Expert Blogs and Consumer Perceptions of Competing Brands1
Authors: Luo, Xueming; Gu, Bin; Zhang, Jie; Phang, Chee Wei
Journal: MIS Quarterly (2017)
DOI: 10.25300/misq/2017/41.2.03
Social media-based expert blogs are a crucial and credible online information source for consumers, yet little is known about the role of expert blogs for general consumer brand perceptions that bestow long-term value for the firm. On the basis of a novel dataset with 7,871 brand-day observations of over 131,000 expert blogs on major brands in the PC industry, this study reveals how expert blogs may act as a quality signal leading general consumers’ perceptions of rival brands. Our analyses reveal three key insights: (1) Expert blog sentiments and volume on a focal brand have a positive relationship with consumer perceptions of the focal brand but a negative relationship with those of its competing brands. (2) The focal brand’s blogs have a reinforcing relationship with its subsequent blogs and a cannibalistic relationship with competitors’ subsequent blogs. (3) Brand position (leading versus non-leading in the market) plays a nontrivial role in these competitive, dynamic relationships. For example, a 1 percent unexpected increase in Acer’s expert blog sentiment would be associated with a 1.5 percent lift in its own brand quality as perceived by consumers, thus winning more consum…