UNDERSTANDING BLOGS AS A MARKETING TOOL: DOMAIN SPECIALIZATION, PRODUCT NEWNESS AND SPONSORSHIP

Abstract

Blogs are taking the business world by storm and represents unprecedented challenges and opportunities to businesses to shape and make optimal use of this new application. Yet currently, little research has been done in this area of blogs as a controlled marketing tool that propagates online word-of-mouth (WOM). This study examines the effect product reviews featured on blogs have on the attitudes of readers towards three targets – the product review, blogsite and blogger. It also studies the effects a sponsorship has on changes in these attitudes. A between subjects factorial experiment was conducted to examine the impact of domain specialization (specialized, moderately specialized or non-specialized) and product newness (new or existing) to determine the most ideal level of blog specialization and product type for an online environment. A sequential introduction of information was also used to study the effects of sponsorship (sponsored or non-sponsored) in changing the attitudes of respondents. All the hypotheses presented found some support in at least one of the three targets. Specialized domains were found to elicit more favorable attitudes than the other two less specialized domains. Supporting existing traditional WOM literature, new products also gathered more favorable attitudes than existing products. Finally, a sponsorship discovery and subsequent transgression always led to a decline in favorable attitudes. This decline is found to be greater in specialized domains and new products.