When brand-related UGC induces effectiveness on social media: the role of content sponsorship and content type

With the growing power of brand-related user-generated content (UGC) on social media, marketers have begun incorporating UGC into the marketing mix as part of word-of-mouth marketing. Drawing upon the Persuasion Knowledge Model, this study examines how content sponsorship interacts with content type to influence consumer responses toward brand-related UGC (inferences of manipulative intent, brand attitude, and intention to click on a URL). The results of an experiment with an online panel in the United States show that when the content is organic (i.e. unpaid), experience-centric content is more likely to induce favourable consumer responses than promotional content. When the content is sponsored (i.e. paid), however, promotional content yields more effective results than experience-centric content. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that consumer inferences of manipulative intent serve as a mediator for the interaction effects between content sponsorship and content types on consumer responses.