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Reputational assets and social media marketing activeness: empirical insights from China

Johansson, Anders C., Zhu, Zhen (2023) Reputational assets and social media marketing activeness: empirical insights from China. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, . Article Number 101305. ISSN 1567-4223. E-ISSN 1873-7846. (doi:10.1016/j.elerap.2023.101305) (KAR id:102633)

Abstract

We explore the linkages between social media marketing activeness and reputational assets on digital platforms with a unique sample of over 8,000 customer-to-customer (C2C) sellers registered on both Taobao, China’s largest C2C online shopping platform, and Sina Weibo, China’s largest microblogging platform. A unique collaborative effort between the two platforms enables us to examine whether C2C sellers are motivated to engage in marketing activities on a separate social media platform. Applying machine learning methods, we first classify whether C2C sellers conduct social media marketing on their microblogs or not, which allows the measurement of social media marketing activeness. We then use logistic regression models and find that earned reputational assets such as the rating scores and the number of followers are significantly associated with social media marketing activeness on both platforms. However, we identify a conflict of owned reputational assets such as the shop age and the paid membership between the two platforms, which provides a potential explanation for the limited success of the cross-platform collaboration.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1016/j.elerap.2023.101305
Uncontrolled keywords: social media marketing; reputational assets; electronic commerce; China
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Kent Business School - Division > Department of Analytics, Operations and Systems
Funders: University of Kent (https://ror.org/00xkeyj56)
Depositing User: Zhen Zhu
Date Deposited: 31 Aug 2023 13:58 UTC
Last Modified: 21 May 2024 13:00 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/102633 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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