No abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how social media (TripAdvisor) content influences restaurant visit intentions and liking expectations, how online review valence affect the viewing behavior of the social media page and which social media elements capture the initial attention of the consumer. Findings The pictures posted by firms and opinions posted by users attracted consumers’ attention. However, in the negative valence condition, participants needed to expand upon the content by reading additional (and more detailed) online reviews with specific cues, revisited the content more often and more closely fixated on specific online ratings. Moreover, the picture of the restaurant was the first area seen (reflecting a bottom-up process) and the third-party ad tended to be viewed last (reflecting selective attention). Research limitations/implications All social media elements are seen but only some affect decisions, with negatively (vs positively) valenced reviews requiring consideration of an extra element. Of relevance to managers, this study stresses the importance of the pictorial element and the influence of user-generated content on the attention and judgment of consumers. Originality/value This study suggests that, to form an opinion, viewers devote more cognitive effort and attention when evaluating restaurants with negatively (vs positively) valenced reviews. However, viewing patterns appear unaffected by review valence. It also demonstrates how consumers pay attention to different social media elements.

No abstract

Neuroimaging and behavioral studies have shown that brands convey meaning to consumers. To investigate the immediate reactions of the brain to brand logos, followed either by congruent or incongruent pictorial brand-related cues, can deepen understanding of the semantic processing of brands, and perhaps how consolidated the logo is in consumers’ minds. Participants were exposed to different brand-related image sets, that were either congruent (a match between brand-related images and brand logo) or incongruent (a mismatch between brand-related images and brand logo) while having their brain signals recorded. Event-related potential and EEG time–frequency domain features were extracted from the signals of the target image (brand logo). The results showed significantly larger N400 peak and relative theta power increase for incongruent compared to congruent logos, which could be attributed to an error-monitoring process. Thus, we argue that brands are encoded deeply in consumers’ minds, and cognitive processing of mismatched (vs matched) brand logos is more difficult, leading to greater error monitoring. The results were mostly consistent with previous studies investigating semantic incongruences in the linguistic field. Therefore, the error-monitoring process could be extended beyond linguistic forms, for example to images and brands.