) how resources in one mode can serve to foreground particular regions of meaning potential in other modes, and (3) how attitudinal meaning realised by emoji appears to differ from the prosodic patterning of linguistic attitude.
A consumer’s personal attribute (e.g., disease, body weight) can assume the qualities of a stigma (i.e., become a source of devaluation by others) in the presence of certain audiences, which can affect consumption and represent a major hurdle to marketers in many industries (e.g., healthcare). Two field experiments—manipulating the marketing communications sent to 1,453 consumers diagnosed with 87 diseases of varying stigma potential—and two Mturk studies reveal that consumers with potentially stigmatizing attributes distinctly decode aspects of marketing communications as audience cues, to infer how (un)favorable observers of their consumption will be in light of the potential stigma. When consumers possess potentially stigmatizing attributes, audience cues influence social devaluation inferences, which impacts their beneficial consumption (program enrollment, long-term engagement in healthcare program; e.g., 64% click-through decrease) and their interest in detrimental consumption (products that promise to alleviate the stigma but are associated with considerable risks). Anticipated empowerment may increase beneficial consumption among consumers managing stigmatizing attributes.
Facial expression emojis are commonly used in digital communications and marketing campaigns. However, it is less known how the design of emojis may affect consumer responses. To address this gap, this research examines the impact of emojis’ facial asymmetry levels on consumer judgments. Findings across four studies demonstrate that compared with their symmetric counterparts, asymmetric facial expression emojis are more likely to receive favorable consumer evaluations. This effect is driven by perceptions of human expression resemblance and emotional expression strength and tends to be more prominent among consumers with a higher level of emotional sensitivity. Moreover, marketing messages including an asymmetric (vs. a symmetric) emoji are more likely to generate positive consumer responses.
Brand personality (BP) measurement is a research area that has been attracting a tremendous amount of attention. An examination of extant BP scales reveals that: (a) all of them gauge BP through verbal stimuli; (b) most of them were formulated in one language and tested in one country; and that (c) the majority of them were developed using Classical Test Theory and factor analytic procedures as “the” measurement framework and the method of choice, respectively. This study explores the possibility of using emoji (a new universal non-verbal language) to measure BP. It adopts a Nonparametric Item Response Theory procedure known in personality research as Mokken scaling. Data were collected from 416 respondents from 10 countries via an online 30-emoji survey assessing four global brands. Results indicate that 17 of the 30 emoji form four strong and reliable Mokken scales gauging dimensions Agreeableness, Conscientiousness/Openness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism. The proposed emoji-based scale represents a valuable measure that is suited to national as well as cross-national BP research.
Flags are important national symbols that have transcended into the digital world with inclusion in the Unicode character set. Despite their significance there is little information about their role in online communication. This paper examines the role of flag emoji in political communication online by analyzing 640,676 tweets by the most important political parties and Members of Parliament in Germany and the USA. We find that national flags are frequently used in political communication, and are mostly used in-line with political ideology. As offline, flag emoji usage in online communication is associated with external events of national importance. This association is stronger in the USA than in Germany. The results also reveal that the presence of the national flag emoji is associated with significantly higher engagement in Germany irrespective of party, whereas it is associated with slightly higher engagement for politicians of the Republican party and slightly lower engagement for Democrats in the USA. Implications of the results and future research directions are discussed.
The present article stands at the interface of CMC research and grapholinguistics. After outlining which features are typical of the writing of pri vate text messages, the focus of the first part of the paper (Sections 2 and 3) lies on the use of emojis. Notably, emoji use is not-as is commonly done-analyzed under a pragmatic perspective, but grapholinguistically, at the graphetic and graphematic levels: emojis are conceptualized as visual shapes that may assume graphematic functions within a given writing system. In the second part (Section 4), it is underlined that all variants of written digital communication (such as the use of emojis, but also all other characters) are made possible only due to the Unicode Consortium's decisions; this, finally, is argued to have farreaching consequences for the future of writing.
The recent proliferation of Social Web applications has facilitated an array of new customer engagement behaviors. Creating social presence in brand communication is key to creating positive outcomes for brand. Present research integrates social presence theory and the consumer-brand relationship perspective in examining how the use of textual paralanguage (e.g., emojis and emoticons; TPL) and consumer-brand relationships (CBRs) can be leveraged to enhance message relatability in the context of responding to product reviews. A 2 (CBR strength) X 3 (TPL) online experiment is conducted. Findings show that TPL use increases the social presence of brand messages, leading to more positive attitude toward the brand, greater purchase intention, and the strengthening of brand relationships. Further, while CBR strength did not influence social presence of responses, actively engaging with consumers increases purchase intention and significantly strengthens weak brand relationships.
Abstract Emoji have become a prominent part of interactive digital communication. Here, we ask the questions: does a grammatical system govern the way people use emoji; and how do emoji interact with the grammar of written text? We conducted two experiments that asked participants to have a digital conversation with each other using only emoji (Experiment 1) or to substitute at least one emoji for a word in the sentences (Experiment 2). First, we found that the emoji-only utterances of participants remained at simplistic levels of patterning, primarily appearing as one-unit utterances (as formulaic expressions or responsive emotions) or as linear sequencing (for example, repeating the same emoji or providing an unordered list of semantically related emoji). Emoji playing grammatical roles (i.e., ‘parts-of-speech’) were minimal, and showed little consistency in ‘word order’. Second, emoji were substituted more for nouns and adjectives than verbs, while also typically conveying nonredundant information to the sentences. These findings suggest that, while emoji may follow tendencies in their interactions with grammatical structure in multimodal text-emoji productions, they lack grammatical structure on their own.
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is pervasive in our lives, influencing social interaction including human courtship. To connect with potential partners via CMC, modern relationship-seekers must master faster and shorter methods of communicating self-disclosure and affect. Although CMC can lack crucial sensory information in this context, emojis may provide useful aid. Across two studies, we assessed attitudes toward and frequency of emoji use, and whether signaling affect via emoji use relates to more romantic and sexual opportunities. Our findings suggest that emoji use with potential partners is associated with maintaining connection beyond the first date, and more romantic and sexual interactions over the previous year. This research provides evidence that emojis convey important affective information to potential partners, and are potentially associated with more successful intimate connection. Implications for multiple theoretical models and methodologies are discussed.
In recent years, advertisers have increasingly been using emoji in their promotional communications. However, little is known about how consumers might react to the use of emoji in advertisements. In this paper, we examine the effect of including emoji in advertisements on consumers' purchase intentions. Two empirical investigations (a laboratory experiment and an online study) provide convergent evidence that the presence of emoji leads consumers to experience higher positive affect, which in turn, leads to higher purchase intentions. We also examined the moderating influence of product type (utilitarian vs. hedonic) on the emoji ➔ positive affect ➔ purchase intentions link, finding that emoji are only effective for promoting hedonic products. The findings of our work offer theoretical and managerial implications with respect to why and when emoji are likely to make advertisements more effective.
Constructive and ecological theories of perception raise questions about whether visual perception is inherently data‐driven (bottom‐up) or interpreted in terms of higher‐order cognitions (top‐down). Analogies between these theoretical perspectives and the two visual systems involved in visual perception (the dorsal and ventral stream) suggest that the literature on visual information processing can be organized around two types of processes: object processing and spatial processing. Object processing involves the identification and recognition of stimuli in the environment and is shaped by existing concepts and associations in memory. It is associated with the processing of properties of objects such as color, size, shape, and pictorial details that are considered in this review. Spatial processing involves the perception of location, movement, spatial relations, and transformation of objects and other stimuli. Imagery‐based processes that are used to transform marketing stimuli in order to simulate various possibilities are reviewed in this section along with individual differences in spatial and visual abilities.
Social media require a marketing rhetoric that embraces emerging language use and shifting communication norms. Emojis have become quintessential elements of social media communication; yet, their role in supporting persuasion attempts has not been systematically analysed. Drawing on general rhetoric literature, this paper dissects, portrays and labels social media influencers’ persuasive attempts to initiate engagement through emojis. The focus on influencers is justified because of their dual roles as marketers and active social media users. 600 Weibo posts by the top 200 Weibo influencers were collected to develop a taxonomy of emoji-based verbal moves aimed at encouraging responses in followers. The resulting taxonomy demonstrates that emoji use by social media influencers is complex and strategic and serves multiple persuasive and communicative purposes.
The amount of digital text available for analysis by consumer researchers has risen dramatically. Consumer discussions on the internet, product reviews, and digital archives of news articles and press releases are just a few potential sources for insights about consumer attitudes, interaction, and culture. Drawing from linguistic theory and methods, this article presents an overview of automated text analysis, providing integration of linguistic theory with constructs commonly used in consumer research, guidance for choosing amongst methods, and advice for resolving sampling and statistical issues unique to text analysis. We argue that although automated text analysis cannot be used to study all phenomena, it is a useful tool for examining patterns in text that neither researchers nor consumers can detect unaided. Text analysis can be used to examine psychological and sociological constructs in consumerproduced digital text by enabling discovery or by providing ecological validity. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Over the last 50+ years, there has been a huge rise in interest in consumer language research. This article spotlights the emergence and evolution of this area, identifying key themes and trends and highlighting topics for future research. Work has evolved from exploration of broad language concepts (e.g., rhetorics) to specific linguistic features (e.g., phonemes) and from monologues (e.g., advertiser to consumer) to two-way dialogues (e.g., consumer to service representative and back). We discuss future opportunities that arise from past trends and suggest two important shifts that prompt questions for future research: the new shift toward using voice (vs. hands) when interacting with objects and the ongoing shift toward using hands (vs. voices) to communicate with people. By synthesizing the past, and delineating a research agenda for the future, we hope to encourage more researchers to begin to explore this burgeoning area.
For many years the Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research (Scherer & Ekman, 1982) has been an invaluable text for researchers looking for methods to study nonverbal behavior and the expression of affect. A successor to this essential text, The New Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research is a substantially updated volume with 90% new material. It includes chapters on coding and methodological issues for a variety of areas in nonverbal behavior: facial actions, vocal behavior, and body movement. Issues relevant to judgment studies, methodology, reliability, analyses, etc. have also been updated. The topics are broad and include specific information about methodology and coding strategies in education, psychotherapy, deception, nonverbal sensitivity, and marital and group behavior. There is also a chapter detailing specific information on the technical aspects of recording the voice and face, and specifically in relation to deception studies. This volume will be valuable for both new researchers and those already working in the fields of nonverbal behavior, affect expression, and related topics. It will play a central role in further refining research methods and coding strategies, allowing a comparison of results from various laboratories where research on nonverbal behavior is being conducted. This will advance research in the field and help to coordinate results so that a more comprehensive understanding of affect expression can be developed.
When sharing information and opinions about products, services, and experiences, communicators often use either past or present tense (e.g., “That restaurant was great” or “That restaurant is great”). Might such differences in verb tense shape communication’s impact, and if so, how? A multimethod investigation, including eight studies conducted in the field and lab, demonstrates that using present (vs. past) tense can increase persuasion. Natural language processing of over 500,000 online reviews in multiple product and service domains, for example, illustrates that reviews that use more present tense are seen as more helpful and useful. Follow-up experiments demonstrate that shifting from past to present tense increases persuasion and illustrate the underlying process through both mediation and moderation. When communicators use present (rather than past) tense to express their opinions and experiences, it suggests they are more certain about what they are saying, which increases persuasion. These findings shed light on how language impacts consumer behavior, highlight how a subtle, yet central linguistic feature shapes communication, and have clear implications for persuasion across a range of situations.
The current research advances understanding of how consumers respond to embarrassing service encounters. Across a combination of field and online studies, the authors provide evidence that a) consumers prefer self-services to human-services when purchasing embarrassing products or services; b) when self-service is not available, consumers respond more positively to a mechanistic service provider than a personable service provider; and c) if consumers must engage in embarrassing social interactions, they dehumanize service providers, perceiving them as more mechanistic and less capable of emotional reactions than when engaging in non-embarrassing service interactions. The authors also examine consumers’ familiarity with the service provider as a boundary condition for the effect. Collectively, the results provide converging evidence for the proposed framework and define substantive implications for service management.
Emojis are being increasingly used in different types of communications, including in advertising campaigns. One emoji, the smiley face, has been an important part of consumers’ informal communications. Interestingly, smiley faces now also appear in marketing communications, advertisements, and brand logos. The present research examines the role of smiley faces in restaurant logos as a form of marketing communication. A set of five studies—conducted in a lab and at a middle school—demonstrates that communication associated with restaurant logos including smileys is perceived as lower in healthfulness, which in turn leads to lower price expectations. These effects are caused by a visual association with a fast-food restaurant category, whereby consumers link the presence of smiley faces with fast-food restaurants. The authors conclude that including a smiley face logo in a restaurant’s marketing communication can have unintended consequences on consumers’ perceptions.
While some argue that emojis are processed like words, opponents note dissimilarities. We used a divided attention (DA) technique to examine whether memory for emojis, relative to words, engages primarily verbal or visuo-spatial cognitive representations. We compared the decline in memory output experienced when participants freely recalled a list of studied words or emojis under dual-task conditions with a concurrently performed distracting task. Participants encoded either words or emojis (between-subjects) under full attention (FA), and later recalled them under FA or while concurrently performing a 1-back task to words (DA Words), emojis (DA Emojis), or stars (DA Stars), manipulated within-subject. Emoji memory was higher overall compared to words. Word recall was unaffected by the DA Stars condition, but significantly worse in the DA Words-and to a lesser degree DA Emojis-condition, relative to FA. Results suggest that memory for words relies primarily on reactivation of verbal representations, which is hampered when the distracting task also requires verbal, but not visuo-spatial, processing. In contrast, small but significant declines in recall were observed for emojis across all DA conditions relative to FA. Results suggest that unlike words, representing and retrieving emojis engages both verbal and visuo-spatial processing.
Online influencer marketing (OIM) has become an integral component of brands’ marketing strategies; however, marketers lack an adequate understanding of its scope, effectiveness, and potential threats. To fill this gap, this article first describes the phenomenon’s background, defines OIM, and delineates its unique features to set the conceptual boundaries for the new concept. Drawing insights from practitioner and consumer interviews, and in line with social capital theory, the authors propose that OIM can be understood as leveraging influencer resources (including follower networks, personal positioning, communication content, and follower trust) to enhance a firm’s marketing communication effectiveness. Six novel propositions illustrate the benefits and potential threats of OIM, which may spur progress toward a theory of OIM. Finally, this article outlines key strategies for effectively managing OIM and identifies important literature–practice gaps to suggest avenues for further research.
Emoji is widely used in electronic word of mouth (eWOM) and online consumer reviews across various social media platforms and online retailers, but the boundary condition of its effect on perceived helpfulness and its underlying mechanisms have not been examined in the extant literature. This research investigates the effect of emoji meaning multipleness on review helpfulness through two experiments. The results show that multiple meaning emojis lead to less helpful perception, but user expertise with emojis moderates such an effect. Further, processing fluency plays the mediating role, explaining the relationship between emoji meaning multipleness and perceived review helpfulness. The findings of the present research offer important insights into the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of the effective use of emoji in eWOM or online reviews.
The meaning of success in conversation depends on people’s goals. Often, individuals pursue multiple goals simultaneously, such as establishing shared understanding, making a favorable impression, and persuading a conversation partner. In this article, we introduce a novel theoretical framework, the Conversational Circumplex, to classify conversational motives along two key dimensions: 1) Informational: the extent to which a speaker’s motive focuses on giving and/or receiving accurate information and 2) Relational: the extent to which a speaker’s motive focuses on building the relationship. We use the conversational circumplex to underscore the multiplicity of conversational goals that people hold, and highlight the potential for individuals to have conflicting conversational goals (both intrapersonally and interpersonally) that make successful conversation a difficult challenge.
There is evidence for an age-related decline in the ability to understand non-literal language such as sarcasm. There is also evidence to suggest that devices such as emoticons/emojis may influence sarcasm comprehension in younger adults. However, research examining whether such devices may improve written sarcasm comprehension in older adults is scarce. The present study used an online rating task to investigate the influence of the winking face emoji on both the interpretation and perception of message intent for sarcastic or literal criticism or praise. Results revealed that older adults, in comparison to their younger counterparts, demonstrated deficient ability in interpreting and perceiving sarcastic intent. However, older adults’ interpretation and perception of sarcastic intent were significantly improved when the messages were accompanied by the winking face emoji. This would suggest that the winking face emoji is a clear indicator of sarcastic intent, compensating for the absence of non-verbal cues in written communication, and may play a useful role in successful intergenerational communication.
Companies are increasingly including innovative visual design elements such as animations and pictographs in digital communication. While both elements can be beneficial in exchanges with their customers, we propose that combining them can have negative effects on communication effectiveness. Animations and pictographs enhance digital communication, essentially through increased perceptions of enrichment, but these elements also raise perceptions of clutter. As they enrich a message in unique ways, processing these different types of visual design elements requires distinct cognitive resources such that, when combined, clutter perceptions dominate the recipient’s perceptions and behaviors, thus paradoxically offsetting their positive effects. This interplay may not only undermine message outcomes but even spill over to downstream behavioral outcomes. In a large-scale randomized field experiment in cooperation with a mobile app company, we find that including animations (GIFs) and pictographs (emojis) together damages message outcomes (increasing unsubscriptions) and downstream outcomes (reducing in-app time) compared with what happens when these elements are deployed separately. We elaborate on the processing of the text and visual elements from this field experiment in two lab experiments, including an eye-tracking study. Finally, in two further online studies, we seek to establish whether the proposed mechanisms depend on the number of visuals or the types of pictographs employed in an electronic message.
Avatars are becoming increasingly popular in contemporary marketing strategies, but their effectiveness for achieving performance outcomes (e.g., purchase likelihood) varies widely in practice. Related academic literature is fragmented, lacking both definitional consistency and conceptual clarity. This article makes three main contributions to avatar theory and managerial practice. First, to address ambiguity with respect to its definition, this study identifies and critically evaluates key conceptual elements of the term avatar, offers a definition derived from this analysis, and provides a typology of avatars’ design elements. Second, the proposed 2 × 2 avatar taxonomy suggests that the alignment of an avatar’s form realism and behavioral realism, across different contingencies, provides a parsimonious explanation for avatar effectiveness. Third, the authors develop an emerging theory of avatar marketing, by triangulating insights from fundamental elements of avatars, a synthesis of extant research, and business practices. This framework integrates key theoretical insights, research propositions, and important managerial implications for this expanding area of marketing strategy. Lastly, the authors outline a research program to both test the propositions and insights as well as advance future research.
Brands, both human and corporate, are increasingly communicating with their consumers using emojis. The current work examines if and how these pictographs shape online brand engagement on Twitter (i.e., likes & retweets). To do so, we first examine datasets generated by scraping the tweets of the most popular celebrity brands and most popular corporate brands (Study 1). This study demonstrates that emoji presence increases engagement with tweets, with more emoji leading to more likes and retweets. Two controlled experiments then explore the role of perceived playfulness in explaining this effect of emojis on engagement (Studies 2 and 3). We find that the effect of emojis on brand engagement varies depending on the nature of the interplay between emojis and text, and the subsequent effect of this interplay on perceived playfulness. Theoretical contributions and social media practitioner implications are also addressed.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose cultural equity as a construct to better understand the characteristics that define a culturally symbolic brand and the downstream consequences for consumer behavior and nation branding in the era of globalization.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is an empirical investigation of the knowledge and outcome aspects of cultural equity with a total of 1,771 consumers located in three different countries/continents, 77 different brands as stimuli, and using a variety of measures, surveys, lab experiments, procedures and consumer contexts.
Findings
Cultural equity is the facet of brand equity attributed to the brand's cultural symbolism or the favorable responses by consumers to the cultural symbolism of a brand. A brand has cultural equity if it has a distinctive cultural symbolism in consumers' minds (brand knowledge aspect of cultural equity: association with the central concept that defines the culture, embodiment of culturally relevant values and embeddedness in a cultural knowledge network), and such symbolism elicits a favorable consumer response to the marketing of the brand (outcome aspect of cultural equity: favorable evaluations and strong self-brand connections).
Practical implications
This paper offers a framework that allows marketers to develop cultural positioning strategies in hyper-competitive and globalized markets and identify ways for building and protecting their brands' cultural equity.
Originality/value
This paper advances our understanding of brands as cultural symbols by introducing cultural equity and integrates prior research on brand equity, cross-cultural differences in consumer behavior, country-of-origin effects and nation branding.
This research investigates a novel type of fit unique to digital marketing: That between the intimacy of an advertising appeal and of the social media platform through which it is advertised. In doing so, we challenge the common marketing practice of posting identical content across platforms by showing how the same ad is received differently by consumers across differing platforms. Consistent with theories of processing fluency, we propose that platform‐appeal fit (in terms of intimacy) enhances consumers’ social media engagement with the brand because the associated fluency enhances consumers’ favorable cognitive judgments, affective state, and attitudes. A Pilot Study first maps the contours of platform intimacy through multidimensional scaling of several popular platforms. The resulting perceptual maps are then used to compare consumer response to an intimate or non‐intimate appeal posted by actual (Experiment 1) and fictitious (Experiment 2) brands on platforms of varying intimacy. Results provide evidence for fluency as a mechanism for increased engagement following platform‐appeal fit, suggesting that a one‐size‐fits‐all approach to digital marketing may be sub‐optimal in terms of consumer response.
Are social media posts with pictures more popular than those without? Why do pictures with certain characteristics induce higher engagement than some other pictures? Using data sets of social media posts about major airlines and sport utility vehicle brands collected from Twitter and Instagram, the authors empirically examine the influence of image content on social media engagement. After accounting for selection bias on the inclusion of image content, the authors find a significant and robust positive mere presence effect of image content on user engagement in both product categories on Twitter. They also find that high-quality and professionally shot pictures consistently lead to higher engagement on both platforms for both product categories. However, the effect of colorfulness varies by product category, while the presence of human face and image–text fit can induce higher user engagement on Twitter but not on Instagram. These findings shed light on how to improve social media engagement using image content.
The current research examines how goal orientation affects consumer preference among products with different prices. We argue that a less expensive product may have not only lower perceived quality but also greater perceived quality variability. This greater perceived variability provides the opportunity for optimistic, promotion‐oriented consumers to overestimate the quality of the less expensive product. This effect is weaker, however, for a more expensive product that consumers perceive to have less quality variability and which thus provides less room for quality overestimation. As a result, we hypothesize that promotion‐oriented consumers, as compared to prevention‐oriented consumers, will demonstrate a stronger preference for a less expensive product. In a field study and two lab experiments, we obtain empirical support both for the hypothesized effect of consumers’ goal orientation on their product preference and for its underlying process. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our results.
The lack of typical nonverbal cues in digitally mediated marketing communication (e.g., text messages, social media etc.) creates special challenges for marketers desiring to manage customer relationships. To overcome these limitations, marketers have turned to emojis to convey subtle meaning regarding the message sender (often a service provider) and to elicit positive emotion in the message recipient. Relying on theories of emotion as social information and emotional contagion, we present three studies that provide initial evidence of a positive conscious and unconscious affective response to smiley-face emojis that mediates relational outcomes when relationships are communal in nature, but not when relationships are based on simple exchange. We also make a methodological contribution by employing biometric measurement of smiling in order to capture unconscious affect and to demonstrate novel emotional contagion effects in a customer service message. We close with a discussion of the average emoji effect observed across reported and unreported studies, which is modest but reliable, as well as discussion of future research opportunities and managerial implications.
Phatic communication is a mode of communication where the significative content of the used utterance gives way to the social bonding function of the utterance itself. This mode of communication appears to be increasingly common in our current media culture and is exemplified by frequent photo sharing through applications such as Snapchat. However, most theoretical discussions on phatic communication have taken place in the context of linguistic expressions. In this theoretical article, we broaden the focus to visual interpersonal communication by way of photography theory. We suggest that photographic phatic communication is based on the indexicality of the medium itself and the sense of presence it produces. We argue further that, contrary to previous literature, photographic phatic communication is not without meaningful content. However, we propose that it is connected, primarily, to the material indexicality of the photograph and only secondarily to the signifying function of the iconic content.
Words are part of almost every marketplace interaction. Online reviews, customer service calls, press releases, marketing communications, and other interactions create a wealth of textual data. But how can marketers best use such data? This article provides an overview of automated textual analysis and details how it can be used to generate marketing insights. The authors discuss how text reflects qualities of the text producer (and the context in which the text was produced) and impacts the audience or text recipient. Next, they discuss how text can be a powerful tool both for prediction and for understanding (i.e., insights). Then, the authors overview methodologies and metrics used in text analysis, providing a set of guidelines and procedures. Finally, they further highlight some common metrics and challenges and discuss how researchers can address issues of internal and external validity. They conclude with a discussion of potential areas for future work. Along the way, the authors note how textual analysis can unite the tribes of marketing. While most marketing problems are interdisciplinary, the field is often fragmented. By involving skills and ideas from each of the subareas of marketing, text analysis has the potential to help unite the field with a common set of tools and approaches.
In this paper I review, from the perspective of experimental research, studies that have examined how brands acquire cultural meaning, and suggest future research directions. McCracken's (1986) model of the meaning transfer process gained influence about thirty years ago, but experimental studies of the processes it posited have been limited in their scope. The review is organized around three questions. First, what should be the dependent variables: the types of meanings that can adhere to brands? Second, what have we learned from studies on the types of visual, sensory, and human cues that are the sources of particular types of brand meaning – our independent variables? Third, what do we know, and need to know, about the inferential and other processes through which consumers “take possession” of these brand meanings from these cues? The review concludes with a research agenda.
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Emojis are becoming an increasingly popular mode of communication between individuals worldwide, with researchers claiming them to be a type of "ubiquitous language'' that can span different languages due to its pictorial nature. Our study uses a combination of methods to examine how emojis are adopted and perceived by individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds and 45 countries. Our survey and interview findings point to the existence of a cultural gap between user perceptions and the current emoji standard. Using participatory design, we sought to address this gap by designing 40 emojis and conducted another survey to evaluate their acceptability compared to existing Japanese emojis. We also draw on participant observation from a Unicode Consortium meeting on emoji addition. Our analysis leads us to discuss how emojis might be made more inclusive, diverse, and representative of the populations that use them.
Virtually no research has examined the role of emoticons in commercial relationships, and research outside the marketing domain reports mixed findings. This article aims to resolve these mixed findings by considering that emoticon senders are often simultaneously evaluated on two fundamental dimensions, warmth and competence, and the accessibility of one dimension over the other is critically contingent on salient relationship norms (communal vs. exchange norms) in customers’ minds due to individual and situational factors. Through laboratory and field experiments, the current research shows that customers perceive service employees who use emoticons as higher in warmth but lower in competence compared to those who do not (study 1). We further demonstrate that when a service employee uses emoticons, communal-oriented (exchange-oriented) customers are more likely to infer higher warmth (lower competence) and thus to be more (less) satisfied with the service (study 2). We also examine two practically important service situations that can make a certain type of relationship norm more salient: unsatisfactory services (study 3) and employees’ extra-role services (study 4). We speculate on possible mechanisms underlying these effects and discuss theoretical and practical implications along with opportunities for future research. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
The unique influence of attitude toward the ad on brand attitude often has been viewed as simply reflecting the impact of peripheral persuasion. The authors’ research challenges such a conception. Ad attitude is shown to have a significant influence on brand attitude even in the absence of peripheral persuasion. The feasibility and usefulness of decomposing ad attitude into evaluations of particular ad elements also are explored.
Although a considerable amount of research in personality psychology has been done to conceptualize human personality, identify the “Big Five” dimensions, and explore the meaning of each dimension, no parallel research has been conducted in consumer behavior on brand personality. Consequently, an understanding of the symbolic use of brands has been limited in the consumer behavior literature. In this research, the author develops a theoretical framework of the brand personality construct by determining the number and nature of dimensions of brand personality (Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness). To measure the five brand personality dimensions, a reliable, valid, and generalizable measurement scale is created. Finally, theoretical and practical implications regarding the symbolic use of brands are discussed.
Our research uses an interpretive approach to explore the consumer journeys of sojourners, temporary residents of a new country, with attention to cultural experiential goal pursuit and cultural brand engagement. Depth interviews with students from nine countries studying in America document that home country access to American popular culture impacts cultural experiential goals; the temporary nature of sojourners’ stay engenders instrumental brand use (vs. brand attachment); and cultural brand engagement relies on indexical/iconic brand meanings inextricably tied to the desired cultural experience. Three cultural experiential goals and their brand engagement emerge: the “imagined American” cultural experience is grounded in American myths and stereotypes and iconic brand meanings; the “unique Americana” experience is grounded in Americana symbolism and indexical brand meanings with American symbolism; and the “life like the locals” experience is grounded in observed realities in America and indexical brand meanings. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications related to our findings.
The authors propose a communication-based model of relationship marketing and discuss how communication (rather than persuasion) is the foundation of the “new” customer-focused marketing efforts. The authors trace recent parallel shifts in communication and marketing theory and show the intersections between communication and marketing. Although communication always has been a critical element in marketing, the authors show how the increase in interactivity makes communication an even more valuable element of marketing by identifying those many points that link the two disciplines. Using the three key points at which the two disciplines intersect—messages, stakeholders, and interactivity—the authors develop a communication-based model of marketing. They demonstrate how interactive communication at three levels—corporate, marketing, and marketing communication—leads to the brand relationships that drive brand value.
When do consumers experience offense due to another individual’s choice, use, display, gifting, sharing, or disposal of a product? Why do they experience offense, and does it matter if they do? In this article, we first draw from past work in multiple disciplines to offer a unique conceptualization of consumption-based offense. We then develop a framework of types of violations that may generate consumption-based offense and propose a set of affective, consumption, and cognitive outcomes we anticipate may follow. We close by offering an agenda for future research that may establish the antecedents and consequences of different types of consumption-based offense, glean new insights from past findings through integration of this novel construct, and offer practical insights into the effects and management of consumption-based offense both in consumers’ lives and in the marketplace.
The use of emoji in digital communication can convey a wealth of emotions and concepts that otherwise would take many words to express. Emoji have become a popular form of communication, with researchers claiming emoji represent a type of "ubiquitous language" that can span different languages. In this paper however, we explore how emoji are also used in highly personalised and purposefully secretive ways. We show that emoji are repurposed for something other than their "intended" use between close partners, family members and friends. We present the range of reasons why certain emoji get chosen, including the concept of "emoji affordance" and explore why repurposing occurs. Normally used for speed, some emoji are instead used to convey intimate and personal sentiments that, for many reasons, their users cannot express in words. We discuss how this form of repurposing must be considered in tasks such as emoji-based sentiment analysis.
Purpose
Nowadays, computer-mediated communication is an inherent part of consumers’ daily interactions. That kind of communication, however, is associated with limited options to express emotions and, thus, impairs smooth interactions. Considering these shortcomings, existing research has paid attention to the use of smileys and examines their impacts on communication. Nevertheless, little is known about the effects of smileys on the receivers’ emotions as well as on the interaction between the communication partners. Against this background, the appropriateness of smileys in causing emotional contagion in computer-mediated communication is investigated. That interpersonal mechanism fosters harmonic interactions and strengthens the relationship between interaction partners by sharing emotions.
Design/methodology/approach
Field data of 1,745 females were obtained through an online experiment applying two scenarios that only differ by the use of either a positive or a negative smiley. The appropriateness of both smileys to express positive or negative emotions was pretested in a study with 18 respondents.
Findings
Findings support the assumption that emotions expressed by smileys affect receivers’ emotions through the process of emotional contagion. Furthermore, the effects of the negative smiley on the emotions of the receivers are moderated by the receivers’ susceptibility to emotional contagion.
Originality/value
Findings contribute to current research on computer-mediated communication by offering a deeper understanding of the impacts of smileys on interactions. In that way, the present study underlines the suitability of smileys to stimulate emotional contagion in a ‘cueless’ environment.
The use of emoticons and emoji is increasingly popular across a variety of new platforms of online communication. Moreover, they have also become popular as stimulus materials in scientific research. However, the assumption that emoji/emoticon users’ interpretation always corresponds to the developers/researchers intended meaning might be misleading. This paper presents subjective norms of emoji and emoticons provided by everyday users. The Lisbon Emoji and Emoticon Database (LEED) comprises 238 stimuli: 85 emoticons and 153 emoji (iOS, Android, Facebook and Emojipedia). The sample included 505 Portuguese participants recruited online. Each participant evaluated a random subset of 20 stimuli in seven evaluative dimensions: aesthetic appeal, familiarity, visual complexity, concreteness, valence, arousal and meaningfulness. Participants were additionally asked to attribute meaning to each stimulus. The norms obtained include quantitative descriptive results (mean, standard deviation and confidence intervals), and meaning analysis per stimulus. We also examined the correlations between the dimensions, and tested for differences between emoticons and emoji, as well as between two major operating systems – Android and iOS. The LEED constitutes a readily available normative database (available at www.osf.io/nua4x) with potential applications to different research domains.
Iconic photographs possess broad social and symbolic significance, are widely replicated over time and circulated across media platforms, and fuel public discussion. In an era of digital memes, they have become generative resources for memetic performances that not only can draw on these images’ historic authority but can also undermine it. Based on the analysis of the ‘Accidental Napalm’ memes, our research leads to a fourfold taxonomy, from memes that expand or expound the meaning of the original picture to those that narrow and potentially destroy its significance. Assessing Hariman and Lucaites’ contention that appropriations of iconic images enhance civic engagement and public culture, we argue that some memes may actually dissolve the original significance of iconic photographs and potentially degrade, rather than enhance, public culture.