A Woke Approach to User-generated Content: How Product Involvement and Gender Influence What We Post

Abstract

Although gender is often utilized as a dummy control variable in user-generated content research, studies are often conducted in online communities of products that are disproportionately used by male users. In a similar fashion, existing studies also concentrate on communities of high-involvement products, even though online communities of low involvement products are emerging. In continuation of Soylemez’s work (2021a), this study utilized ELM and the equity theory and investigated how two personal factors (gender and product involvement) influence the relative generation of brand-oriented and community-oriented content. The study found that members of high-involvement product communities generate more brand-oriented content than community-oriented content, whereas members of low-involvement product communities generate more community-oriented content than brand-oriented content. A significant gender-product involvement interaction exists. Managerial and theoretical implications are also discussed.