Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339

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Journal of Business Research

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How does brand-related user-generated content differ across social media? T

Evidence reloaded
Paolo Romaa, , Davide Aloinib
⁎

a
Department of Industrial and Digital Innovation, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, 90128 Palermo, Italy
b
DESTEC - Università degli Studi di Pisa, Largo Lucio Lazzarino, 56122 Pisa, Italy

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: In light of the relevant changes in the social media environment in recent years, this paper extends the theo-
User generated content retical framework of user-generated content (UGC) dimensions and updates evidence on how brand-related UGC
Social media characteristics vary across social media. Using content analysis and statistical analysis of frequencies, we
Brand compare how different social media (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) shape twelve important UGC dimensions.
Social media marketing
Our findings suggest that, by flattening the differences on visual and richer content, the recent trends have made
Change
Facebook and Twitter more similar to YouTube on certain brand-related UGC dimensions (e.g., self-presentation,
brand centrality, brand recommendation). Moreover, by amplifying the differences related to the real-time and
ubiquitous sharing of increasingly richer content, the recent trends have favored the emergence of other brand-
related UGC characteristics (e.g., location sharing, sharing while purchasing/using the brand, brand connection
with personal experience, response to advertising campaign) more prominently on Facebook and Twitter than on
YouTube.

1. Introduction generated content (UGC) is online published content that is “created

Social media marketing has surged as a mainstream marketing tool
for companies in the last few years (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016). Re-
cent figures suggest that 90% of companies commonly utilize social
media to market their businesses (Stelzner, 2016). Firms adopt social
media not only for digital advertising purposes, but also to manage
their relationships with customers, engage them and take advantage of
their ideas and information for product innovation and brand man-
agement (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Smith, Fischer, & Yongjian, 2012;
Solis, 2010). The extreme popularity of social media, such as Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, with billions of social interac-
tions daily engaged by consumers around the globe, has provided firms
with a great stimulus to leverage social media to generate value (Yadav,
Valck, Hennig-Thurau, Hoffman, & Spann, 2013).
Along with these trends, the traditional one-way communication
previously controlled and administered by marketers, is now multi-di-
mensional, two-way and peer-to-peer communication (Berthon, Pitt, &
Campbell, 2008). “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is
what consumers tell each other it is.” (Scott Cook, co-founder, Intuit). As a
matter of fact, the number of reviews and other online content, gen-
erated and shared by users in social media has increased dramatically in
recent years (Goodrich & de Mooij, 2014; Smith et al., 2012). User
outside of professional routines and practices” (OECD, 2007). It is es-
sentially the manner through which users express themselves and
communicate with other people in online social media (Smith et al.,
2012). Brand-related UGC is the type of user content created with re-
gard to a specific brand. User reviews on a specific brand on Facebook
or user videos discussing the features of a brand on YouTube are ex-
amples of brand-related UGC.
Brand-related UGC has a central role in developing social interac-
tions, online word-of-mouth (eWOM) and brand relationships (Moran,
Muzellec, & Nolan, 2014; Smith et al., 2012). For instance, since their
inception, major online retailers have allowed consumers to post re-
views on their websites as these reviews have been shown to influence
purchase decisions (Sridhar & Srinivasan, 2012). In particular, UGC has
the potential to shape consumer brand perceptions and significantly
influence a number of phases in the consumers' purchase decision
process (Goh, Heng, & Lin, 2013; Yadav et al., 2013). For instance, the
effects of advertising and brand-related marketing actions in social
media do not merely depend on the original message, but also on user
content generated in the context of the particular message and social
media channel (e.g., commentaries or Facebook ‘likes’ related to an
advertisement). While both firm-created and user-generated brand
communication in social media influence brand perception, the latter

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: paolo.roma@unipa.it (P. Roma), davide.aloini@unipi.it (D. Aloini).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.11.055
Received 22 February 2018; Received in revised form 26 November 2018; Accepted 27 November 2018
0148-2963/ © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
P. Roma, D. Aloini
seems to have a positive impact also on brand loyalty and perceived
brand quality (Schivinski & Dabrowski, 2016).
Within the vast literature accumulated on brand-related UGC, a
plethora of studies have focused on the effects of online reviews and
eWOM on consumers' purchase decisions and market performance
(Chen & Xie, 2008; Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006; Chintagunta, Gopinath,
& Venkataraman, 2010; Dellarocas, Zhang, & Awad, 2007; Duan, Gu, &
Whinston, 2008; Forman, Ghose, & Wiesenfeld, 2008; Goes, Lin, &
Yeung, 2014; Goh et al., 2013; Li & Hitt, 2008). Other studies have
instead concentrated on the process of creation of UGC, with a specific
focus on user behavior (Halliday, 2016; Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner,
Walsh, & Gremle, 2004; Ho & Dempsey, 2010; Muntinga, Moorman, &
Smit, 2011; Toubia & Stephen, 2013), content characteristics (Akpinar
& Berger, 2017; Berger & Milkman, 2012; de Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang,
2012; Ghose & Han, 2011; Liu-Thompkins & Rogerson, 2012), and the
context where such content is created and shared (Berger & Schwartz,
2011; Chen & Berger, 2016; Papacharissi, 2009; Park & Lee, 2009;
Schweidel & Moe, 2014; Senecal & Nantel, 2004; Smith et al., 2012).
Little research has been conducted, however, on how brand-related
UGC creation and UGC characteristics are influenced by a specific type
of context, namely the different types of social media. Except for some
notable works (Papacharissi, 2009; Schweidel & Moe, 2014; Smith
et al., 2012), prior studies have mostly focused on a single social media
platform or venue format in analyzing the major features of brand-re-
lated UGC and the underlying user behavior (Schweidel & Moe, 2014).
However, given the increasing diffusion and impact of social media, the
study of whether and how users shape their content differently across
different social media can provide marketers with useful insights on the
communication strategies to adopt in different social media to better
engage consumers in brand co-creation processes. To fully capture
value from social media, firms should comprehend the important dif-
ferences arising across the different types of social media. Typically,
social media include a number of different formats such as social net-
working sites, blogs, and online content communities (e.g., photo and/
or video-sharing websites), which have different scopes, architecture,
culture and norms that evolve over time. Structural differences among
channels might deeply affect the social environment, such as the type of
individuals who serve as members, the nature of relationships that are
formed, and the behaviors characterizing users. Understanding how
users engage and interact within different social media is crucial for
firm profitability. This is because it can support a better resource al-
location across them (Smith et al., 2012), shedding light on which so-
cial media channel to use under certain conditions (Gensler, Völckner,
Liu-Thompkins, & Wiertz, 2013; Mulhern, 2009; Weinberg & Pehlivan,
2011) and which sequence of exposure should be adopted (Voorveld,
Neijens, & Smit, 2012).
This paper contributes to the stream of literature on the process of
UGC creation. In particular, it contributes to the studies that examine
the relationship between brand-related UGC and the type of social
media where it is created and shared (Papacharissi, 2009; Schweidel &
Moe, 2014; Smith et al., 2012). Specifically, building on Smith et al.
(2012), this paper aims to extend the theoretical framework of UGC
dimensions and update evidence on how brand-related UGC char-
acteristics vary across social media. Motivation for this attempt has to
be found in the relevant and continuous socio-technological changes
occurred in social media in recent years (Berger, 2014). There are has
been a trend of incorporating more visual-oriented features and richer
content in social media (Gupta, 2013; Pollard, 2017; Thompson, 2017;
Vilnai-Yavetz & Tifferet, 2015). For instance, Facebook introduced a
new live video streaming functionality only two years ago, and in
general posting videos has become very popular among users in this
social media site. Besides gradually increasing character limit, Twitter's
CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the company is working on making it
easier for users to express themselves much faster and with more
images and videos other than text posts (Perez, 2017; Shinal, 2018).
Moreover, due to technological developments, there has also been a
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Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
huge shift to social media use from mobile devices, which has opened
up the room for more dynamic, ubiquitous, location-based and real-
time interactions and, at the same time, has drastically increased users'
participation (Dube, 2012; Hudson, Huang, Roth, & Madden, 2016;
Kaplan, 2012; Kulkarni, 2017; Lamberton & Stephen, 2016; Sterling,
2016; Verhoef et al., 2017). By inducing such important changes in the
social media landscape, these trends may naturally influence the role of
different social media in user content creation in a manner that certain
user behaviors and actions toward brands in and across social media
may not be consistent over time. Therefore, it is important to under-
stand whether, following these changes, the same differences in brand-
related UGC in prior studies (e.g., Smith et al., 2012) still emerge across
different social media channels. It is equally important to shed light on
whether new dimensions characterizing brand-related UGC differently
across different social media channels have become prominent.
To advance understanding about the effect of social media on UGC
characteristics in light of the recent evolution of social media, we
compare the UGC dimensions introduced by Smith et al. (2012), i.e.,
promotional self-presentation, brand centrality, marketer-directed
communication, response to online marketer action, factually in-
formative communication about the brand, and brand sentiment, across
the same social media, i.e., Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, over a
more recent time window. We use the cola market (Coke vs. Pepsi) as a
setting for this comparison. Moreover, in the same setting, we add and
compare six new dimensions, i.e., response to advertising campaigns,
location sharing, connection with personal experience, real-time
sharing of brand purchase experience, real-time sharing of brand con-
sumption experience, exhibition of brand recommendation features.
These dimensions are introduced to capture a number of new and im-
portant social phenomena, which have surged prominently as a con-
sequence of the evolution of the social media landscape, and have
started receiving considerable attention in the marketing literature. In
particular, these social phenomena include the simultaneous con-
sumption of social media and traditional media channels (Fossen &
Schweidel, 2016), as well as the use of social media as a brand re-
commendation channel (Harmeling, Moffett, Arnold, & Carlson, 2017;
Osei-Frimpong & McLean, 2018; Reimer & Benkenstein, 2018) and as a
geo-localized and real-time communication channel (Huang &
Benyoucef, 2013; Liu, 2018; Pagani & Malacarne, 2017; Presi, Maehle,
& Kleppe, 2016; Shankar et al., 2016; Verhoef et al., 2017; Yavuz &
Toker, 2014). We formulate and test hypotheses on how the presence of
these new dimensions should vary across different type of social media,
which has never been studied before.
By re-examining the dimensions of brand-related UGC introduced
by Smith et al. (2012) and adding new relevant ones, we provide the
following contributions to the stream of literature on the process of
brand-related UGC creation. Primarily, we contribute to the literature
on the role of the context by highlighting the importance of the social
media environment in shaping brand-related UGC characteristics. In
particular, we pinpoint the effects of the different evolution path fol-
lowed by different social media in terms technological functionalities
and social dynamics. This also allows us to characterize the social
media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) based on the
characteristics most frequently associated with each of them. We also
add to the stream of literature on the features of UGC informing on how
the main characteristics of brand-related UGC and their cross-platform
differences are evolving as a result of the changing social media en-
vironment. Moreover, in this respect, we emphasize the importance of
new characteristics of brand-related UGC that have emerged promi-
nently in the current scenario and, perhaps, differently across different
social media platforms. Finally, we contribute to the stream focusing
more on user behavior as the content created is the result of certain user
behaviors, which are in turn influenced by the culture, social dynamics,
and, ultimately, by the technological functionalities enabled in certain
social media platforms. Therefore, by shedding light on how both new
and old characteristics of brand-related UGC vary across social media
P. Roma, D. Aloini
platforms in the current scenario, we also identify the emergence of
different user behaviors associated with technologically and socially
different social media environments.
The remainder of the paper unfolds as follows. In Section 2 we si-
tuate our study within the vast literature on UGC. In Section 3 we
present our theoretical arguments and the relative hypotheses. In
Section 4, we describe data, variables and methods used in this paper.
In Section 5, we present our empirical findings. Finally, we provide
implications for theory and practice and conclude in Section 6.
2. Literature overview
UGC is a very wide and diversified research topic within marketing
literature, which includes contributions on many different forms of
online communication (Dhar & Chang, 2009). A first important stream
has examined the role of UGC, and specifically online consumer reviews
and eWOM, in stimulating consumers' purchase decisions (Goh et al.,
2013; Senecal & Nantel, 2004; Zhao, Yang, Narayan, & Zhao, 2013),
and increasing sales and market performance (Chen & Xie, 2008;
Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006; Chintagunta et al., 2010; Dellarocas et al.,
2007; Dhar & Chang, 2009; Duan et al., 2008; Forman et al., 2008; Goes
et al., 2014; Li & Hitt, 2008; Zhu & Zhang, 2010).
A second relevant stream, more closely related to our study, has
explored the intervening behavioral processes for UGC generation.
Contributions in this stream have focused on three major aspects af-
fecting content generation and transfer: user behavior (e.g., aim, mo-
tivation, and incentives for sharing UGC), UGC content features, and
the context where user content is created and shared (Berger, 2014;
Berger & Milkman, 2012; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004; Muntinga et al.,
2011; Smith et al., 2012; Toubia & Stephen, 2013). Due to the close
interconnections, several studies in this stream have examined more
than one aspect simultaneously (Chen & Berger, 2016; Liu-Thompkins
& Rogerson, 2012; Smith et al., 2012; Toubia & Stephen, 2013).
The stream focusing on user behavior has mainly explored users'
motives for generating content (Halliday, 2016; Hennig-Thurau et al.,
2004; Ho & Dempsey, 2010; Muntinga et al., 2011; Toubia & Stephen,
2013). For instance, among the key motivations for creating and
sharing content, a number of studies have highlighted the need of en-
tertainment (Muntinga et al., 2011; Phelps, Lewis, Mobilio, Perry, &
Raman, 2004), expressing personal identity (Muntinga et al., 2011;
Nadkarni & Hoffman, 2012; Schau & Gilly, 2003; Seidman, 2013;
Vilnai-Yavetz & Tifferet, 2015), connecting to others and belonging to a
community (Muntinga et al., 2011; Nadkarni & Hoffman, 2012; Phelps
et al., 2004; Vilnai-Yavetz & Tifferet, 2015), altruism (Reimer &
Benkenstein, 2018), and empowerment (Muntinga et al., 2011;
Labrecque, 2014). Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) have suggested desire
for social interaction, desire for economic incentives, concern for other
consumers, and the potential to enhance their own self-worth as pri-
mary factors motivating consumers to communicate online. Similarly,
He, Chen, Lee, Wang, and Pohlmann (2017) have drawn on motivation
theory to separate motivations into three types of psychological needs:
self-competency, self-belongingness, self-autonomy.
As for the stream focusing on content features, numerous works
have focused on information UGC provides about the product or the
vendor to potential consumers (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006; Dellarocas,
2003). While earlier studies on eWOM have focused on the quantitative
aspects of UGC (e.g., volume, ratings), more recent works have shown
that certain qualitative characteristics of the content (e.g., sentiment,
readability, etc.) have better predictive power (Ghose & Han, 2011; Goh
et al., 2013). Emotional content seems to offer the greatest potential for
a large diffusion (Akpinar & Berger, 2017; Berger & Milkman, 2012),
together with interactive, interesting and well written content (Chen &
Berger, 2016; de Vries et al., 2012), and content infused with educa-
tional values (Liu-Thompkins & Rogerson, 2012). Moreover, Luarn, Lin,
and Chiu (2015) have suggested that the type of content influences
online brand engagement, showing that medium level of vividness as
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Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
well as high interactivity favor higher levels of engagement. Similarly,
Packard and Berger (2017) have found that more explicit endorsement
in the UGC language is more persuasive and increases purchase intent.
More closely related to our study, Smith et al. (2012) have identified six
major characteristics of brand-related UGC that may differ across social
media.
Finally, in the context-related stream, scholars have explored the
relationship between UGC and the context where UGC is generated and
shared, asserting the relevance of product, market, technological and
socio-cultural context in determining UGC generation, diffusion and
effectiveness. The market features, the type of product (e.g., search vs.
experience), the content acquisition method (social media platform,
website, etc.), the social norms in the community, the information di-
rection, the website reputation (type of recommendation source) have
been all underscored as important drivers of UGC propagation (Berger
& Schwartz, 2011; Chen & Berger, 2016; Kozinets, De Valck, Wojnicki,
& Wilner, 2010; Papacharissi, 2009; Park & Lee, 2009; Schweidel &
Moe, 2014; Senecal & Nantel, 2004; Smith et al., 2012). UGC diffusion
has also been shown to crucially depend on several characteristics of
the user network where content is shared, such as centrality, tie
strength, network connectivity and size (Goldenberg, Han, Lehmann, &
Hong, 2009; Katona, Zubcsek, & Sarvary, 2011; Liu-Thompkins &
Rogerson, 2012; Susarla, Oh, & Tan, 2012; Toubia & Stephen, 2013).
Alongside this evidence related to the role of the context in UGC, the
rapid development of social networking and communication technolo-
gies has motivated researchers to further explore or re-consider the
effect of the technological context where the UGC is generated
(Campbell, 2013; Gensler et al., 2013; Hervas-Drane, 2015; Katona
et al., 2011; Schweidel & Moe, 2014). For instance, Ghose and Han
(2011) have provided significant insights about UGC generation and
consumption in the specific context of mobile Internet. From a broader
perspective, an explicit call to consider how technological changes
shape eWOM has appeared in Berger (2014). This is because a relevant
number of evolving technology-related factors may heavily affect UGC
generation, e.g., type of communication (text vs. photo/video, perma-
nent vs. ephemeral content), mobility, timing and location, audience
size, social presence and cost/effort of computer-mediated commu-
nications (Berger, 2014; Ghose & Han, 2011; Schweidel & Moe, 2014;
Smith et al., 2012). Closely related to this point, significant differences
may exist and evolve across the various social media platforms in terms
of available functionalities supporting UGC generation and diffusion. In
turn, this may determine different socio-cultural environments eliciting
different norms, preferences, and behaviors (Papacharissi, 2009;
Schweidel & Moe, 2014; Smith et al., 2012). Therefore, our contribu-
tion can be framed at the interplay among all three sub-streams of lit-
erature examining the UGC generation process and characteristics.
3. UGC dimensions and hypotheses
To understand how the characteristics of brand-related UGC vary
across different social media, we start from the framework proposed by
Smith et al. (2012), where six relevant dimensions of brand-related UGC
are identified, and integrate it with six additional dimensions. We briefly
summarize the hypotheses already formulated by Smith et al. (2012) on
their six UGC dimensions and explain how changes may have affected
them. We provide more extensive discussion on the hypotheses related to
the six new dimensions of UGC, namely, response to advertising cam-
paigns, location sharing, connection with personal experience, real-time
sharing of purchase experience, real-time sharing of consumption ex-
perience, and exhibition of brand recommendation features.
3.1. The six dimensions of Smith et al. (2012) and the impact of recent
changes
As discussed earlier, we have identified two major changes in the
social media landscape, namely the trend toward incorporating more
P. Roma, D. Aloini
visual and richer content, and the shift to social media use from mobile
devices. In this section, we explain how these changes may have af-
fected the six dimensions of brand-related UGC introduced by Smith
et al. (2012) and shaped the relative differences across the social media
platforms. Specifically, based on the effects of the changes, we de-
termine whether the hypotheses originally formulated by Smith et al.
(2012) should be updated or not.
3.1.1. Promotional self-presentation
This feature refers people's effort to convey a specific image and
identity of themselves to others (Zywica & Danowski, 2008). This effort
is often associated with the use of products and brands (Belk, 1988,
2013; Schau & Gilly, 2003; Smith et al., 2012). Prior literature has
highlighted that users' self-presentation is more frequently observed in
brand-related UGC available on YouTube than on Facebook or Twitter,
as YouTube's focus on visual content naturally facilitates self-pre-
sentation (Burgess & Green, 2009; Misoch, 2014; Smith et al., 2012).
However, we argue that the recent shift toward more visual and richer
features occurred in the last few years also in social media not ex-
clusively focused on visual content, e.g., Facebook and Twitter, (Gupta,
2013; Pollard, 2017; Shinal, 2018; Thompson, 2017; Vilnai-Yavetz &
Tifferet, 2015) may have diminished the differences emerging across
social media on this characteristic.
3.1.2. Brand centrality
This dimension refers to whether the brand is the actual focus of the
given brand-related UGC or it is simply a companion (Smith et al.,
2012). Prior literature has found that brand-related UGC is more likely
to be brand-centric on Twitter than on Facebook and YouTube, and
explained this result as a consequence of Twitter's policy of imposing
character limit for tweets (Ma, 2013; Perez, 2017; Smith et al., 2012).
Moreover, prior research has suggested that brands often have a per-
ipheral role in UGC on YouTube as consumers display greater attitude
for self-presentation in this channel (Smith et al., 2012). However, as
suggested above, the increased emphasis on more visual and richer
content recently occurred on both Facebook (e.g., live streaming fea-
tures) and Twitter (e.g., a more permissive character rules gradually
adopted) may have weakened the differences emerging across social
media with regard to the characteristic of self-presentation and, in turn,
also with regard to brand centrality.
3.1.3. Marketer-directed communication
The opportunity to dynamically interact with customers to learn
their preferences and stimulate ideas from them has induced many
firms to create pages for their brands on social media (Gensler et al.,
2013; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010; Labrecque, 2014; Luarn et al., 2015).
Prior research has highlighted that social media may differ with regard
to the extent to which consumers use them to interact directly with the
company, for instance asking questions, complaining about products, or
commenting over firms' posts (Smith et al., 2012). In this respect,
Twitter and Facebook have been largely perceived as social media
where it is simple and quick for consumers to interact with the brand as
they can easily post comments on the pages created by brands
(Naaman, Boase, & Lai, 2010; Smith et al., 2012). In contrast, due to
considerable effort required to make a video, users have been less in-
centivized to use YouTube to these purposes. We argue that this dif-
ference has been magnified by the increase in the use of social media
from mobile devices, as this has enabled more real-time ad ubiquitous
interactions between users and brands on social media where it is more
immediate to share content, i.e., Facebook and Twitter (Kaplan, 2012).
3.1.4. Response to online marketer action
This dimension captures whether social media users are more or less
likely to produce UGC as a response to marketing actions carried by
marketers on the given social media. Marketer actions on social media
are usually in the form of daily news or event announcements, coupon
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Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
posting, or questions to consumers. Similarly to the above dimension,
the easiness and rapidity of accessing and visualizing brand content in
social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter should provide a
greater stimulus to users on these sites to create content in response to
it, as compared with users on YouTube (Smith et al., 2012). In contrast,
on YouTube, while users can still provide comments in response to
marketer actions, they do not do it as frequently as in the other two
channels as the culture on YouTube has been centered on video creation
rather than on writing comments (Smith et al., 2012). Therefore, we
expect that the increased use of social media from mobile devices has
amplified these differences.
3.1.5. Factually informative about the brand
This dimension indicates whether UGC reports objectively verifiable
information about the brand (e.g., physical product features, price,
store location) rather than personal opinions. Prior research has sug-
gested that all three social media sites equally facilitate the presence of
factual information (Smith et al., 2012). This is intuitive for social
media like Facebook and Twitter due to the ease of sharing news and
facts in these sites (Chen, Chen, Chen, Chen, & Yu, 2013; Kim &
Johnson, 2016; Taecharungroj, 2016). However, some studies have
explained that, although the YouTube's stronger “self” focus favors the
sharing of personal opinions in some video formats, the same platform
hosts other video formats (e.g., product reviews) through which factual
information can be easily shared, similarly to the other two platforms
(Smith et al., 2012).1 We add that the increased orientation toward
more visual features and richer content recently occurred on Facebook
and Twitter may have diminished the differences emerging across social
media with regard to the dimension of self-presentation, thus further
equalizing the presence of factual information in brand-related UGC
across the three platforms.
3.1.6. Brand sentiment
This dimension can be defined as the sentiment expressed by social
media users toward brands in their UGC. It describes whether users
have positive, neutral or negative attitude toward brands when com-
menting or reviewing them. Prior research has found quite large
variability of brand evaluations provided by users in social media, ir-
respective of the channel where UGC is produced (Hennig-Thurau,
Wiertz, & Feldhaus, 2015; Kim & Johnson, 2016; Liu, Burns, & Hou,
2017; Pfeffer, Zorbach, & Carley, 2013; Smith et al., 2012). This sug-
gests that users can easily provide any type of judgments about brands
(e.g., positive, negative, or neutral sentiment) in each of the three social
media (Smith et al., 2012). We argue that the changes occurred in the
social media landscape in recent years are unlikely to influence how
brand sentiment varies across social media because they do not tend to
canalize a specific sentiment orientation into a specific social media
site.
Based on the above arguments, only the hypotheses related to the
first two dimensions (namely Promotional Self-Presentation and Brand
Centrality) clearly require a reformulation as for both dimensions the
changes occurred in the social media landscape (in particular, the trend
toward more visual and richer content) have acted to eliminate pre-
viously documented cross-platform differences. For all other dimen-
sions, instead, the changes have been either not impactful or have
magnified the effects already identified by Smith et al. (2012), thus
implying consistency with the original hypotheses. In Table 1 (first two
columns), we summarize the original hypotheses (H1–H6) of Smith
et al. (2012) and report our reformulation of the first two hypotheses
(H1new and H2new).
1
In contrast with their arguments, Smith et al. (2012) have observed lower
frequency of factually informative UGC on Facebook, which they have ex-
plained as a consequence of the brand setting considered in their study.
P. Roma, D. Aloini
Table 1
Hypotheses in Smith et al. (2012), our reformulation, and hypotheses on new dimensions.
Hypotheses in Smith et al. (2012) Our reformulation of hypotheses in Smith et al.
(2012)
H1: Promotional Self-Presentation highest on YouTube. H1new: Promotional Self-Presentation equally likely
across social media.
H2: Brand Centrality highest on Twitter and lowest on H2new: Brand Centrality equally likely across social
YouTube.
H3: Marketer-directed Communication lowest on YouTube.
H4: Response to Online Marketer Action lowest on YouTube.
H5: Factually Informative about the Brand equally likely
across social media.
H6: Brand Sentiment equal across social media.
3.2. Additional dimensions of brand-related UGC
We now introduce the six new dimensions of brand-related UGC and
formulate hypotheses (H7–H12) on how they vary across social media
platforms, summarizing them in Table 1 (third column).
3.2.1. Response to advertising campaign
While Smith et al. (2012) consider the fact that users can create
brand-related content as a response to marketer actions on the social
media, they seem to refer to user response to daily marketer actions
such as questions, news, coupon provision, rather than examining
whether consumers use social media to comment on (offline and/or
online) advertising campaigns, e.g., TV commercials.
The large variety of media content, coupled with the increased
ubiquity and multiple connectivity capabilities of modern devices, has
favored the simultaneous consumption of different media channels that
were traditionally utilized separately (Brasel & Gips, 2011; Fossen &
Schweidel, 2016). We introduce the dimension Response to advertising
campaign to capture one important aspect of the simultaneous con-
sumption of different media channels, namely the growing user ten-
dency to comment about advertising campaigns in social media. Recent
surveys document that a multitude of social media users comment in
real time about TV shows and advertisements, thus offering marketers
the opportunity to exploit multiple types of media channels jointly
(Business Insider, 2013; Dumenco, 2012; Hill, Nalavade, & Benton,
2012). For instance, combining both TV and social media, Korean
company Kia Motors enjoyed great success for two SuperBowl adver-
tising campaigns, resulting in a myriad of consumers sharing related
comments, videos, and images via social media (Furrier, 2013). More in
general, offline advertising campaigns have been shown to positively
influence social media chatter, mainly in terms of visibility and virality
(Fossen & Schweidel, 2016; Srinivasan, Rutz, & Pauwels, 2015;
Tirunillai & Tellis, 2017).
Given the prominent role social media may play in determining and
monitoring the success of (offline and online) advertising campaigns
second-by-second and on a grand scale (Hill et al., 2012), it is important
to understand in which social media channel (Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube) users are more stimulated to chat about brand advertising
campaigns, an issue that has not yet been addressed. Similarly to the
case of the dimension Response to Online Marketer Action, we argue that
users can now very easily share real-time comments on Facebook and
Twitter while watching the given advertisement, by simply using a
mobile device. In contrast, the greater skills and effort necessary to
create a video on YouTube should provide users with less incentive to
respond to (offline and online) advertising campaigns through video
creation. YouTube users can still provide comments in response to ad-
vertising campaigns in the comment section of this media channel.
However, in line with Smith et al. (2012), we argue they do not do it as
frequently as in the other two channels since the culture on YouTube
has been centered on video creation and sharing rather than on writing
Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
Hypotheses on the six new dimensions
H7: Response to Advertising Campaign lowest on
YouTube.
H8: Location Sharing lowest on YouTube.
media.
Unchanged. H9: Connection with Personal Experience lowest on
YouTube.
Unchanged. H10: Real-time Sharing of Purchase Experience lowest
on YouTube
Unchanged. H11: Real-time Sharing of Consumption Experience
lowest on YouTube
Unchanged. H12: Brand Recommendation highest on YouTube.
comments. This argument that UGC responding to advertising cam-
paigns should be less frequent on YouTube is strengthened by the evi-
dence that online chatter around advertising campaigns ceases quite
soon after the campaign (Tirunillai & Tellis, 2017), which would con-
trast with the time and effort needed to produce UGC on this channel.
Therefore, we formulate our first novel hypothesis as follows:
H7. Brand-related UGC is less likely to respond to (offline and/or
online) brand advertising campaigns on YouTube than on Facebook or
Twitter.
3.2.2. Location sharing
The dimension Location Sharing is motivated by the surge of geo-
location tools available in social media sites and the consequent in-
creasing users' attitude to share location information in their posts
(Wang, 2013). In fact, exploiting these tools directly from their mobile
devices, consumers have started sharing regularly their location in-
formation, which can range from appearances at the workplace and
other daily places (e.g., supermarkets, malls, pubs, etc.) to participation
to special events and visits to touristic places (Verhoef et al., 2017;
Wang, 2013; Wilken, 2014; Yavuz & Toker, 2014). For instance, check-
in applications available in several social media sites enable users to
mark and share their location, allowing them to receive tips and re-
commendations from other people, connect with nearby friends and
contacts, and benefit from promotional offers provided by the listed
locations (Pagani & Malacarne, 2017; Wang, 2013; Yavuz & Toker,
2014). These features offer new business opportunities to marketers as
they have considerable implications for how and why people shop, as
well as they activate online word of mouth that can favor purchases
(Pagani & Malacarne, 2017). By enabling geo-location functionalities,
users can be monitored more precisely, thus revealing the viability of
certain revenue options (van Dijck, 2011). Moreover, geo-location in-
formation of posts on social media platforms (e.g., via check-ins) can
provide marketers with geographical details of brand-related user ex-
periences. In turn, this can inform them about the close linkage between
location information and certain consumer feelings and behaviors.2 As
such, geo-location information of posts on social media can work as an
inexpensive and effective tool for customer engagement (Pagani &
Malacarne, 2017). Marketing literature on location sharing in social
media has mostly examined user behavior and motivations. For in-
stance, Yavuz and Toker (2014) have identified social value enhance-
ment as the major motive for sharing location information. According
2
Note that social media can be informed of users' location even if users do not
share their location. It is sufficient that they activate geo-location identification
from their device to deliver this information. However, as mentioned, when the
location information is shared directly by users via UGC (e.g., via check-ins), it
becomes even more powerful because it allows the marketer to better connect
certain consumer behaviors and feelings related to the brand (e.g., occasions of
usage, emotional statuses, etc.) with the location context.
326
P. Roma, D. Aloini
to the authors, while information provision and need of socialization
are relevant motivations for location sharing, it is the desire to impress
and feel important in front of other people that mostly determines this
decision. This reveals that check-in behavior is strictly correlated to
different aspects of consumer behavior and traits, such as self-pre-
sentation, identity construction, narcissism, and extroversion, and thus
must be fully understood by marketers to make valuable brand pro-
positions to consumers through social media (Kim, 2016; Wang, 2013;
Wang & Stefanone, 2013; Yavuz & Toker, 2014).
No study has yet focused on the relationship between the social
media site and user propensity to share location information. However,
it is important to understand which social media channel offers better
opportunities for setting up more effective location-based marketing
services (e.g., customized communications, discounts, etc.). We argue
that users' tendency to share location information when posting online
content is likely to differ across different social media sites, as a result of
two major factors. First, social media have evolved differently re-
garding the provision of location-based tools, with Facebook being one
of the most active platforms in incorporating the trends related to lo-
cation sharing into tools that enable users to share this type of in-
formation in an easy and effective manner (Kim, 2016; Wilken, 2014;
Yavuz & Toker, 2014). Similarly, location-based functionalities have
been widely integrated on Twitter (Yavuz & Toker, 2014). In contrast,
location-sharing tools are not much supported on YouTube, where users
can only reveal their location referring to the location directly inside
the video or in its description. The greater effort of Facebook and
Twitter in creating an environment where it is easy and effective for
users to share location with personal contacts should act to incentivize
this type of behavior. The second factor relates to the fact that users
tend to share location mostly for social value enhancement reasons
(Yavuz & Toker, 2014). Due to the close relationship between the need
of social value enhancement and self-presentation, the location-sharing
behavior should be more frequently observed in social media where
self-presentation is more stimulated. In principle, this should confer an
advantage to YouTube due to the intrinsic focus on visual content.
However, due to the recent shift toward more visual and richer content
occurred in the last few years also on Facebook and Twitter, cross-
platform differences in self-presentation should have been mitigated,
thus making the first factor dominant. Accordingly, we formulate:
H8. In their brand-related UGC, users are less likely to share their
location on YouTube than on Facebook or Twitter.
3.2.3. Connection with personal experience
We introduce the dimension Connection with Personal Experience to
capture the recent social media trend of strengthening the linkage be-
tween brands and user everyday life and making it more meaningful
and habitual (Hollenbeck & Kaikati, 2012; Presi et al., 2016). In fact,
the growing use of social media from mobile devices as well as the
recent shift to more visual features in social media have boosted real-
time, ubiquitous and informationally rich content posting activities,
such as selfies. In turn, this has made more natural and immediate for
consumers to share content where the brand is associated with personal
experiences and everyday life, e.g., birthdays, holidays, etc. (Carlsson,
2016; Hollenbeck & Kaikati, 2012; Kaplan, 2012; Presi et al., 2016). In
these posts, the brand becomes a meaningful component of the life
events that the user wants to share with his/her friends or the public.
While the brand may play a peripheral role in this content, the fact that
it is publicized by social media users as part of their life is indicative of
how well the brand has been interiorized by consumers, thus providing
useful information about consumer brand loyalty. Moreover, this
brand-user connection helps understand other important issues to
marketers, such as the values and meanings users attribute to the brand.
As the literature has started examining the association of brands with
consumers' life events in social media only recently (e.g., Presi et al.,
2016), there is still lack of evidence on how this association varies
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Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
across social media. Therefore, it is important to understand how much
frequently UGC displays this feature of associating brands with people's
personal stories across different social media channels.
Prior literature has noted that, to satisfy user social goals, UGC
connecting brands with personal life events is usually shared real-time,
e.g., while these events are ongoing or at most immediately after their
conclusion (Olsson, Soronen, & Vaananen-Vainio-Mattila, 2008; Wang,
2013). The brand characteristic of being intimately connected and
concurrent with the happening of a personal event naturally contrasts
with the skills and effort requested to produce videos on YouTube, thus
making this type of UGC not particularly suitable on this media channel
(Kaplan, 2012). In contrast, the clear social networking nature of Fa-
cebook, coupled with the recent trends toward richer, more visual and
real-time features, provides users with a much more suitable environ-
ment to share personal events with their friends, like a diary, in a timely
and cost effective manner (Bevan et al., 2015; Huang & Benyoucef,
2015). In the same vein, Twitter's focus on quick and timely sharing of
information, coupled with more permissive character rules, should also
create a more favorable environment (as compared with YouTube) to
create brand-related content related to personal life events. Hence, we
formulate:
H9. Brand-related UGC is less likely to associate the brand with a user
personal experience on YouTube than on Facebook or Twitter.
3.2.4. Real-time sharing of purchase experience
The dimension Real-time Sharing of Purchase Experience is introduced
to capture the recent trend of using social media to share in real time
shopping experiences. Due to the wide diffusion of social media from
mobile devices, consumers increasingly use social media when pur-
chasing products and services (Ma, Yang, & Wilson, 2017; Shankar
et al., 2016). They share their shopping experience in real time with
their network of contacts in social media, commenting, posting selfies,
or uploading videos about their shopping experiences and their newly
purchased products (Shankar et al., 2016). For instance, the campaign
Share a Coke, one of the most successful campaigns launched by Coca
Cola, encouraged people to share their name they found when buying
on the bottle of Coke, thus stimulating consumers to post during their
purchase (Tarver, 2015). The purchase process becomes more and more
a social experience (Wang & Zhang, 2012). By publicizing their pur-
chase consumers not only can build a stronger and more appreciated
identity of themselves in their networks or communities (So, Wu, Xiong,
& King, 2018), but also can positively influence other consumers' pur-
chase decision activating effective eWOM (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013;
Shankar et al., 2016). From monitoring UGC shared when shopping,
marketers can gather important information on the timing, frequency,
occasions in which purchases occur. This information can serve to them
to better design marketing strategies aimed at improving their brand
offerings as well as consumers' shopping/consumption experience
(Shankar et al., 2016). For instance, to promote new product lines,
Victoria's Secret has recently invited consumers to take in-store selfies
that are instantaneously uploaded to social media and shared among
friends (Samuely, 2015).
In spite of its growing relevance, this “posting while shopping”
phenomenon has not received adequate attention from the marketing
literature (Shankar et al., 2016). In particular, there is lack of knowl-
edge on which social media channel represents a more suitable en-
vironment for consumers to share their brand shopping activity in real
time. Understanding how this characteristic varies across social media
sites can support marketers in choosing the most effective social media
site to improve consumers' shopping experience, make it more social,
and thus generate positive eWOM. We argue that the effort and time
requested to produce videos on YouTube combined with the absence of
official live streaming features should discourage users from creating
and sharing content when purchasing brands in this channel. In con-
trast, the easiness of posting and visualizing content in real time on
P. Roma, D. Aloini
Facebook and Twitter, which has been emphasized by the introduction
of more dynamic tools (e.g., the live streaming feature on Facebook)
should favor the diffusion of content shared in the moment of brand
purchase in these platforms (Kaplan, 2012). Moreover, the culture of
selfies in association with brands (Liu, 2018; Presi et al., 2016) per-
meating the latter two platforms should further amplify their advantage
with regard to this dimension. Hence, we formulate:
H10. Brand-related UGC created and shared in the context of brand
purchase is less likely to be observed on YouTube than on Facebook or
Twitter.
3.2.5. Real-time sharing of consumption experience
This dimension is similar to the previous one, but it focuses on
consumers' attitude to share brand-related content in the context of
brand consumption (rather than when purchasing the brand). The fast
growth of social media usage from mobile devices provides un-
precedented opportunities for consumers to share in real time their
product consumption experiences in social media, e.g., via comments,
selfies, etc., (Humphrey, 2013; Presi et al., 2016; So et al., 2018; Yi,
Jiang, & Benbasat, 2017). For example, it is very popular for young
generations to post pictures of their food or drink they are consuming at
restaurants or bars (Hosie, 2017). Extant literature has suggested that,
for prestigious or widely accepted brands, consumers' decision to make
their consumption experience socially visible through social media is
mostly due to the desire to enhance their social status and thus re-
inforce their social self-esteem (Belk, 2013; So et al., 2018; Stokburger-
Sauer, Ratneshwar, & Sen, 2012). The identification with important
brands in the eyes of other consumers is an effective mean to achieve
social acceptance, which in turn triggers a consumer's self-esteem
(Stokburger-Sauer et al., 2012; Toubia & Stephen, 2013). From mar-
keters' perspective, the dynamics behind socially visible consumption
(e.g., consumption occasions) need to be understood in order to design
a brand positioning that takes advantage of the linkage existing among
socially visible consumption, consumer-brand identification, and social
self-esteem. Moreover, sharing positive brand consumption experiences
on social media is important as it propels positive eWOM (Berger,
2014).
No study sheds light on which social media site provides a greater
stimulus to consumers to share real-time brand consumption experi-
ence, in spite of the importance of this issue for marketers. We con-
tribute by comparing the magnitude of this phenomenon across dif-
ferent social media. This allows us to identify the most appropriate
platform through which derive information for better designing con-
sumers' consumption experiences. Specifically, we claim that the same
arguments discussed for the previous dimension (namely, Real-time
Sharing of Purchase Experience) also apply to the present dimension. Due
to the easiness of content sharing and visualization, users perceive so-
cial media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as environments where it
is quick and immediate to upload and share content also in the context
of brand consumption (Kaplan, 2012). This should facilitate the diffu-
sion, more in these social media sites than in video-sharing commu-
nities such as YouTube, of a culture where users make their brand
consumption socially visible in real time to their network of contacts.3
Therefore, we formulate:
H11. Brand-related UGC created and shared in the context of brand
consumption is less likely to be observed on YouTube than on Facebook
or Twitter.
3 2010; Klein, 2003). Therefore, in line with these theories, we expect
We recognize that there are numerous user videos on YouTube, e.g., product
tutorials, showing brand consumption. However, most of these videos are first
produced and then shared, given that, comparatively speaking, it is less easy to
create a video on YouTube and share it in real time. That is, consumption and
sharing are usually not simultaneous on YouTube, which is instead the crucial
aspect of the dimension Real-time Sharing of Consumption Experience.
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Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
3.2.6. Brand recommendation
The dimension Brand recommendation is motivated by the fact that
the increasingly ubiquitous and real-time access to social media has
also propelled consumers' activity of posting reviews to inform their
contacts about their brand experience. To avoid the consequences of
negative eWOM, firms' interest in customer engagement through so-
cial media has dramatically increased (Malthouse, Haenlein, Skiera,
Wege, & Zhang, 2013). Firms more often try to motivate, empower,
and engage customers to the extent that they become the first brand
ambassadors in social media and promote the brand in the eyes of
other consumers (Harmeling et al., 2017; Malthouse et al., 2013;
Nambisan, 2002; Reimer & Benkenstein, 2018). Consumer brand en-
gagement can be defined as a “psychological state that occurs by
virtue of interactive, co-creative customer experiences with a focal
agent/object (e.g., a brand)” (Brodie, Hollebeek, Juric, & Ilic, 2011).
This psychological state often materializes as a consumer's voluntary
contribution to firm's marketing functions, such as customer acquisi-
tion and retention, product innovation, marketing communication,
beyond the economic transaction between the firm and the consumer
(Harmeling et al., 2017). Consumer brand engagement is conducive to
the attainment of superior profitability (Bijmolt et al., 2010; Kozinets
et al., 2010; Nambisan & Baron, 2007) because engaged customers
become effective and relatively cheap vehicles of brand promotion to
other consumers (Harmeling et al., 2017; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010;
Malthouse et al., 2013; Nambisan, 2002; Reimer & Benkenstein,
2018). For instance, explicit brand recommendation through UGC
tends to have positive influence on consumers' purchase intentions
(Packard & Berger, 2017).
Social media have been identified as a powerful instrument to
engage consumers in a timely and direct manner, and at higher levels
of efficiency than can be achieved with more traditional commu-
nication tools (Hollebeek, Glynn, & Brodie, 2014; Kaplan & Haenlein,
2010; Osei-Frimpong & McLean, 2018). However, little is known on
whether consumer brand engagement varies across different social
media. In particular, it is unclear whether users are more prone to
create content explicitly recommending a brand to their networks of
contacts in certain social media channels rather than in others. To
shed light on this issue and inform marketers about the different op-
portunities offered by different social media for customer engagement,
we advance that the extent to which consumers explicitly promote the
brand via UGC may differ across social media depending on the
evolving structural and cultural characteristics of the social media.
These features encompass the type and format of shared content and
the platform tools provided for content production and sharing, which
naturally induce different social norms and behaviors across different
social media. Specifically, we ground on Media Richness Theory
(MRT) (Daft & Lengel, 1986; Dennis & Kinney, 1998) and Social
Presence Theory (SPT) (Osei-Frimpong & McLean, 2018; Short,
Williams, & Christie, 1976) to argue that the communication format
should play a crucial role in determining cross-media differences with
regard to the brand recommendation dimension of UGC. MRT and SPT
suggest that media differ in information richness (i.e., the ability of
information to change understanding within a time interval) and so-
cial presence (i.e. the degree of salience of the other person in an
interaction). Hence, considering the aim of the UCG, some media may
be more effective than others in the communication process to the
audience. In particular, it is widely recognized that formats enabling
more complete forms of communication (e.g., including gestures,
voice, sense of presence, etc.), such as videos, should be more im-
pactful than leaner formats, such as written text (Kaplan & Haenlein,
that engaged users would choose the richest forms of communication
and possibly specialized supporting platforms to recommend the
brand through their UGC, despite this approach might request higher
skills and time for content production. As a result, we should more
likely observe UGC where users promote the brand to other users on
P. Roma, D. Aloini
YouTube rather than on Facebook or Twitter. We recognize that the
recent trends toward more visual features and richer content also on
social media not originally focused on video sharing (e.g., Facebook)
may mitigate this difference. However, by virtue of being a specialized
video-sharing platform, YouTube should still be more suitable for
brand recommendation purposes, as compared with Facebook and
Twitter. Accordingly, we hypothesize that:
H12. Brand-related UGC is more likely to feature explicit brand
recommendation on YouTube than on Facebook or Twitter.
4. Data & methods
To test the above hypotheses, we followed the approach undertaken
by Smith et al. (2012) in terms of sampling procedure and methods of
analysis (though, as discussed, we consider different brand setting and
time window). Similarly to them, a user posting was considered as
brand-related if the brand was mentioned, or displayed in it or if there
was a clear reference to it. We randomly collected 240 UGCs for each of
the two brands, Coke from The Coca-Cola Company and Pepsi from
PepsiCo, in each of the three social media used by Smith et al. (2012),
namely Facebook (a social networking website), Twitter (a micro-
blogging website), and YouTube (an online video content community),
on May and June of years 2015–2017, yielding 1440 observations in
total.
To retrieve data for our sample, we used the search engine available
in each of these social media by typing the words “Coke” and “Pepsi”
respectively, and by restricting each search to the above period of ob-
servation. Similarly to Smith et al. (2012), for all three social media,
each post was selected by randomly picking one every ten results dis-
played progressively in the given social media site until 240 posts were
collected for each brand on each site. Of course, in our sampling pro-
cedure, we considered only postings produced by consumers and with
no apparent commercial objective. It is also important to point out that
when we encountered a brand-related post from the company in our
sampling procedure, we retrieved random comments provided by users
as a response to the company post. Overall, posts well represented the
wide range of UGC types that can be found on each site. For example,
on Twitter, tweets, retweets, and replies were all included in the
sample. On Facebook, status updates, wall posts, forum contributions,
pictures, and videos were all represented in the sample. On YouTube,
we included videos and comments.4
The choice of considering the soft drink industry, and specifically
Coke and Pepsi brands is due to the fact the cola market is essentially a
duopoly worldwide (Fosfuri & Giarratana, 2009) and the two brands
have global recognition, regularly ranking among the most valuable
brands worldwide according to Interbrand.com. The fact that the cola
market can be considered globally as a duopoly has the advantage that
we can simply consider two brands, thus limiting data collection effort,
with no risk of missing UGC related to other brands active in the same
product category. In other words, all the relevant brand-related UGC
with regard to the global cola product category does not refer to (and
cannot be affected by) any competitor other than the two brands ana-
lyzed in this paper. In our view, analyzing only the UGC related to two
4
As highlighted by Smith et al. (2012), a difference among the three social
media concerns the fact that, contrarily to Twitter and YouTube, most postings
are private on Facebook. This difference can be hardly eliminated because it is
quite problematic to access private content on Facebook. Nevertheless, in line
with Smith et al. (2012), we believe that this difference should not affect much
our findings because the number of publicly available brand-related posts on
Facebook is still very large and, in principle, we can reasonably assume that
publicly available brand-related posts share similar features to their private
counterparts. Note also that our study is not affected by the fact that all three
social media delete (and archive) content over time because data were collected
exactly during the period to which they refer.
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Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
brands in an industry with more than two competing brands as done by
Smith et al. (2012) may be problematic because the sample may not be
representative of all social media users given that UGC of consumers of
excluded brands would be disregarded. In turn, this may limit the
generalizability of the results on how different social media influence
the characteristics of brand-related UGC even within the same product
category because UGC related to other brands in the same product
category is not observed. Our choice of considering two brands in a
duopoly market helps keep data collection and analysis manageable
and, at the same time favor, generalizability (at least at the product
category level). In addition, choosing an industry different from that
examined by Smith et al. (2012) helps understand to which extent their
findings obtained in the apparel industry can be extended to other
business settings.
The choice of considering Coke and Pepsi is also due to the fact that,
being giant corporations, the two companies (namely The Coca-Cola
Company and PepsiCo) owning these two brands are very active on
social media (Sviokla, 2010). However, the different level of social
media marketing expenses of these two companies hints at possible
differences in the social media strategies of the two brands and thus also
in the way they perform. As a matter of fact, some figures show that
Coke's page on Facebook enjoys 107 million likes, whereas Pepsi's page
reaches 37 million likes. Coke's followers (tweets) on Twitter are 3.4
million (246,000), whereas Pepsi's followers (tweets) are 3.1 million
(34,000). Coke's page subscribers on YouTube are > 2 million, whereas
the counterparts for Pepsi are 0.8 million.5 Therefore, in line with Smith
et al. (2012), the fact that the two brands quite differ in the way they
approach and perform in social media helps understand whether a more
or a less proactive social media marketing strategy influences the effect
of the different social media on the characteristics of brand-related
UGC.
As for the methods, following Smith et al. (2012) we used content
analysis performed by multiple analysts to obtain the information ne-
cessary to our purposes. Content analysis is a standard method for
systematically comparing the content of communications (Kolbe &
Burnett, 1991). For instance, it has been regularly used by researchers
interested in analyzing content related to advertisements, media stories,
websites, and online reviews (Cheng & Ho, 2015; Kassarjian, 1977;
Roznowski, 2003; Yun, Park, & Ha, 2008). Content analysis is appro-
priate for our study because it provides a systematic and objective way
to compare content for a quite large sample of UGC across different
social media (Smith et al., 2012). In Table 2 we present the oper-
ationalization of the twelve dimensions of our theoretical framework. In
particular, we used the same operationalization used by Smith et al.
(2012) for the six dimensions inherited from their study, and followed a
similar approach for the six additional dimensions. Similarly to Smith
et al. (2012), data coding was manually conducted by an independent
coder, who had no knowledge of the research hypotheses, as well as by
one member of the research team. The independent coder was given an
explanation of the codes and also conversed with a second member of
the research team to seek clarification after coding an initial portion of
the sample. Intercoder reliability, as calculated using Perreault and
Leigh's (1989) formula, was on average 0.884 (the average is computed
because there is one dimension, i.e., brand sentiment, which is not di-
chotomous), falling within the accepted range of 0.8–1.0. Any dis-
crepancies in coding were examined and evaluated by a third party
fully informed about the research project. Following coding, we took
the same approach as in Smith et al. (2012) by tabulating category
frequencies and assessing statistical significance of the differences
across social media by means of Chi-square tests, as reported in the next
section.
5
Statistics were retrieved directly from the social media on February 2018.
P. Roma, D. Aloini Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339

Table 2
Operationalization of UGC dimensions.
UGC dimensions Coding procedure description

Promotional Self-Presentation
Brand Centrality
Marketer-directed Communication
Response to Online Marketer Action
Factually Informative about the Brand
Brand Sentiment
Response to Advertising Campaign
Location Sharing
Connection with Personal Experience
Real-time Sharing of Purchase Experience
Real-time Sharing of Consumption Experience
Brand Recommendation
Content was coded as “yes” if the author of the post was mentioned, referenced, or featured in the content in a way that was
explicitly self-promotional; otherwise, it was coded as “no”. For example, a video on YouTube where a user broadcasts himself/
herself in foreground when tasting or talking about Coke or Pepsi was codified as “yes”, whereas a video where only the brand
appeared in the video (e.g., a video showing an event publicized in association with the brand) was codified as “no”.
Content was coded as “yes” for brand centrality if the brand was the main focus of the content, rather than being peripheral;
otherwise, it was coded as “no”. For example, a user post on Coke's Facebook page asking questions on the brand or a user
picture where Pepsi consumption is emphasized was codified as “yes”, whereas a user video on YouTube broadcasting an event
where the brand appears as a sponsor along with many others was codified as “no”.
Content was coded as “yes” if a post was explicitly directed toward the brand; otherwise, it was coded “no”. For instance, a
consumer reply to a PepsiCo tweet related to Pepsi brand or a post on Coke's Facebook wall asking about product price increase
was coded “yes”, while a user video on YouTube comparing the taste of the two brands was coded as “no”.
Content was coded as “yes” if it was in response to a specific online marketer action; otherwise, it was coded as “no”. For
instance, a user post replying to Pepsi's post on Facebook informing customers on how to obtain some discounted offer was
coded as “yes”, whereas a user post on the same social medium expressing love for the brand was coded as “no”.
Content was coded as “yes” if it contained objective brand information, such as a price or nutritional facts; otherwise, it was
coded as “no”. For example, a tweet displaying the price increase of Pepsi bottles was coded as “yes” because it reports a factual
news, whereas a YouTube video where the user congratulates with Pepsi for the great marketing strategy was coded as “no”
because it expresses a personal opinion.
Content was coded as “positive”, “negative”, or “neutral” based on the overriding sentiment of the post. For instance, a user post
on Facebook thanking Coke for a certain surprise was coded as “positive”. A user on Twitter complaining about the fact he paid a
price for Coke bottle higher than advertised was coded as “negative”. A tweet reporting a news release related to Pepsi was
coded as “neutral”. Differently from Smith et al. (2012), we did not encounter ambiguous sentiment in our sample. Therefore,
we did not codify any content as “unclear”. This difference is likely to be due to the global notoriety of Coke and Pepsi, which
makes easier to identify a clear sentiment toward these brands.
Content was coded as “yes” if it was in response to a large (online and/or offline) brand advertising campaign; otherwise, it was
coded as “no”. We distinguish between advertising campaigns and online marketer actions in the sense that the former refer to
large campaigns promoting the brand through one or more channels (e.g., TV and/or Internet), whereas the latter refer to daily
activities conducted by the brand within the given social medium, such as posting news with the scope of directly interacting
with social media users. For instance, a tweet where the user share a Coke showing the text of a song and the hashtag
#ShareaSong is clearly a post in response to the famous advertising campaign Share a Song launched by The Coca-Cola
Company and thus was coded as “yes”. In contrast, a Facebook post of a user stating she cannot sleep because she drank too
much Coke was coded as “no”.
Content was coded as “yes” if it clearly refers to the precise location (e.g., a city, a point of interest, a pub, a local shop, etc.) from
where the user is posting; otherwise it was coded as “no”. For instance, Facebook or Twitter check-ins were definitely coded as
“yes”. Also, content was coded as “yes” when the precise location is explicitly mentioned in the content related to Coke or Pepsi.
When the location was vaguely described with no clear identification or was absent, we coded the relative content as “no”.
Content was coded as “yes” if the brand was associated with a personal experience or event of the user; otherwise it was coded as
“no”. For instance, a picture on Facebook of a group of people drinking Pepsi for a friend's birthday was coded as “yes”, whereas
simply sharing news or opinions about the brand on any of the three social media was coded as “no”, given that the user content
is not generated in relation to a personal life experience.
Content was coded as “yes” if the user created it in the moment of purchasing the brand; otherwise it was coded as “no”. For
instance, a selfie on Facebook taken at the store while buying a Coke pack was coded as “yes”. Contrarily, any content not
specifically created in the moment of purchase was coded as “no”. We remark that we consider real-time exclusively when the
posting is done simultaneously with the shopping or the consumption. The use of present continuous forms in the posts as well as
features of social media informing that a certain event is currently occurring at a certain place were fundamental to discern
between real-time posts displaying shopping (via text, photos, etc.) and those not being shared in real time.
Content was coded as “yes” if the user created it in the moment of consuming the brand; otherwise it was coded as “no”. For
instance, a user tweeting that he/she is currently drinking a Pepsi was coded as “yes”. In contrast, any content not specifically
created when consuming Coke or Pepsi was coded as “no”. The same considerations discussed for the dimension Real-time
Sharing of Purchase Experience hold for this dimension as well.
Content was coded as “yes” if the user explicitly promoted the brand to other social media users; otherwise it was coded as “no”.
For instance, a video on YouTube where the user clearly try to advise other users on the choice of Coke (e.g., using sentences like
“Hey guys, Coca-Cola Cherry is so good, you should try it…”) was codified as “yes”, whereas a Facebook picture showing an
occasion where people drink Pepsi was codified as “no”.

5. Empirical findings
Table 3 illustrates the coding frequencies tabulated for each di-
mension and brand. Before testing for differences in brand-related UGC
across the three social media we performed Poisson and log-linear
analyses on the tabulated data in Table 3 to check for the existence of
significant interactions between brand and social media site.6 As re-
ported in the second column of Table 4, the Poisson regression models
showed that the interaction between brand and social media site was
not significant for all dimensions except for the variable Response to
6
Before running Poisson regression models, we verified that our dependent
variables (i.e., the twelve dimensions) follow a Poisson distribution by means of
the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test.
Advertising Campaign, for which this interaction was significant at the
5% level (6.607 (2), p < 0.037). Therefore, the two brands could be
collapsed for further analyses for all dimensions except for Response to
Advertising Campaign. To check robustness of the results obtained via
Poisson regressions, we also performed log-linear analyses. As reported
in the third column of Table 4, the results of these analyses were con-
sistent with those obtained using the Poisson regression, except for the
dimension Connection with Personal Experience. As a matter of fact, the
results under log-linear analyses suggested collapsing the two brands
for all dimensions except Response to Advertising Campaign (11.184 (2),
p < 0.004) and Connection with Personal Experience (6.806 (2),
p < 0.033). Given that both regression models agreed not to collapse
brands on the dimension Response to Advertising Campaign, we tested the
differences in the user content related to this dimension across the three
social media separately for the two brands. For the dimension on which

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Table 3
Coding frequencies for Coke and Pepsi.
Code Coke Pepsi

Facebook Twitter YouTube Total across sites (%) Facebook Twitter YouTube Total across sites (%)

Promotional Self-Presentation
Yes 115 81 117 43% 130 87 117 46%
No 125 159 123 57% 110 153 123 54%

Brand Centrality
Yes 176 177 150 70% 156 169 162 68%
No 64 63 90 30% 84 71 78 32%

Marketer-directed Communication
Yes 89 114 17 31% 41 68 14 17%
No 151 126 223 69% 199 172 226 83%

Response to Online Marketer Action

Yes 34 25 23 11% 32 34 16 11%
No 206 215 217 89% 208 206 224 89%

Factually Informative about the Brand

Yes 53 57 55 23% 39 38 60 19%
No 187 183 185 77% 201 202 180 81%

Brand Sentiment
Positive 91 91 67 35% 81 84 66 32%
Negative 23 24 30 11% 31 43 44 16%
Neutral 126 125 143 54% 128 113 130 52%

Response to Advertising Campaign

Yes 100 90 41 32% 43 39 35 16%
No 140 150 199 68% 197 201 205 84%

Location Sharing
Yes 107 21 4 18% 88 15 6 15%
No 133 219 236 82% 152 225 234 85%

Connection with Personal Experience

Yes 130 95 75 42% 95 90 79 37%
No 110 145 165 58% 145 150 161 63%

Real-time Sharing of Purchase Experience

Yes 24 16 0 6% 18 15 0 5%
No 216 224 240 94% 222 225 240 95%

Real-time Sharing of Consumption Experience

Yes 74 60 23 22% 68 61 36 23%
No 166 180 217 78% 172 179 204 77%

Brand Recommendation
Yes 40 37 41 16% 43 46 40 18%
No 200 203 199 84% 197 194 200 82%

Table 4
Brand × site interaction effects: Poisson regression and log-linear analysis.
Content category Poisson regression 2-way interaction Log-linear analysis 3-way interaction (Brand ∗ Site ∗ Content Decision
(Brand ∗ Site) (df), p-value Category) (df), p-value

H1: Promotional Self-Presentation 0.451 (2), p < 0.798 0.943 (2), p < 0.624 Collapse brands
H2: Brand Centrality 1.592 (2), p < 0.451 5.063 (2), p < 0.080 Collapse brands
H3: Marketer-directed Communication 2.381 (2), p < 0.304 3.902 (2), p < 0.142 Collapse brands
H4: Response to Online Marketer Action 2.665 (2), p < 0.264 3.003 (2), p < 0.223 Collapse brands
H5: Factually Informative about the Brand 3.564 (2), p < 0.168 4.396 (2), p < 0.111 Collapse brands
H6: Brand Sentiment 0.823 (2), p < 0.663 1.345 (4), p < 0.854 Collapse brands
H7: Response to Advertising Campaign 6.607 (2), p < 0.037 11.184 (2), p < 0.004 Do not collapse
brands
H8: Location Sharing 1.040 (2), p < 0.595 1.284 (2), p < 0.526 Collapse brands
H9: Connection with Personal Experience 3.390 (2), p < 0.184 6.806 (2), p < 0.033 Collapse brands
H10: Real-time Sharing of Purchase 0.220 (2), p < 0.639 0.248 (2), p < 0.883 Collapse brands
Experience
H11: Real-time Sharing of Consumption 2.898 (2), p < 0.235 3.396 (2), p < 0.183 Collapse brands
Experience
H12: Brand Recommendation 0.607 (2), p < 0.738 0.736 (2), p < 0.692 Collapse brands

Statistical significance p-value < 5%.

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Table 5
Between site differences in brand-related UGC: Chi-square analyses.
Content Total Facebook-Twitter Facebook-YouTube Twitter-YouTube
(df), p-value (df), p-value (df), p-value (df), p-value

Promotional Self-Presentation
Total 29.206 (2), p < 0.000 25.195 (1), p < 0.000 0.504 (1), p < 0.478 18.642 < (1), p < 0.000

Brand Centrality
Total 5.663 (2), p < 0.059 – – –

Marketed-directed Communication
Total 135.117 (2), p < 0.000 12.840 (1), p < 0.000 73.142 (1), p < 0.000 137.570 (1), p < 0.000

Response to Online Marketer Action

Total 8.106 (2), p < 0.017 0.451 (1), p < 0.502 7.795 (1), p < 0.005 4.546 (1), p < 0.033

Factually Informative about the Brand

Total 3.930 (2), p < 0.140 – – –

Brand Sentiment
Total 12.440 (4), p < 0.014 1.943 (2), p < 0.379 8.797 (2), p < 0.012 8.472 (2), p < 0.014

Response to Advertising Campaign

Coke 38.129 (2), p < 0.000 0.871 (1), p < 0.351 34.956 (1), p < 0.000 25.208 (1), p < 0.000
Pepsi 0.980 (2), p < 0.613 – – –

Location Sharing
Total 299.911 (2), p < 0.000 144.121 (1), p < 0.000 212.282 (1), p < 0.000 15.435 (1), p < 0.000

Connection with Personal Experience

Total 22.157 (2), p < 0.000 6.812 (1), p < 0.009 21.977 (1), p < 0.000 4.382 (1), p < 0.036

Real-time Sharing of Purchase Experience

Total 41.068 (2), p < 0.000 1.794 (1), p < 0.180 43.922 (1), p < 0.000 32.034 (1), p < 0.000

Real-time Sharing of Consumption Experience

Total 44.696 (2), p < 0.000 2.310 (1), p < 0.129 43.350 (1), p < 0.000 26.284 (1), p < 0.000

Brand Recommendation
Total 0.039 (2), p < 0.981 – – –

Statistical significance p-value < 5%.

Table 6
Between site differences in Pepsi-related UGC sentiment: Chi-square analyses.
Brand sentiment for both brands Total Facebook-Twitter Facebook-YouTube Twitter-YouTube
(df), p-value (df), p-value (df), p-value (df), p-value

Positive 10.294 (2), p < 0.006 0.041 (1), p < 0.840 7.309 (1), p < 0.007 8.433 (1), p < 0.004
Negative 3.666 (2), p < 0.160 – – –
Neutral 5.137 (2), p < 0.077 – – –

Statistical significance p-value < 5%.

the two models disagreed (i.e., Connection with Personal Experience), we dimension, we often associate the given social media channel with two
followed the results derived from the Poisson regression models and numbers in parentheses (separated by comma). The first (second)
tested the differences related to this dimension jointly for the two number is the frequency of the given dimension related to Coke (Pepsi),
brands in order to have larger sample and thus ensure higher reliability as reported in Table 4. Table 7 compares our results with those in Smith
of results.7 For all other dimensions, tests of how brand-related UGC et al. (2012).
differs across social media were conducted by collapsing the two brands
since the two types of regression models were consistent with each
5.1. Findings regarding the six dimensions of Smith et al. (2012)
other.
Chi-square tests were first conducted across the three platforms for
5.1.1. Promotional self-presentation
each dimension. If these tests yielded a significant Chi-square statistic
Original hypothesis H1 states that brand-related UGC on YouTube
(level of significance equal to 5%), we performed additional tests in
(117, 117) is more characterized by self-presentation than the coun-
order to establish which specific social media relationships (e.g.,
terpart on Facebook (115, 130) and Twitter (81, 87), whereas our re-
Facebook-Twitter, Facebook-YouTube or Twitter-YouTube) contributed
formulation H1new claims no differences among platforms. The Chi-
significantly to that statistic. If the initial Chi-square statistic across all
square test in the second column of Table 5 shows that the distributions
three social media was shown to be insignificant, thus suggesting si-
between the three sites are different (p < 0.000). The Chi-square tests
milarity among the brand-related UGC of Twitter, Facebook, and
conducted on each couple of social media (columns 3–4-5 of the same
YouTube on that dimension, no further analyses were conducted. These
table) show that self-presentation is more present on YouTube and
results are summarized in Tables 5 and 6. We next discuss these results
Facebook than on Twitter (p < 0.000 in both cases). This finding
for each dimension. Note that in the discussion below, for each
documents a situation in between the original hypothesis of Smith et al.
(2012) and our reformulation. According to Smith et al. (2012), it
shows that the main focus in using Twitter has not changed sig-
7
At any rate, performing Chi-square analysis on this dimension separately for nificantly, remaining conversation rather than identity building
the two brands yields qualitatively similar results. (Kietzmann et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2012). According to our

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P. Roma, D. Aloini
Table 7
Summary of hypotheses and results.
Hypotheses
H1: Promotional Self-Presentation highest on YouTube.
H1new: Promotional Self-Presentation equally likely across social
media
H2: Brand Centrality highest on Twitter and lowest on YouTube.
H2new: Brand centrality equally likely across social media
H3: Marketer-directed Communication lowest on YouTube.
H4: Response to Online Marketer Action lowest on YouTube.
H5: Factually Informative about the Brand equally likely across social
media.
H6: Brand Sentiment equal across social media.
H7: Response to Advertising Campaign lowest on YouTube.
H8: Location Sharing lowest on YouTube.
H9: Connection with Personal Experience lowest on YouTube.
H10: Real-time Sharing of Purchase Experience lowest on YouTube
H11: Real-time Sharing of Consumption Experience lowest on YouTube
H12: Brand Recommendation highest on YouTube.
reformulation, it reports no significant differences between YouTube
and Facebook (p < 0.478). This suggests that Facebook's considerable
shift toward more visual and richer content has actually eliminated the
gap with YouTube with regard to self-presentation.
5.1.2. Brand centrality
The results for this dimension confirm our reformulated hypothesis
(H2new). As a matter of fact, results in Table 5 show that this feature is
equally likely across the three social media (p-value above 5%). The
changes occurred in the social media environment since Smith et al.
(2012) have contributed to eliminate the differences emerging across
social media with regard to the UGC characteristic of brand centrality.
The more permissive character rules recently adopted by Twitter have
increased the space for other features of brand-related UGC not ne-
cessarily centered on brand in this social media site. Also, the increased
user self-presentation especially on Facebook, as implied by the in-
creased emphasis on visual features, has also contributed to mitigate
the cross-media differences in brand centrality of UGC. Finally, the
different brand setting chosen for the analysis (cola market instead of
clothing-apparel market) may also have played a role. Due to the large
notoriety of Coke and Pepsi, the brand centrality characteristic is very
frequent in brand-related UGC irrespective of the social media channel
(see Table 3).
5.1.3. Marketer-directed communication
Unchanged hypothesis H3 states that brand-related UGC on
YouTube (17, 14) is less frequently directed to the marketer than the
counterpart on Facebook (89, 41) or Twitter (114, 68). This hypothesis
is statistically supported. The Chi-square test conducted on each couple
of social media (columns 3-4-5 of Table 5) shows that marketer-directed
communication is less likely to be present on YouTube than on Face-
book (p < 0.000) and Twitter (p < 0.000). The results also reveal that
brand-related UGC is more characterized by direct communication to
the marketer on Twitter than on Facebook (p < 0.000). This additional
result is due to the fact that Twitter's focus on sharing news and in-
formation stimulate consumers to address questions/comments to
marketers. Our results on hypothesis H3 partially differ from those
obtained by Smith et al. (2012). While we fully support this hypothesis
irrespective of the considered brand, Smith et al. (2012) found that the
hypothesis H3 was supported for one brand but not for other because of
the different pro-active approach undertaken by the brands. The
slightly different result suggests that the brand setting may influence
Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
Results in Smith et al. (2012) Results in the present study
H1 supported. H1new partially supported.
No differences between YouTube and Facebook.
H2 supported. H2new supported.
Partially supported. Supported.
Hypothesis holds only for Lululemon brand. Also, it is highest on Twitter.
Supported. Supported.
Partially supported. Supported.
Factual information equally likely for Twitter and
YouTube.
Not supported. Not supported.
– Partially supported.
Valid for Coke, but not for Pepsi.
Supported.
Also it is highest on Facebook.
– Supported.
Also, it is highest on Facebook.
– Supported.
– Supported.
– Not supported.
Brand recommendation equal across social media.
the role of social media in user content creation.
5.1.4. Response to online marketer action
In line with the unchanged hypothesis H4, our analysis shows in
Table 5 that UGC as a response to online actions carried out by the
brand is less likely to occur on YouTube (23, 16) than on Facebook (34,
32) or Twitter (25, 34). The Chi-square test confirms this difference for
both comparisons Facebook-YouTube (p < 0.005) and Twitter-You-
Tube (p < 0.033). The same test also shows that there are no sig-
nificant differences between Facebook and Twitter on this dimension
(p < 0.502). Overall, these results confirm those obtained by Smith
et al. (2012), suggesting that marketers can actually trust the cross-
platform differences on this dimension, as they tend to be stable over
time, despite the relevant changes in the social media environment.
5.1.5. Factually informative about the brand
Results in Table 5 also fully support our unchanged hypothesis H5
that factually informative brand-related UGC is equally frequent across
the three social media. The Chi-square test reveals no significant dif-
ferences among three sites (p < 0.140). While hypothesis H5 is sup-
ported, our results are different from those obtained by Smith et al.
(2012), who did not find support for the hypothesis because in their
brand setting Facebook displayed less frequency of factual information
about the brand as compared with the other two social media. We do
not observe significant differences across social media with regard to
this dimension in our brand setting. This different result may be the
consequence of the increased orientation toward more visual features
recently occurred in social media not exclusively focused on visual
content, which may have increased self-presentation and thus may have
negatively impacted on the provision of factual information about the
brand. As a matter of fact, Table 3 shows that in all three social media
the great majority of content do not report factual information.
5.1.6. Brand sentiment
Our unchanged hypothesis H6 theorizes similar brand sentiment
distributions through the three social media sites. However, our results
in Table 5 yield a significant difference between YouTube and the other
two social media (p < 0.012 and p < 0.014 in Facebook-YouTube
and Twitter-YouTube comparisons, respectively), while Facebook and
Twitter are shown to be similar on this dimension (p < 0.379).
Therefore, our hypothesis H6 is overall not confirmed. To understand
which sentiment (positive, negative, neutral) contributed to generate
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this difference, we ran Chi-square tests on each single category of
sentiment. Results reported in Table 6 show that the occurrences of
both negative and neutral brand-related UGC do not vary significantly
(p < 0.160 and p < 0.077) across the three social media, whereas
those related to positive content are significantly different (p < 0.006).
In particular, the positive sentiment is less likely observed on YouTube
than on Facebook (frequencies 67 versus 91 for Coke and 66 versus 81
for Pepsi, respectively, and p < 0.007) and Twitter (frequencies 67
versus 91 for Coke and 66 versus 84 for Pepsi, respectively, and
p < 0.004). We connect this difference to the fact that both Coca-Cola
Company and PepsiCo are less active on YouTube than on Facebook or
Twitter. This possibly induces less user attachment to the brand in this
media channel, which in turn results in less positive sentiment. Overall,
our results are in line with those obtained by Smith et al. (2012). Hence,
the result that brand sentiment is not equally frequent in the three
social media sites seems to be robust over time.
5.2. Findings regarding the six new dimensions
5.2.1. Response to advertising campaign
Our results support the novel hypothesis H7 only partially. Ac-
cording to both Poisson and log-linear regression analyses, we report
the results in Table 5 separately for the two brands. We find that the
three social media are equally likely to stimulate UGC as a response to
large (online and/offline) advertising campaigns carried out by Pepsi.
In contrast, UGC responding to Coke advertising campaigns is less likely
observed on YouTube than on Facebook (frequencies 41 versus 100,
respectively, and p < 0.000) and Twitter (frequencies 41 versus 90,
respectively, and p < 0.000). No differences are statistically observed
between Facebook and Twitter for Coke (p < 0.351). Therefore, hy-
pothesis H7 is confirmed for Coke, but not for Pepsi. A possible ex-
planation for the different result concerning Pepsi is that the number of
user posts as a response of Pepsi advertising campaigns is significantly
lower than that for Coke, thus naturally limiting the cross-platform
differences for this dimension. This result suggests that users do not
respond to advertising campaigns across social media in the same way
they respond to daily-based online marketer actions. Specifically, by
comparing the results related to these two UGC dimensions, the beha-
vior is the same for Coke, but not for Pepsi. In turn, this hints at the role
of the different effectiveness of brand advertising strategies in social
media.
5.2.2. Location sharing
Our hypothesis H8 states that it is less likely to observe geo-loca-
lized UGC on YouTube (4, 6) than on Facebook (107, 88) or Twitter (21,
15). The Chi-square test in Table 5 confirms this difference for both
comparisons Facebook-YouTube (p < 0.000) and Twitter-YouTube
(p < 0.000). Moreover, the comparison between Facebook and Twitter
shows that Facebook is the social media where users most frequently
share their location when generating brand-related content
(p < 0.000). This evidence confirms the intuition that users' location
sharing is more popular in social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter)
that have invested more in incorporating geo-location tools in their
services and thus have facilitated the creation of a culture of sharing
user location. This aspect becomes more relevant in determining these
cross-platform differences also in light of the reduced gap in terms of
self-presentation that has been observed especially between Facebook
and YouTube. The observed increase in users' self-presentation attitude
on Facebook also explains why users are more inclined to share location
on Facebook than on Twitter. Self-presentation for social identity
building has been identified as a critical aspect characterizing the
motives behind users' location sharing behavior (Yavuz & Toker, 2014).
Therefore, this behavior has developed more easily on Facebook, in
light of the higher self-presentation observed in UGC shared in this
channel as compared with Twitter.
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Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
5.2.3. Connection with personal experience
Our hypothesis H9 states that it is less likely to observe UGC where
the brand is associated with a personal experience on YouTube (75, 79)
than on Facebook (130, 95) or Twitter (95, 90). The Chi-square test in
Table 5 confirms this difference for both comparisons Facebook-You-
Tube (p < 0.000) and Twitter-YouTube (p < 0.036). Moreover, the
comparison between Facebook and Twitter shows that Facebook is the
social media most frequently utilized to create brand-related content in
relation to a personal experience or event (p < 0.009). This evidence
supports the argument that the effort and time necessary to produce
content on YouTube is less compatible with the real-time nature of this
UGC dimension. This type of content is naturally posted while the event
is happening or right after its conclusion, in order to quickly im-
mortalize the event and generate large and immediate participation of
other users. Because of the effort and time requested to produce videos
on YouTube, users naturally tend to prefer easier and quicker social
media such as Facebook or Twitter when creating this type of content.
In particular, Facebook is shown to be most preferred channel to this
purpose because it has been conceived as a personal diary where users
can share their stories including those where the brand is present.
5.2.4. Real-time sharing of purchase experience
Consistent with hypothesis H10, our analysis shows that UGC cre-
ated and shared in the context of brand purchase is less likely to occur
on YouTube (0, 0) than on Facebook (24, 18) or Twitter (16, 15). The
Chi-square test in Table 6 confirms this difference for both comparisons
Facebook-YouTube (p < 0.000) and Twitter-YouTube (p < 0.000).
The same test also shows that there are no significant differences be-
tween Facebook and Twitter with regard to this dimension
(p < 0.180). Similarly to the previous dimension, the effort and time
requested to produce videos on YouTube coupled with the absence of
live streaming features (like those available on Facebook) discourage
users to create and share content when purchasing the brand in this
channel. In contrast, the easiness of posting content in real time on
Facebook and Twitter favors the diffusion of content in the moment of
brand purchase.
5.2.5. Real-time sharing of consumption experience
Regarding UGC created and shared in the context of brand con-
sumption, we also find full support for our hypothesis (H11) stating that
this type of brand-related content is less likely observed on YouTube
(23, 36) than on Facebook (74, 68) or Twitter (60, 61). Similarly to the
case of Real-time Sharing of Purchase Experience, the Chi-square test in
Table 6 confirms this difference for both comparisons Facebook-You-
Tube (p < 0.000) and Twitter-YouTube (p < 0.000). The same test
also shows that there are no significant differences between Facebook
and Twitter with regard to this dimension (p < 0.129). The same in-
tuition discussed above for the dimension Real-time Sharing of Purchase
Experience is also valid for this result. It is noteworthy, however, that
posting content while consuming the brand is a much more frequent
user activity than posting while purchasing the brand. This is clearly
expected because brand consumption can occur in a larger number of
circumstances and places than brand purchase.
5.2.6. Brand recommendation
Finally, we do not find confirmation for our hypothesis H12 on
whether users are more likely to promote the brand on YouTube (41,
40) than on Facebook (40, 43) or Twitter (37, 46). The Chi-square test
in Table 6 shows similar presence of brand recommendation features
across the three social media (p < 0.981). In line with MRT and SPT,
the recent trends toward more visual and richer content also on social
media not originally focused on video sharing have contributed to
mitigate the cross-media differences related to the exhibition of brand
recommendation features in UGC. The easiness and the effort in
creating and sharing content in a real-time manner have played in the
same direction. Moreover, in our context of global brands such as Coke
P. Roma, D. Aloini
and Pepsi, we observe that the majority of users on YouTube do not
make videos to explicitly recommend brands to other users. As a result,
no advantage of YouTube over Facebook and Twitter with regard to this
dimension is observed.
6. Discussion and conclusion
6.1. Implications for theory
This research has important implications for the copious literature
on UGC generation process and characteristics, updating current evi-
dence in light of the recent changes occurred in the social media
landscape. Specifically, by looking at the content features (Akpinar &
Berger, 2017; de Vries et al., 2012; Liu-Thompkins & Rogerson, 2012),
this work illustrates new relevant dimensions of analysis for brand-re-
lated UGC that should be considered by researchers when studying the
current role of social media platforms in brand-related user content
creation. The present analysis of new and old UGC characteristics also
reflects the different underlying user behaviors associated with tech-
nologically and socially different social media environments, which
adds to the stream examining the user behavior in brand-related UGC
creation (Halliday, 2016; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004; Ho & Dempsey,
2010; Muntinga et al., 2011; Toubia & Stephen, 2013). More im-
portantly, the work offers updated insights on how UGC content fea-
tures change across different social media platforms, which further
informs about the role of the current socio-technological context where
brand-related UGC is created and shared (Berger & Schwartz, 2011;
Chen & Berger, 2016; Park & Lee, 2009; Senecal & Nantel, 2004; Smith
et al., 2012).
In support of the argument that the changes occurred in the social
media environment may have affected some characteristics of brand-
related UGC, we obtain results that are only partially consistent with
prior studies. First, our results partially confirm previous views that
self-presentation attitude should be particularly emphasized in UGC
available on YouTube (Burgess & Green, 2009; Kietzmann, Hermkens,
McCarthy, & Silvestre, 2011; Misoch, 2014; Smith et al., 2012). In our
study, while UGC displays such characteristic more frequently on
YouTube than on Twitter, no differences emerge between YouTube and
Facebook. This may be the consequence of Facebook's shift toward
more visual and richer features (e.g., live video streaming), which sti-
mulates user self-presentation. Moreover, the higher self-presentation
of brand-related UGC in these media does not jeopardize the brand
centrality of the content. As a matter of fact, somewhat in contrast with
prior theoretical arguments (Cheong & Morrison, 2008; Smith et al.,
2012), UGC displays statistically similar brand centrality in all three
social media sites. This implies that the higher user attitude to self-
presentation on YouTube and Facebook does not necessarily push the
brand aside in UGC when brands with global recognition are in-
vestigated. At the same time, because of the progressive reduction in
the character limit, Twitter's technical design and focus on sharing news
do not necessarily imply superior brand centrality, as instead advanced
by prior studies (Ceballos, Crespo, & Cousté, 2016; Lopez, Sicilia, &
Moyeda-Carabaza, 2017; Ma, 2013). These results seem to delineate a
process of homogenization of user behaviors in social media with re-
gard to specific UGC characteristics, i.e., self-presentation and brand
centrality, which contrasts with a media-dependent view of self-pre-
sentation and related characteristics (Papacharissi, 2009). It is also
noteworthy that we find support for the hypothesis that factually in-
formative brand-related UGC is equally frequent across the three social
media, whereas Smith et al. (2012) did not corroborate this hypothesis
as factually informative content was less frequently observed on Face-
book in their study. As for the brand sentiment dimension, our findings
do not support the argument of large variability of (positive, negative,
and neutral) brand sentiment irrespective of the channel where UGC is
produced (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2015; Kim & Johnson, 2016; Liu et al.,
2017). In this respect, showing that the brand sentiment can be
335
Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
contingent upon the social media platform, our findings are consistent
with Smith et al. (2012). Our results also reveal that a feature distin-
guishing YouTube from the other two social media is its lower efficacy
in facilitating interactive communication between brand and users.
Consistent with prior studies (Naaman et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2012),
this difference results in less frequent communication directed to the
brand in this social media channel as well as lower number of user posts
created as a response to online marketer actions.
With regard to the new dimensions, our findings add to the extant
knowledge that recent social media phenomena, such as simultaneous
consumption of different media, location sharing, brand connection
with personal events, sharing content while buying and/or consuming,
seem to be captured to a greater extent by social media platforms such
as Facebook and Twitter. Compared with YouTube, these platforms
have incorporated in recent years' functionalities and services facil-
itating the rapid creation of considerably rich content at lower effort for
consumers. In turn, this has stimulated the emergence of certain social
dynamics more frequently in these media channels. As a matter of fact,
our findings suggest that, compared with YouTube, Facebook and
Twitter are associated with higher frequency of geo-localized brand-
related UGC, content intimately linking brands and user personal
stories, as well as content posted while purchasing and/or using the
brands. These results have interesting implications especially for the
research stream focusing on the identification of new elements (e.g.,
location sharing, socially visible purchase and consumption) that con-
tribute to social identity building in social media (Presi et al., 2016; So
et al., 2018; Stokburger-Sauer et al., 2012; Wang, 2013; Wang & Zhang,
2012; Yavuz & Toker, 2014). These results inform about the platforms
where consumers tend to adopt behaviors consistent with the scope of
building strong social identity. Differently, our argument that UCG as a
response to advertising campaigns should be less likely observed on
YouTube than on Facebook or Twitter is contingent upon the brand. In
our setting it holds only for Coke. This adds to the literature on si-
multaneous consumption of social media and traditional media (e.g.,
Fossen & Schweidel, 2016; Tirunillai & Tellis, 2017), suggesting that the
choice of both brand advertising strategy and the type of social media
may be crucial in determining the level of online user chatter about
brand advertising campaigns. Finally, regarding the trend of using so-
cial media for brand promotion (Malthouse et al., 2013; Packard &
Berger, 2017; Reimer & Benkenstein, 2018), our findings indicate that
UGC created by consumers to recommend the brand to other consumers
is equally probable across the three social media. This advances the
theory of brand engagement (e.g., Harmeling et al., 2017) in that it
reveals that the social dynamics necessary to activate user online brand
recommendation may not be media-dependent.
Prior literature has resorted to numerous suitable theories to explain
the motives behind the UGC generation process as well as provide a
rationale for analyzing UGC characteristics and the context where it is
created and shared. These include social presence, social influence,
motivation, fundamental interpersonal relations orientation, and con-
tingency theories, among others. From a broad perspective, by re-
vealing that some characteristics of UGC may change across different
social media platforms depending on a number of evolving contextual
factors, our findings can be framed within the contingency theory
(Yadav et al., 2013; Zeithaml, Varadarajan, & Zeithaml, 1988). Ac-
cording to this view, differences in UGC content can be explained by
evolving diversity in the beliefs, culture, social norms and preferences
characterizing users belonging to different social media communities,
as well as by different and evolving technical features available within
various social media platforms. However, we believe that our findings
can be best interpreted linking them to the Social Presence Theory
(SPT) (Short et al., 1976). SPT asserts that the social presence of a
medium influences the recipients' understanding of content generated
from senders (Cui, Lockee, & Meng, 2013; Osei-Frimpong & McLean,
2018; Vilnai-Yavetz & Tifferet, 2015), by influencing the degree to
which the interaction partners have a sense of personal human contact
P. Roma, D. Aloini
(Osei-Frimpong & McLean, 2018). In its essence, social presence de-
termines the perceived distance or closeness between participants, and
different media (including digital media) may enable different levels of
social presence. For example, sharing a basic logic similar to the MRT
theory (Cui et al., 2013), social presence is highest in face-to-face
communication, and lowest in text-based communications (Osei-
Frimpong & McLean, 2018). Taken together, our findings suggest that,
on the one hand, by flattening the cross-platform differences in terms of
visual and richer content, the recent trends have made Facebook and
Twitter more similar to YouTube on certain UGC dimensions (e.g., self-
presentation, brand centrality, brand recommendation). On the other
hand, by amplifying the cross-platform differences related to the real-
time and ubiquitous sharing of increasingly richer content, the recent
trends have favored the emergence of certain UGC characteristics (e.g.,
location sharing, sharing while purchasing/using the brand, connection
with personal experience, response to advertising campaign) more
prominently on Facebook and Twitter than on YouTube. Reinterpreting
these findings in light of the SPT, the recent trends have shaped the
differences in the level of social presence enabled by different social
media. Specifically, the higher social presence enabled by video content
on YouTube has been gradually mitigated by the shift of Facebook and
Twitter toward more visual and richer content. At the same, in their
evolution, the latter social media platforms have better incorporated
other elements that may increase social presence at relatively lower
effort for users, including functionalities that enable more real-time and
ubiquitous interactions and enhance the sense of closeness of users in
the communication. As a result, these changes in the level of social
presence enabled by different social media have impacted the user
behavior across social media and the consequent UGC generation pro-
cess, determining the reduction of cross-platform gap for certain UGC
characteristics, while emphasizing it for others.
6.2. Implications for practice
Our findings also offer several remarkable implications that can
support marketers on how to design and manage their interactions with
consumers in social media. First, we enlarge the number of dimensions
characterizing brand-related UGC. Specifically, firms may also need to
monitor whether the given content is created as a response to a large
(offline and/or online) advertising campaign, the location where the
UGC is created, whether the content links the brand with a user per-
sonal experience or life event, whether it features brand re-
commendation, and/or displays real-time information about purchase
and consumption. Second, our findings inform that, in general, how
UGC characteristics vary across the main social media may not be
consistent over time due to the very changing nature of social media
dynamics. At the same time, they also suggest that marketers can trust
the cross-platform differences regarding certain UGC characteristics
(i.e., response to online marketer action and brand sentiment) as they
tend to be stable over time, in spite the relevant changes occurred in the
social media environment. Moreover, the role of social media in
shaping the characteristics of UGC may not be exactly the same when
changing the brand/market setting. Third, our findings provide mar-
keters with tailored and updated suggestions for each social media
channel. Specifically, besides devoting attention to maintain a high
level of interaction with social media users, marketers traditionally able
to create successful advertising campaigns may consider focusing on
Facebook and Twitter to monitor the impact of such campaigns as
consumers exploit the easiness of these social media to comment real-
time about popular ads. Moreover, to increase the impact of their
marketing actions and at the same time contain costs, firms should be
aware of the fact that these two social media are potentially effective to
take advantage from geo-location services and real-time information
about purchase and consumption experiences. Similarly, marketers
should try to take advantage of users' pronounced attitude to include
the brand in their personal stories and life events on Facebook, relying
336
Journal of Business Research 96 (2019) 322–339
more on this channel (than on Twitter or YouTube) to implement
communication strategies that are able to emotionally connect brands
with consumers' everyday life. Firms may also consider exploiting the
culture of self-presentation on YouTube and Facebook by identifying
and collaborating with those users able to build a strong identity and
thus influence other users' behavior within the given channel. Finally,
our findings suggest that all three social media seem to be suitable for
marketers to implement strategies that can favor user brand promotion
as well as the transmission of factual brand information.
The evidence provided by this research also offers important im-
plications for social media platforms in such a changing environment.
Understanding which (and how) user content is generated and shared
across different social media channels can offer interesting insights for
the design of future systems that can be more appealing to both users
and marketers. Over the culture, in fact, user behavior seems to be
influenced by structural characteristics and networking features of the
social media platforms. Our findings help disclose preliminary direc-
tions for social media platform development to adapt to the rapidly
changing environment, at different levels: structural changes in the
social media management, innovative features and add-ons on the so-
cial media platform, and modifications of policies and constraints. We
have discussed some examples of such adaptation already discernable
in the market, e.g., Twitter's gradual increase of character limit, and
Facebook's introduction of live streaming and check-in functionalities.
6.3. Limitations and future developments
We have addressed the study of the relationship between social
media and brand-related UGC proposing an extension of the number of
UGC dimensions. Still, there are a number of issues that should be ex-
amined in future studies. For instance, the number of dimensions may
still be not exhaustive. In very competitive settings, it would be inter-
esting to study whether users tend to compare brands and discuss about
price differences in their UGC differently across social media (Roma,
Zambuto, & Perrone, 2014; Roma, Zambuto, & Perrone, 2016). Simi-
larly, in light of the discussed changes, other emerging types of social
media including Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest could be in-
vestigated. To further validate the argument that the brand setting may
play a role in the effect of social media on brand-related user content
creation, it would be useful to test our hypotheses using a sample si-
multaneously encompassing data of different brand categories. More-
over, a study of dimension categorization would be important to
identify similarities and/or reciprocal influences among them. Future
work could also look at relating the characteristics of brand-related
UGC to social media marketing strategies implemented by firms in
different social media channels and then to marketing performance
measures such as sales. Finally, future research aimed at understanding
how structural and/or policy change of social media platforms influ-
ences their performance is undoubtedly worthwhile.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Editors-in-Chief, the Associate
Editor, and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable and in-
sightful comments, which helped improve the paper significantly.
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Paolo Roma is a tenured Assistant Professor of Marketing (already qualified for Associate
Professor) at the University of Palermo, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial
Engineering and Management from the same University in 2009. He has been a visiting
scholar at the University of California at Davis, University of Pittsburgh, and Toulouse
School of Economics. Dr. Roma's research focuses on topics such as online distribution
channel management, online pricing, mobile app market, innovative business models on
the Internet, social media marketing, and crowdfunding. Outlets of Dr. Roma's research
include Information Systems Research, Operations Research, Production and Operations
Management, Research Policy, European Journal of Operational Research, Decision
Support Systems, International Journal of Production Economics, Applied Economics,
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, among others.
Davide Aloini is an Associate Professor of Management Information Systems at the
University of Pisa, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in Management Engineering from the
University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy, in 2008. Dr. Aloini's research interests include ICT
innovation, customer relationship management, big data analytics, business process
management, and risk management. Outlets of Dr. Aloini's research include Information
& Management, European Journal of Operational Research, Technology Forecasting and
Social Change, Management Decision, Business Process Management Journal, Production
Planning and Control, Expert Systems with Applications and International Journal of
Innovation Management, among others. Dr. Aloini was awarded with a Citation of
Excellence Award by Emerald for his research on the organizational impact of informa-
tion systems projects.