Does Online Word of Mouth Increase Demand? (And How?) Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Stephan Seiler (), Song Yao () and Wenbo Wang ()
Additional contact information
Stephan Seiler: Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
Song Yao: Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
Wenbo Wang: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong

Marketing Science, 2017, vol. 36, issue 6, 838-861

Abstract: We leverage a temporary block of the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo due to political events to estimate the causal effect of online word-of-mouth content on product demand in the context of TV show viewership. Based on this source of exogenous variation, we estimate an elasticity of TV show ratings (market share in terms of viewership) with respect to the number of relevant comments (comments were disabled during the block) of 0.016. We find that more postshow microblogging activity increases demand, whereas comments posted prior to the show airing do not affect viewership. These patterns are inconsistent with informative or persuasive effects and suggest complementarity between TV consumption and anticipated postshow microblogging activity.

Keywords: microblogging; advertising; social media; word of mouth; natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2017.1045 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormksc:v:36:y:2017:i:6:p:838-861

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Marketing Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().