Analysis of Bullet Chats in User-Generated Content Advertisement on Bilibili Website: The Success of Madoka Magica’s Mobile Game Promotion

This article explores the reasons behind the success of user-generated content (UGC) advertisements on Bilibili, which is one of China’s most significant video-sharing social media sites, with a core focus on East Asian pop culture. Additionally, Madoka Magica is a well-known Japanese animation about magical girls. There are two derivative games based on it. By using diffusion of innovation theory and content analysis method, this article takes UGC advertisements of Madoka Magica’s mobile games as windows to investigate how early adopters (influencers) motivate early majority adopters (their followers) to play the game. Moreover, this paper also addresses three types of bullet chats in this kind of video to further explore followers’ interaction with the influencers and reasons for the success of its marketing method. Bullet chats are a unique way to observe target consumers’ reaction to the advertisements. The author found that word-of-mouth marketing, the right audience and influential people are important factors for the success of UGC advertising. Besides, this marketing strategy is not limited to the marketing of mobile game advertisements, but can also be used for the marketing of other products. However, the prerequisite for this marketing method to be effective is that the advertised product or service has good quality

Spinning words as disguise: Shady services for ethical research?

Ethical researchers who want to quote public user-generated content without further exposing these sources have little guidance as to how to disguise quotes. Reagle (2021b) showed that researchers’ attempts to disguise phrases on Reddit are often haphazard and ineffective. Are there tools that can help? Automated word spinners, used to generate reams of ad-laden content, seem suited to the task. We select 10 quotations from fictional posts on r/AmItheButtface and “spin” them using Spin Rewriter and WordAi. We review the usability of the services and then (1) search for their spins on Google; and, (2) ask human subjects (N=19) to judge them for fidelity. Participants also disguise three of those phrases and these are assessed for efficacy and the tactics employed. We recommend that researchers disguise their prose by substituting novel words (i.e., swapping infrequently occurring words, such as “toxic” with “radioactive”) and rearranging elements of sentence structure. The practice of testing spins, however, remains essential even when using good tactics; a Python script is provided to facilitate such testing.

Hotel experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic: high-touch versus high-tech

Purpose This study aims to gain an understanding of hotel experiences during the pandemic by examining sentiments of guests posted online. Design/methodology/approach This paper incorporates the balance theory, in a dyadic system to analyze the ways in which guests were motivated to restore a position of balance during the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis. Qualitative content analysis was used to detect thematic patterns of hotel experiences based on examining online reviews shared by actual guests of two major hotel brands – one more closely associated with convenience-driven automation (high-tech) and the other known for providing more guest–employee interaction (high-touch). Findings The analysis of the reviews yielded six main themes: “purpose of visit,” “COVID safety concerns,” “technology adoption,” “COVID limitations,” “exceeded expectation” and “hospitality of staff.” Staff displaying a welcoming attitude was the main factor in creating a convivial experience for guests at both hotel brands, but the technology was not highlighted as much in guests’ reviews. Despite the pandemic, guests of both hotel brands had similar levels of enjoyment regarding their hotel experiences regardless of the high-touch or high-tech nature of the operations. Research limitations/implications User-generated content often reflects the opinions of those who are very satisfied or not satisfied at all. Different data collection techniques could be used to get a “big picture” view of the balance between high-touch and high-tech experiences. Practical implications The findings offer support to researchers and practitioners who advocate that high-touch and high-tech can indeed co-exist, and that these distinct service delivery modes do not have to be mutually exclusive. Originality/value This paper provides new trajectories that can broaden the approaches undertaken by hospitality/tourism scholars and practitioners based on user-generated content. This study is one of the first to adopt the lens of the balance theory, in a dyadic system, to investigate how guests may be psychologically motivated to balance their perceptions and expectations during a time of crisis.

Building Customer Engagement Through User-Generated Content: A Case Study on @Bt21Stuff.Id

As the popularity of K-Pop culture increases rapidly in Indonesia, many people started to see this as an opportunity to start a business. The business which started to get popular amongst K-Pop fans community nowadays is an online shopping entrusted goods service business which specialized in providing a service to help K-Pop fans in purchasing their favorite idol merchandises directly from South Korea. The competition for this online shopping entrusted goods service business keeps growing and increases every day, due to the popularity of K-Pop and the customers plays a crucial role in this business. Therefore, maintaining a customer engagement for this business is very necessary. The objective of this research is to reveal the contribution of user generated content created by the customers as a way to build customer engagement of @bt21stuff.id and also to reveal the motivations behind the creation of user generated content by the customers. This research is using a qualitative methodology and guided by using the concept of customer engagement cycle by Sashi (2012). The findings of this research shows that the user generated content plays a role in each stage of the customer engagement cycle and that the customers are mostly motivated by the empowerment motives in creating the user generated content.

Destination Image of DMO and UGC on Instagram: A Machine-Learning Approach

Social media plays a key role in shaping the image of a destination. Although recent research has investigated factors influencing online users’ perception towards destination image, limited studies encompass and compare social media content shared by tourists and destination management organisations (DMOs) at the same time. This paper aims to determine whether the projected image of DMOs corresponds with the destination image perceived by tourists. By taking the Austrian Alpine resort Saalbach-Hinterglemm as a case, a netnographic approach was applied to analyse the visual and textual posts of DMO and user-generated content (UGC) on Instagram using machine learning. The findings reveal themes that are not covered in the posts published by marketers but do appear in UGC. This study adds to the existing literature by providing a deeper insight into destination image formation and uses a qualitative approach to assess destination brand image. It further highlights practical implications for the industry regarding DMOs’ social media marketing strategy.