The growing amount of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has significantly affected the way consumers make purchase decisions. Empirical studies establish an effect of eWOM on sales but disagree on which online platforms, products, and eWOM metrics moderate this effect. The authors conduct a meta-analysis of 1532 effect sizes across 96 studies covering 40 platforms and 26 product categories. On average, eWOM is positively correlated with sales (.091), but its effectiveness differs across platform, product, and metric factors. For example, the effectiveness of eWOM on social media platforms is stronger when eWOM receivers can assess their own similarity to eWOM senders, whereas these homophily details do not influence the effectiveness of eWOM for e-commerce platforms. In addition, eWOM has a stronger effect on sales for tangible goods new to the market, while the product life cycle does not moderate the eWOM effectiveness for services. With respect to the eWOM metrics, eWOM volume has a stronger impact on sales than eWOM valence. In addition, negative eWOM does not always jeopardize sales, but high variability does.Keywords: electronic word of mouth, online reviews, online ratings, online platforms, social media, eWOM metrics, eWOM volume, eWOM valence, eWOM variance, bandwagon effect, persuasion effect, meta-analysis Aloe, Ariel M. and Cristopher G. Thompson (2013), "The Synthesis of Partial Effect Sizes,"

Marketers are adopting increasingly sophisticated ways to engage with customers throughout their journeys. We extend prior perspectives on the customer journey by introducing the role of digital signals that consumers emit throughout their activities. We argue that the ability to detect and act on consumer digital signals is a source of competitive advantage for firms. Technology enables firms to collect, interpret, and act on these signals to better manage the customer journey. While some consumers’ desire for privacy can restrict the opportunities technology provides marketers, other consumers’ desire for personalization can encourage the use of technology to inform marketing efforts. We posit that this difference in consumers’ willingness to emit observable signals may hinge on the strength of their relationship with the firm. We next discuss factors that may shift consumer preferences and consequently affect the technology-enabled opportunities available to firms. We conclude with a research agenda that focuses on consumers, firms, and regulators.

This article unpacks time as a cultural consumption resource and introduces the concept of consumer timework. Consumer timework refers to marketplace stakeholders’ negotiation of competing interpretations of how the past and the future relate using a wide range of consumption objects and activities. Building on the theory of temporalization, we argue that social tensions, conflicts, and breaks drive the past and the future apart in multiple incompatible ways that individuals and societies must contend. We theorize four fundamental dynamics of consumer timework in which market stakeholders engage: integrative, disintegrative, subjugatory, and emancipatory. Integrative and disintegrative consumer timework respectively harmonize and rupture the multiple temporal orientations (past, present, and future) to create shared communities or counter-communities of time through consumption. Subjugatory and emancipatory consumer timework respectively enforce and disrupt temporal hierarchies of power through consumption. We delineate these temporal dynamics using examples from extant consumer research. We conclude by establishing a future research agenda on consumer timework.

From parenting to health and wellness, the number of virtual support communities (VSCs) keeps growing. The interactive marketing discipline has primarily documented the positive social dynamics of VSCs: communities provide informational and socio-emotional support that helps members achieve their goals. Yet evidence is mounting that VSCs also exhibit judgment and pressure that ultimately hurt community relationships and engagement. We adopted a mixed-methods approach: a qualitative phase, comprised of netnography and interviews, to explore members’ experiences of a VSC and its complex social dynamics, followed by a quantitative phase to test the emerging model with cross-sectional survey data collected from members of a large number of health- and wellness-related VSCs. The two studies provide empirical evidence of many paradoxical social dynamics of VSCs and their relational and engagement consequences. We find that positive group perceptions can generate the social empathy that ensures the group's informational value is helpful to members’ goals; however, we also find that negative group perceptions create social pressure that can be helpful to relational and engagement outcomes if it increases social empathy but can also be detrimental if it turns into angst. Our findings contribute to research on VSCs, inform interactive marketing practices, and suggest further research opportunities on the social dynamics of VSCs.