The Retweet as a Function of Electronic Word-of-Mouth Marketing: A Study of Athlete Endorsement Activity on Twitter

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine endorsement-related tweets from athletes and determine which characteristics of those tweets could increase the degree of electronic word-of-mouth marketing (eWOM) generated by the message. Previous literature has suggested that the retweet function in Twitter is a form of eWOM. Through the lens of eWOM, the concepts of vividness, interactivity, and congruence are used to understand what tweet characteristics generate the most retweets. A sample of professional-athlete endorsement and sponsored tweets (n = 669) was used and coded based on frameworks adapted from previous studies. Results indicated that the interaction between levels of high vividness and high interactivity generated the highest frequency of retweets. Reported findings could inform athletes and/or brand managers in ways to increase the eWOM of sponsored messages on Twitter.

Making Sense from Experience: How a Sustainable Multi-Sensory Event Spurs Word-of-Mouth Recommendation of a Destination Brand

“…Research on consumers' purchase process and brand choice has highlighted the importance of WOM over other sources of communication [83]: namely because it is perceived as credible and custom-tailored by people with no apparent self-interest in pushing a product [84]. As a first-degree information about a brand, WOM exerts considerable influence over consumers' intention to buy [85], which is largely why many organizations want to leverage WOM recommendations as a marketing tool [80].…”

7th ERAZ Selected Papers (part of ERAZ conference collection)

“…Regarding eWOM in Twitter, the study by Hoffman and Fodor (2010) links eWOM to the number of retweets. In addition, studies linking different tweet contents and eWOM were encouraging (Adnan, et al 2019;Cork & Eddy, 2017;Soboleva, et al 2017). Specifically, the results of Adnan et al (2019) state that promoting intervention, or including vaccine price in the content of a tweet about World Pneumonia Day has more retweet count than when the tweet content is a personal experience.…”

“…Specifically, the results of Adnan et al (2019) state that promoting intervention, or including vaccine price in the content of a tweet about World Pneumonia Day has more retweet count than when the tweet content is a personal experience. According to the results of Cork and Eddy (2017), levels of high vividness or high interactivity in the content of the tweets from athletes generates a higher number of retweets. Furthermore, Sovoleva et al (2017) find that including a retweet request or a photo in a tweet from industry companies are predictors of the number of retweets, regardless of the industry.…”

Sport, media and actual consumption behavior: an examination of spectator motives and constraints for sport media consumption

“…The evolution of social media over the last ten years has altered the quickness and range of communication and interaction between individuals and organizations all over the world (Hayes et al , 2019). Nowadays, the utilization of social media goes above mere social communication (Ngai et al , 2015), and in the sport sector, marketers utilize social media to carry out a diversity of marketing communication practices such as sport person endorsements (Baker et al , 2013), promotions (Cork and Eddy, 2017), public relations (Felix et al , 2017) and news updates (Abeza et al , 2019). While social media is an important source to actualize such marketing communication tools, it seems to be an ideal element to expand sport media consumption.…”