The advent of social media has challenged companies as sole creators of marketing messages. Whether intentionally branded or subconsciously promoted, users become ambassadors for products and brands by producing and disseminating user-generated content (UGC). Whereas previous studies on UGC have mainly considered verbal peer recommendations or written reviews, our research focuses on user-generated videos (UGVs). In our 2 (source: user vs. agency) × 2 (technical quality: low vs. high) experimental study, we explore the impact of user-generated videos (UGVs) vs. agency-generated videos (AGVs) on spectators’ perceived source credibility and their intention to visit the tourist destination Tyrol in Austria, as promoted in the video. In addition, we explore the moderating role of video quality. In contrast to conventional wisdom, our results indicate that there is no general superiority of UGVs over AGVs. Rather, the influence of different video generators (user vs. agency) on spectators’ perception and intended behavior depends on the technical quality of the video. In the case of low technical quality, users as generators have a significantly stronger positive effect on source trustworthiness and expertise – and thereby on consumers’ intended behaviors – than AGVs. However, no impact from the generating source on trustworthiness has been found under the condition of highly technical quality. Concerning source expertise, videos generated by users are rated more highly than agency-generated videos under both low and high technical qualities, but the advantage is significantly lower under high technical quality. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of user-generated content overall and relativize the widely assumed general superiority of user-generated content over commercial, firm-generated content, at least in the case of videos.

We acknowledge the support from the Internet Foundation Austria (IPA), particularly from Ernst Langmantel and the netidee.at funding program, which enabled us to collect the data and carry out the research described in this article. We are also grateful for the chance to cooperate with the editors of this special issue, Lee Fleming and Olav Sorenson. They have contributed to our work by providing us with valuable feedback and support. Finally, we received many useful comments from the anonymous reviewers for CMR that helped us move this article forward.

Like Cinderella, many repurposed products involve a biographical transformation, from a tattered past identity (e.g., an old airbag) to a product with a valuable but different new identity (e.g., a backpack made from an airbag). In this article, the authors argue that marketers should help customers infer such product stories by highlighting the products’ tattered past identities. Three field experiments and four controlled experiments show that making a product’s past identity salient boosts demand across a variety of repurposed products. This is because past identity salience induces narrative thoughts about these products’ biographies, which in turn allows customers to feel special. Results also suggest that this strategy of past identity salience needs to be particularly well-crafted for products with easily discernible past identities. These findings highlight a promising new facet of storytelling (i.e., stories that customers self-infer in response to minimal marketer input); create new opportunities for promoting products with a prior life; and deliver detailed guidance for the largely unexplored, growing market for upcycled and recycled products.

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