User-Generated-Content: Concept, Typology, and Marketing Outcomes
Chapter
Overview
Overview
Abstract
User-Generated-Content, also called User-Generated-Media, User-Created-Content, and Consumer-Generated-Content, refers to all types of content, like pictures, videos, or posts created by consumers and delivered through online platforms like Social Media. User-Generated-Content is gaining momentum as a marketing communications tool in the form of contests (e.g., create your own advertisement, branded storytelling or branded interactive applications). By allowing consumers to become prosumers and creating or co-creating brand messages, advertisers increase consumers´ exposure to and involvement with brand communications, which results in a greater level of brand engagement. This chapter analyzes the effects of prosumers’ actions on marketing communications using the Uses & Gratifications Theory approach. Two main types of advertising content created by prosumers -spontaneous content and marketing-oriented content– are identified. Five marketing communication outcomes of User-Generated-Content – credibility, message distortion, loss of control on the message valence, involvement with the message, and virality– are also examined. Main implications for practitioners are also discussed.
