Non-face emojis in digital marketing: Effects, contingencies, and strategic recommendations

Davide Christian Orazi (), Bhoomija Ranjan () and Yimin Cheng ()
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Davide Christian Orazi: Monash Business School
Bhoomija Ranjan: Monash Business School
Yimin Cheng: Monash Business School

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2023, vol. 51, issue 3, No 4, 570-597

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Keywords: Marketing communications; Online sharing platforms; Emojis; Textual paralanguage; Digital marketing; Multimethod research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11747-022-00917-z

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