Controllable Antecedents to Boosting Word-of-Mouth on Social Media: Empirical Evidence from Twitter

This paper examines the burst of word-of-mouth on social media(i.e., ewoM), focusing on the marketing stimuli that are controllable by marketers. Through analysis of textbased user-generated contents on Twitter, we found that nearly half of the ewoM peak occasions were stimulated by four major controllable marketing antecedents, and there were significant variations across sectors. The results suggest that social media is a viable marketing tool, but not for all business sectors, and that celebrity endorsement is a most powerful way to boost woM marketing on social media.