Purpose – Due to the fact that user-generated content and online brand communities are gaining
popularity, the purpose of this study is to identify the type of user-generated content that has a real effect on product success, in terms of the number of owners, within a popular online brand community associated with video games.
Design/methodology/approach – Different types of user-generated content for 205 video games were manually collected (the number of positive and negative comments, discussions, screenshots, artwork, videos, guides developed by users, and the presence of a workshop) to test their influence on product success. The proposed hypotheses were tested using multiple ridge
regression analysis. Findings – Results show that users look for simple and quick reviews and content about products in online brand communities (i.e., guides developed by users, comments, artwork and screenshots). However, results also show that users do not guide their purchases based on usergenerated content when the process of gaining understanding is more time-consuming (i.e., reading discussions, watching videos) or requires more active involvement (i.e., workshop presence). Originality/value – Limited research has been conducted on the type of user-generated content
found in online brand communities. This study contributes to the understanding of the potential influence of different types of user-generated content on product success. In addition, it offers managerial insights for companies into how to manage content in online communities.
History
School
Business and Economics
Department
Business
Published in
Online Information Review
Citation
ESTRELLA-RAMON, A. and ELLIS-CHADWICK, F., 2017. Do different kinds of user-generated content in online brand communities really work? Online Information Review, 41(7), pp. 954-968.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Acceptance date
2017-05-08
Publication date
2017
Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Online Information Review and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-08-2016-0229