Does platform type matter? A semantic analysis of user attitude formation on online platforms

Abstract

An online platform is a setting where users may express their attitude in text or visual content. The doctrine thinking in consumer psychology is that greater perceived product value (e.g., more product features or lower price) gives more positive consumer attitude. Because of different types of platforms, however, online users might form their product/brand attitudes in different ways. We gathered 7,264 lines of online reviews about two famous brands on two types of social media platforms: online text-based forums and live-streaming platforms. The data were collected through a web crawler, and semantic analysis was employed to process the data before hypothesis testing. The findings of this study indicate that users’ perception of product features, price levels and brand culture significantly influence user attitude. The more product characteristics communicated on online platforms, the more difficult to formulate a positive user attitude, and users tend to have more positive attitude with higher perceived price. Compared with traditional text-based platforms, contents in live-streaming platforms (e.g., Tik Tok) with less product features, wider culture distance and lower perceived price are favored among users.