Understanding the Role of Textual Paralanguage in Electronic Word of Mouth
Year: 2024
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) refers to online communication about products and \nbrands among consumers. eWOM influences the consumer decision-making process and \nsubsequently affects sales. Currently, consumers are sharing eWOM enriched with textual \nparalanguage (TPL). TPL, which includes emojis, emoticons, stickers, various punctuations, \nand demarcations, represents expressions of non-verbal communication in writing. Despite \npreviously being ignored by scholars, TPL adds substantial meaning to eWOM. Therefore, this \ndissertation, consisting of three independent articles, focuses on eWOM written with TPL.\nArticle 1 is a systematic literature review of eWOM written with TPL. In this paper, \nwe conduct a comprehensive review of 70 academic publications on eWOM with TPL and \naddress three research questions (RQs). Our findings indicate that senders of eWOM use TPL \nto express discreet emotions with accurate intensity and to maintain social ties (RQ1). We also \nillustrate how sentiment analysis tools apply different techniques to determine the sentiment of \nTPL in eWOM messages (RQ1). We build a conceptual model outlining five influence \nmechanisms and nine moderators of how eWOM with TPL influences its receivers (RQ3). \nFinally, we provide several propositions for future research.\nArticles 2 and 3 are empirical studies that investigate how eWOM with TPL influences \nits senders and receivers, respectively. Both articles focus on the media richness of eWOM \nformats as an explanatory variable and use TPL to manipulate the media richness of eWOM. \nMedia richness refers to the extent to which a medium can convey a variety of information. \nTwo dimensions of media richness are language variety (the extent to which a medium can \nincorporate various symbols) and multiple cues (the extent to which a medium can incorporate \nvarious forms of non-verbal communication). We argue that eWOM with text and TPL, \ncompared to eWOM with only text, is higher in language variety and multiple cues, resulting \nin higher media richness.\niv\nArticle 2 investigates the consequences of engaging in eWOM with varying media-rich \nformats (eWOM with only text vs. eWOM with text and TPL) on the sender’s self-brand \nconnection (SBC). Drawing upon the consumer brand engagement (CBE) framework, we argue \nthat when senders share eWOM with richer media formats, they acquire higher cognitive CBE \nand content engagement, leading to higher SBC. We conducted three experiments. Across these \nstudies, we find that the language variety of media richness leads to cognitive CBE and content \nengagement, which in turn leads to higher SBC.\nArticle 3 examines how the media richness of eWOM (eWOM with only text vs. \neWOM with text and TPL) influences its receivers. The theoretical framework suggests that \nthe media richness of eWOM affects receivers’ purchase intentions through two parallel \nmediators: by influencing vivid mental imagery of the product experience and by influencing \nthe perceived warmth of the reviewers. Two experiments show that language variety leads to \nvivid mental imagery and multiple cues lead to the perceived warmth of reviewers, both of \nwhich influence receivers’ purchase intentions parallelly.\nThis dissertation enriches the eWOM literature by providing a better understanding of \nhow eWOM with TPL influences its senders and receivers. We also discuss future research \ndirections on this topic. Our results suggest that managers should encourage consumers to use \nTPL in their eWOM.\nKeywords: electronic word of mouth, textual paralanguage, media richness, language \nvariety, multiple cues
Author: Tarannum, Iffat
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7071867693