Creating eWoM: perceived factors of celebrity chefs in the context of personal branding in the UK

Abstract

Electronic word of mouth (eWoM hereafter) represents a low-cost and powerful tool for companies to attract new customers. Despite the challenge in creating positive eWoM, celebrity chefs, as representative of personal branding, generate a significant amount of eWoM within their social media brand communities. Two recognised spectra of consumers’ brand-associated communications—eWoM and celebrity chefs in the perspective of personal branding—are the interest of this academic research. Up to now, these streams of literature have seen little intersection, as they typically take their distinct individual research directions. Regardless of frequent occurrence within the celebrity chef’s social media page (Relling et al., 2016) little is identified regarding eWoM triggered by the perceived factors of celebrity chefs. Nevertheless, as there is a non-existing connection in literature and a consequent lack of academic research linking celebrity chefs (in the perspective of personal branding) and eWoM, there is also inadequate understanding of what are the eWoM motivations triggered by celebrity chefs’ perceived factors. Moreover, as per the knowledge of the researcher, this is the first research which investigates why eWoM motivation does not lead to creating actual eWoM, or the intervening factors. This study follows a multi method qualitative approach and is in two segments. The first segment of the research conducts a Netnography study involving non-participant observation within the celebrity chefs’ social media brand communities. The second segment of the research has adopted a semi-structured interview method to explore the eWoM motivations for the generation of eWoM. Moreover, the interviews also explore the factors that intervene in the transformation of eWoM motivation to eWoM messages. The findings of this research highlight key perceived factors of celebrity chefs which trigger eWoM motivation. Moreover, the interview phase reveals eWoM motivations triggered by these factors. Some of the eWoM motivations identified will be a new contribution to the literature. Furthermore, the factors are explored in relation to why eWoM motivations do not create actual eWoM. As per the knowledge of the researcher, this is the first time intervening factors which do not lead eWoM motivation to create eWoM messages have been considered and researched in the context of celebrity chefs’ social media brand communities. At present, social media is an effective tool to attract customers by generating eWoM messages. This research has the potential to address celebrity chefs, or those who are interested in personal branding, social media regulators, social media strategists who can gain a profound understanding of which factors influence the social media participants in terms of creating positive and negative eWoM messages, and why the paticipants do so. Keywords: eWoM, celebrity chefs, social media marketing, personal branding, social media brand communities.