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Exploring the disseminating behaviors of eWOM marketing: persuasion in online video

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Abstract

The effectiveness of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication has attracted increasing attention from marketing practitioners, but relatively few studies focus on the dissemination of eWOM communication from a message perspective. Online video is a prominent form of marketing promotion, yet again, little is known about which factors make online video engaging or how they influence recipients’ forwarding intentions. This study adopts Lasswell’s communication model to investigate the persuasiveness of online video and uses the source, content, and channel dimensions to examine three potentially influential factors: awareness of persuasive intent, perceived humor, and multimedia effect. Awareness of persuasive intent exerts a negative influence, whereas the humor and multimedia effects have positive influences on both attitude toward a received online video and forwarding intentions. Therefore, e-marketers should reshape video clips to be humorous, use multimedia effects, and disguise their commercial intent to attract recipients’ attention and persuade them to disseminate an online video.

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Notes

  1. The experimental stimuli can be accessed through the following link: https://sites.google.com/site/reserachplatofrm/.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Management, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Rd., Jhongli City, Taoyuan County, Taiwan, ROC

    Jung-Kuei Hsieh, Yi-Ching Hsieh & Yu-Chien Tang

Authors
  1. Jung-Kuei Hsieh
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  2. Yi-Ching Hsieh
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  3. Yu-Chien Tang
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Correspondence to Jung-Kuei Hsieh.

Appendix: Scale measures

Appendix: Scale measures

Construct

Measure

Item Means

Construct Means

Cronbach’s alpha

References

Perceived humor

This video is happy

4.51

3.96

0.944

[33]

This video is interesting

4.00

This video is funny

3.74

This video is humorous

3.73

This is amusing

3.81

Multimedia effect

This video is rich in sound effects

3.44

3.63

0.911

[40, 43, 51]

This video is rich in visual effects

3.96

This video is rich in multimedia effect

3.57

I video the media used in this video can present sufficient effects

3.54

Awareness of persuasive intent

This video is trying to sell a specific product or a specific brand to me

4.18

4.25

0.945

[27, 30]

This video is a commercial that is marketing a specific product

4.21

This video was made based on commercial intent

4.38

Attitude toward received online video

This video is appealing

3.86

3.86

0.941

[46]

This video expresses its ideas clearly

3.92

This video is easy to be understood

3.94

This video is refreshing

3.80

This video is pleasant

3.77

Intention to forward

I think this video is worth sharing with others

3.92

3.76

0.921

[9]

I will recommend this video to others

3.85

I will share this video to my friends through Internet

3.52

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Hsieh, JK., Hsieh, YC. & Tang, YC. Exploring the disseminating behaviors of eWOM marketing: persuasion in online video. Electron Commer Res 12, 201–224 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-012-9091-y

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