E-WOM as an Asset of Branded Content Strategies: A Conceptual Approach to the Role of Consumers in Building Brand Equity

Introduction

Within the new communication paradigm, brands need to explore new channels to engage with their relevant audiences in a participative and creative way. In this context, social networks and virtual communities that have emerged around brands have created significant opportunities, but also produced new rules and placed higher demands on advertisers. The characteristics of those platforms have made creativity an essential ingredient for brands to achieve the much-needed engagement with their customers (Lee & Hong, 2016). Furthermore, the interactive nature of those virtual spaces encourages customers to co-create the universe of significance for a brand that continues to generate significance and value for its logo (Llorente-Barroso, Kolotouchkina et al., 2021).

Beyond content strategies developed by brands on social networks, digital communities created by the brands or by their customers, and focused on their products and/or services, can foster a high degree of commitment and passion from users (Ind et al., 2020). To that end, brand managers need to manage corporate reputation within those online brand spaces (Hanson et al., 2019), designing and implementing strategies aimed at enhancing commitment of users and the value of the brand, considering the peculiarities of each specific platform and the profile of its users (Weiger et al., 2017). Online communities linked to brands generate social and emotional value for consumers with a mediating role for their increased commitment to the community (Hanson et al., 2019; Kaur et al., 2018).

Among the elements of the branded content used on social networks and within virtual communities, the audience plays a very important role. Multiple users of the Internet volunteer to create branded content, both effective and creative (Black & Veloutsou, 2017). That content, developed and shared by users within online communities, contributes to the generation of significance that becomes attached to the brand and its further development (Conejo & Wooliscroft, 2015; Llorente-Barroso, Kolotouchkina et al., 2021).

E-WOM (electronic Word of Mouth) refers to the content about the product and/or service provided by brands, which is shared by users on account of their brand experience. Those contributions from consumers, generated about brands, can be positive or negative, however in both cases they are far more effective than traditional advertising formats (Chu & Kim, 2018). The highest degree of efficacy of the content shared through e-WOM results from the altruistic engagement of consumers after their experience with the brand (Reimer & Benkenstein, 2018).

In general, within the digital realm consumers have more trust in the opinion of other consumers about products and/or services from the brand than the communication from the brand itself (De-Veirman & Hudders, 2020). The potential impact of e-WOM on the decision-making process of consumers (De-Veirman & Hudders, 2020) has led brands to consider the online involvement of consumers in their digital strategies to foster positive e-WOM (Kumi & Sabherwal, 2019; Stanton et al., 2019) andto mitigate negative e-WOM (Park & Lee, 2009).

Consequently, the new possibilities that digital environments offer consumers have reconfigured traditional models of opinion leadership. Social media give users the opportunity to become opinion leaders with the capacity to influence very specific audiences, disseminating and motivating the consumption of goods and/or services through a positive e-WOM (Tobon & García-Madariaga, 2021; Zhou et al., 2019). This new type of prescribers develop their leadership by embodying a variety of roles ranging from experts to micro-influencers and enthusiasts (Lin et al., 2018).