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Consumer tweets about brands: A content analysis of sentiment tweets about goods and services

JCCSocial media allow consumers to easily share positive or negative information about a brand with other consumers, for instance through Twitter. Such Twitter use is a source of information that may affect the brand reputation. Therefore, it is important to gain more understanding of how Twitter is employed to evaluate brands and to communicate these evaluations with others. Previous research on Twitter use has shown that tweets about brands are more likely to be positive than negative. The present study integrates an agenda-setting perspective with studies on word-of-mouth and services marketing, which have suggested that this finding may be different for services than for goods. A quantitative content analysis of 1920 Dutch tweets for 24 different brands was performed. The analysis showed that services receive significantly more negative sentiment tweets than products. Implications of these results for monitoring consumers are discussed.

  • Hornikx, J. & Hendriks, B. (2015). Consumer tweets about brands: A content analysis of sentiment tweets about goods and services. Journal of Creative Communications, 10 (2), 176-185. [link]
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Webcare op Twitter door Nederlandse bedrijven

tekstblad2015Via webcare op Twitter of Facebook reageren organisaties op opmerkingen en klachten van consumenten. Het aantal berichten van consumenten is erg talrijk en de reacties zijn noodgedwongen kort. Hoe richten organisaties hun webcare in? En op welke manier kan er met een menselijke stem worden gecommuniceerd? We zochten het uit bij vijf Nederlandse bedrijven.

  • Hornikx, J., Akpinar, M., Bun, M. van, Dunnewind, M., Haukes, R., & Pham, D. (2015). Menselijk communiceren in 140 tekens: Webcare op Twitter door Nederlandse bedrijven. Tekstblad, 21 (4), 28-31. [pdf].
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The curiosity-evoking capacity of foreign languages in advertising

dujal_pbIn commercial messages, such as advertisements, foreign languages are sometimes displayed. Regardless of whether readers understand the foreign language utterance, researchers have claimed that such foreign language display evokes curiosity to read the ad, and improves ad and product evaluation. Whereas empirical research has established the impact of foreign language display on evaluation, no studies have been conducted on its curiosity-evoking capacity. In this research note, the importance of this capacity is highlighted, and a first study is presented that tested this capacity. The results did not find support for the curiosity-evoking capacity of foreign language display.

  • Hornikx, J., & Mulder, E. (2015). The curiosity-evoking capacity of foreign languages in advertising. Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4 (1), 59-66. [link]
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Non-nativeness in communication: Use and effects of foreign languages in advertising

dujal_pbOne of the linguistic consequences of globalization is the increase in the number of people communicating with each other in a language that is not their own. Studies have started to examine how non-nativeness affects people in their production and evaluation of discourse. This special interest section brings together a collection of empirical papers in a particular domain of non-nativeness in communication, that is, the use and effects of foreign languages in job and product advertisements. These papers investigate how the use of foreign languages is appreciated by non-native users, what determines the occurrence of foreign languages, how recall of foreign languages compares to the recall of L1 advertising, and whether foreign languages attract the readers’ curiosity. Together, these papers demonstrate the growing academic interest in non-nativeness in communication.

  • Hornikx, J. (2015). Non-nativeness in communication: Use and effects of foreign languages in advertising. Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4 (1), 1-5. [link]
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Foreign language display in advertising from a psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspective

9781466682627When targeting consumers on a global scale, companies make strategic use of languages in their advertising campaigns. This chapter presents an overview of theories and research regarding the effectiveness of the use of foreign languages (foreign language display, FLD) in advertising. The aim is to bring together theories and empirical studies from various domains, and to show principled explanations for the effectiveness of FLD from two perspectives. The first, psycholinguistic perspective examines the way in which foreign languages in advertising are mentally processed; the second, sociolinguistic perspective links the foreign language use to characteristics of the country where the foreign language is typically spoken. This chapter presents empirical evidence for the benefits and drawbacks of FLD, and identifies areas for further research.

  • Hornikx, J., & Meurs, F. van (2015). Foreign language display in advertising from a psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspective: A review and research agenda. In J. M. Alcántara-Pilar, S. del Barrio-García, E. Crespo-Almedros, & L. Porcu (Eds.), Analyzing the cultural diversity of consumers in the global marketplace (pp. 299-319). Hershey: IGI Global. [link]