Opening the Black Box of Buzzing Bloggers; Understanding How Consumers Deal with the Tension between Authenticity and Commercialism in Seeded WOM Campaigns

Kristine de Valck (devalck@hec.fr), Robert Kozinets, Sarah Wilner and Andrea Wojnicki
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Kristine de Valck: GREGH - Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes en Gestion à HEC - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing has gained ground as a powerful communication tool. One way in which marketers tap into consumers' WOM potential is by seeding products to influencers. These consumers take on a dual role, being both target and agent in the WOM episode. Because of cultural contradictions between the roles of consumer (authenticity) and marketer (commercialism), this dual role is likely to cause tension. This paper examines how consumer-agents and final target consumers deal with this duality by means of a netnographic study and experiments.

Keywords: Consumers; Authenticity; Commercialism; WOM; Word-of-mouth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Published in Advances in Consumer Research, 2008, vol. 35, pp.NC

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00692099

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