DEFINING USER-GENERATED CONTENT

This section opens with a literature review on the definition of UGC. Since the Internet has empowered ways for consumers to proactively express brand-related opinions and experiences online and in public, user-generated content (UGC) has been an important topic in previous scientific marketing studies (Schivinski and Dabrowski, 2014b). The growth of online social media platforms and online communities has turned UGC into an emergent phenomenon that changed the power of manager- generated content into user-generated content (Christodoulides, Jevons and Bonhomme, 2012). However, there are still uncertainties about how UGC should exactly be defined and what kind of content can be labelled as ‘UGC’.

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This section gains insight into the scientific definitions previous studies have given to UGC and how these definitions still leave gaps in literature, considering the complexity of this phenomenon.

2.2.1 UGC versus eWOM

Besides the terms “social media brand communication”, “user-generated branding” and “brand co-creation”, past studies mainly have used two different terms for social media communication: user-generated content (UGC) and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). In literature, both are conceptualised in a similar way, since both types are related to brands, have no commercial intention and aren’t controlled by companies (Berthon et al., 2008). However, the two concepts do have differences, depending on whether the content is generated or only conveyed by users (Schivinski and Dabrowski, 2014a). For example, posting a video on YouTube is UGC, but becomes eWOM when the YouTube link has been spread to others by e-mail. Since eWOM depends on the dissemination of content and mainly focuses on the influence of content, UGC is a less complex concept to use. Therefore, this study makes use of the concept ‘UGC’.

2.2.2 Defining UGC

Since UGC is a relatively new phenomenon in marketing and in particular brand management, there is no widely accepted scientific definition of UGC yet (Hass, Walsh and Kilian, 2008) and fewer still agree on how to measure the social, cultural and economic consequences of it (Wunsch-Vincent and Vickery, 2007). For this reason, different definitions of UGC have been formulated in past empirical literature.

The most generally cited definition of UGC has been drafted by Wunsch-Vincent and Vickery (2007) in a research study for OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and define UGC as “content made publicly available over the Internet, which reflects a certain amount of creative effort and is created outside of professional routines and practices”. Huberman, Romero and Wu (2009) refer in their definition to the term “crowdsourcing”, leading to a situation where million users create content in the form of blogs, news, videos and comments. Besides eWOM, UGC can

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in literature be unchangeably referred to as user-created content, user-led content creation and consumer-generated media (CGM). CGM describes “a variety of new sources of online information which are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers intent on educating each other about products, brands, services, personalities and issues” (Blackshaw and Nazzaro, 2006). One study gives a wider definition and describes UGC as “media content primarily distributed on the Internet” (Daugherty, Eastin and Bright, 2008). Hass, Walsh & Kilian (2008, p. 273) describe UGC as “content that is independently produced and consumed online by an indefinite public, without a direct profit orientation”. Also Hass et al. (2008) state in their study that UGC never has a direct profit orientation. Consumers who generate UGC can be described as “ordinary people, who represent the end users of products or services” (Cheong and Morrison, 2008).

2.2.3 Gaps in the research concerning UGC

It can be concluded that all analysed studies on the definition of brand-related UGC point out that UGC is accessible for the general public, is created by consumers rather than by marketing professionals and is primarily distributed on the Internet. However, UGC remains a difficult concept and some of these definitions do contain a few gaps. To start, not all definitions of UGC have determined whether or not UGC has been made publicly. It is unclear to what extent content is available to the public, because content could be partially accessible, for example to designated communities (Christodoulides et al., 2012). Additionally, several scientific definitions consider the Internet to be the only medium of spreading UGC. There are many media platforms that are emerging and converging, such as mobile applications, which make the reference to ‘the Internet’ too common. Another gap is that all studies mentioned above assume that UGC is always brand-related. UGC could also consist of simple, daily, personal practices, without any references to a brand. To avoid confusion, any reference in this study to UGC should be considered as brand-related.

Finally, it can be questioned whether UGC is always conducted outside of professional routines. UGC could still have a commercial purpose, in situations where fraudulous social identities are being created on social media, for instance by managers and

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company owners, who intentionally make the suggestion that (positive) content is created by a consumer (Arnhold, 2010). Brand managers could intentionally praise a product or service, while pretending to be a consumer. Since recognising, tracing and measuring the effect of this ‘fictive’ content is difficult to realise, this study assumes that UGC is always consumer-related and thus does not have any profit intention. Although the power caused by UGC seems to be shifted into the consumers’ hands, organisations can still have influence on brand-related published online content by consumers. In order to gain deeper understanding of the nature of UGC and the control of both the consumer and the brand, the next paragraph specifies the opportunities and threats for organisations when it comes to the relation between UGC and online branding.