Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser

The impact of social media campaigns on the success of new product

introductions
⁎
Daniela Bauma, Martin Spanna, , Johann Füllerb, Carina Thürridlc
a
Institute of Electronic Commerce and Digital Markets, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, D-80539 Munich, Germany
b
University of Innsbruck, Universitätsstraße 15, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria
c
Vienna University of Economics and Business, Welthandelsplatz 1, A-1020 Wien, Austria

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Social media platforms can be a promising tool for retailers’ marketing campaigns. Especially for the purpose of
Social Media new product introductions, social media may facilitate social interaction and online word-of-mouth and
Tryvertising therefore, may broaden the reach and accelerate the diffusion of information about the new product. The impact
New Products of online word-of-mouth communication and social interaction on consumer behavior has been extensively
Online community
analyzed in previous research. However, little knowledge exists so far on the influence of social media campaigns
on new product introductions. Therefore, the goal of this study is to analyze the impact of a social media
campaign on the success of a new product introduction by using survey as well as behavioral data. The data
stems from an online community related to a social media tryvertising campaign implemented to promote the
introduction of new high-end binoculars. The results of a mediation analysis show that campaign-related factors
positively influence consumers’ attitude toward the new product, which in turn mediates the positive influence
on purchase intention and recommendation behavior. Furthermore, a post-hoc analysis shows the importance of
community members’ activity on the success of the new product introduction.

1. Introduction One special form of such social media campaigns that try to foster the
impact of positive word-of-mouth are tryvertising campaigns. Try-
Social media exhibits a broad penetration with over 71% of Internet vertising campaigns are an experience-based advertising approach
users all around the world staying connected with the help of social where some product testers are motivated and incentivized to share
networking websites (eMarketer, 2017a). Moreover, 60% of the their positive product experiences online (Oberhofer et al., 2014). In
worldwide social network users can be reached just via Facebook this case, firms have recognized that first-hand experiences from con-
(eMarketer, 2017b). Therefore, it is not surprising that manufacturers sumers that already tried the (new) product have been shown to have a
and retailers are increasingly using some form of social media mar- higher impact on potential consumers than information stemming from
keting to promote their services or products (Baum et al., 2013; Davis the firm (Willemsen et al., 2011). Taken together, these advantages are
et al., 2014; Kacker and Perrigot, 2016; Yadav et al., 2013; Yahia et al., beneficial for a successful new product launch and extensive previous
2018). According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social media refers to research already investigated the impact of online word-of-mouth on
online applications which enable Internet users to create and exchange product success (Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006; Marchand et al., 2017;
content. Especially in the case of the market launch of new products, Zhu and Zhang, 2010). Therefore, the focus of this paper is to analyze
the implementation of social media campaigns may be beneficial for the impact of a social media tryvertising campaign which is one special
firms due to several advantages that these campaigns provide: first, form of social media campaigns, on the success of a new product in-
more people can be reached in a shorter period of time (Cruz and Fill, troduction.
2008). Thus, many consumers may be reached due to social media's In particular, this paper addresses the following research questions:
broad penetration and thus receive information about the firm's (new) i) what is the impact of a social media tryvertising campaign on con-
product (Hu et al., 2018). Second, the spread of positive word-of-mouth sumers’ attitude toward a new product?, ii) what is the impact of a
via social networks may influence potential customers’ decision making social media tryvertising campaign on consumers’ purchase intention?,
and possibly increase their purchase intentions (Jansen et al., 2009). iii) what is the impact of a social media tryvertising campaign on

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Baum), [email protected] (M. Spann), [email protected] (J. Füller), [email protected] (C. Thürridl).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2018.07.003

0969-6989/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Baum, D., Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2018.07.003
D. Baum et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

consumers’ recommendation behavior? and iv) what is the influence of research on social interaction and information exchange. As already
actual testing the product on consumers’ attitude, purchase intention mentioned, the members of online communities are able to interact
and recommendation behavior? with each other. Building upon this characteristic, online communities
To answer these questions, the authors analyze survey and beha- can be compared to social communities (Kim et al., 2004) which do not
vioral data of a social media tryvertising campaign and its related on- replace offline interaction but provide an important supplement to it
line community on Facebook, which was implemented to support the (Kozinets, 1999). According to Hagel and Armstrong (1997), members
market launch of a new durable product (i.e., high-end binoculars). of online communities are connected to others sharing the same inter-
The remainder of the article is organized as follows: The following ests (i.e., here the product that is new to the market). Thus, the de-
section reviews literature related to new product introductions, online velopment of an online community based on the similarity of the
communities, social interaction and information exchange as well as members’ interests can be associated with the construct of homophily
involvement. Then, our hypotheses are developed. In the next section, which is an explaining factor for group formation according to the si-
the social media tryvertising campaign as well as the data set are de- milarity of individuals’ characteristics (Brown et al., 2007). Homophily
scribed and we provide the results of the hypotheses testing. The article and therefore similarity between the community members might lead
concludes with a discussion of the findings, implications and limita- to more trust and understanding (Ruef et al., 2003) within the com-
tions. munity which may also be of importance for the exchange of in-
formation. According to Hagel and Armstrong (1997), social interaction
2. Related literature and hence building relationships with other community members al-
lows the exchange of information and knowledge within the community
New products are important for the success of a firm but their in- which, in turn, is important for its success (Hinz and Spann, 2008). This
troduction is risky since a lot of new products fail on the market information exchange in an online community that developed within
(Hultink and Robben, 1995). To become successful on the market, a fast the scope of a social media tryvertizing campaign to support the market
diffusion is necessary. Therefore, it is essential that potential consumers launch of a new product is crucial since firms are interested in a fast
become aware of the new product. Subsequently, early adopters of new dissemination of new product information (Cruz and Fill, 2008). In
products may then speak favorably about their experiences and re- addition, information from other Internet users, especially from the
commend the product to others (Füller et al., 2013). This is one of the product testers, is generally regarded as highly credible and more
reasons for why an increasing number of manufacturers and retailers trustworthy than marketer-generated information (Dellarocas, 2003;
use social media for their marketing purposes. By implementing social Park et al., 2007).
media campaigns, firms often use existing social networking websites The second stream of research that this study builds upon is in-
(e.g., Facebook) to quickly spread the new product information and to volvement. First, Shang et al. (2006) as well as Dwyer (2007) point out
benefit from the large number of potential customers they are able to that product involvement is one of the main reasons for Internet users
reach this way. A special form of social media campaigns are try- to participate in an online community. An Internet user's involvement
vertising campaigns (Oberhofer et al., 2014). Previously, firms have with (in this case) the new product leads to the search for information
already built on firm-created word-of-mouth communication. Here, (Shang et al., 2006), because a lot of previous research associates
they initiate the spread of word-of-mouth information by giving sam- consumers’ product involvement with their information search beha-
ples of the new product to selected customers while these consumers in vior (Beatty and Smith, 1987; Bloch et al., 1986; Celsi and Olson, 1988).
turn are responsible for the diffusion of the word-of-mouth information Therefore, an Internet user's involvement leads to his or her participa-
(Godes and Mayzlin, 2009). By using tryvertizing campaigns, firms do tion in the online community that is centered upon the product that is
not only provide information about the new product themselves via new to the market. Second, not only potential consumers’ involvement
social networking websites but select certain consumers that are given with the new product is of interest but also their involvement with the
the new product and are to tell others about their experiences. In times social media campaign itself. According to Mangold and Faulds (2009),
of increasing use of social media marketing, these campaigns combine social media can be regarded as a component of a firm's marketing
the approach of product sampling with the strengths of social networks. communication. Firms increasingly use social media campaigns as part
By building upon an already existing online social network, notifica- of their marketing mix to spread the word about a new product and to
tions and users’ status updates are automatically sent to one's direct achieve a fast dissemination of information (Baum et al., 2013; Cruz
friends due to user activity. These automated notifications and status and Fill, 2008). Previous research showed that individuals’ advertising
updates might possibly lead to increased product awareness and involvement does influence or moderate the formation of brand attitude
eventually product adoption among one's direct friends on the social (Laczniak and Muehling, 1993), thus a community member's involve-
networking platform (Aral and Walker, 2011). In addition, the major ment with the social media campaign should also be influencing his or
part of the information published online consists of opinions and first- her attitude toward the brand (or in this case, toward the product).
hand experiences of consumers that already have tried the new product Furthermore, involvement is an important factor concerning the moti-
(so called ‘product testers’). Thus, the information about the new pro- vation for word-of-mouth communication and recommendation beha-
duct is likely to be more credible and trustworthy than information vior (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). Therefore, the community member's
published directly by the firm (Dellarocas, 2003; Park et al., 2007; involvement with both, the product and the campaign, is important for
Shareef et al., In press). By implementing a social media tryvertizing social media campaigns in general and tryvertizing campaigns in par-
campaign using an already existing social networking website, an on- ticular, a fast dissemination of the new product information and finally
line community within this social network emerges (Hennig-Thurau for the success of the new product introduction.
et al., 2010). Online communities are defined as a group of Internet The success of new product introductions cannot be assessed easily
users (i.e., the community members) that interact with each other, since there is a multitude of dimensions and measures that can be in-
share a common interest and exchange knowledge on that (Koh and cluded in its evaluation (Griffin and Page, 1993) and there is little
Kim, 2004; Kozinets, 1999). consensus regarding its operationalization (Hart, 1993). In congruence
To investigate the impact of social media tryvertizing campaigns with the goals of using social media for a firm's marketing purposes, a
involving the development of an online community, this paper builds successful new product introduction is related to consumers’ attitude
upon two streams of research related to social media and online com- toward the new product, their purchase intention and their positive
munities: 1) social interaction and information exchange and 2) in- word-of-mouth communication (Cruz and Fill, 2008; Griffin and Page,
volvement. 1993; Lee et al., 2008; Park et al., 2007) which will eventually also
The first stream of research that is important for this article is impact the financial performance of the new product. Therefore, within

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the scope of this article, the focus is put on these three aspects. generation of word-of-mouth (Marks and Kamins, 1988). For the pro-
duct testers of our tryvertizing campaign, positive experiences and sa-
3. Hypotheses tisfaction with the new product might be a reason for online word-of-
mouth communication (Dellarocas and Narayan, 2006). Therefore, we
Since the analyzed social media tryvertizing campaign is accom- assume that being able to try the new product should positively influ-
panied by the creation of an online community, being part of this ence the intention to recommend the new product. Furthermore, the
community should have an impact on community members. Brown product testers in our study were additionally incentivized to speak
et al. (2007) link the impact on community members’ behavior to the about the product by giving the most active community members the
construct of homophily and to the strong tie connections between the chance to win the product. This leads to our following hypothesis:
members of the community. In congruence with this argumentation,
H4a. Being able to test the product has a positive influence on the
feeling part of the community should also influence the community
intention to recommend the new product.
members. A community member's sense of community refers to his or
her feeling of being a part of the community and belonging together, to McGuinness et al. (1995) investigated the impact of product sam-
his or her contact and interaction with other community members as pling and various other sales promotion techniques on consumers’
well as to the importance the community has to him or her and vice purchase behavior. While some forms of sales promotions have been
versa (Kim et al., 2004; McMillan, 1996; Peterson et al., 2008). In ad- shown to be more effective than others, all of them influence consumer
dition, Bergkvist and Bech-Larsen (2010) were able to show a positive purchases (McGuinness et al., 1995). Building on this research study,
influence of consumers’ sense of community on brand love. In addition, we assume that being able to try the new product should not only po-
this paper's focus is the investigation of a social media campaign that sitively influence the product attitude and the intention to recommend
was implemented to support the market launch of a new product. the new product but also the intention to purchase:
Hence, product-related measures are of importance, not brand-related
H4b. Being able to test the product has a positive influence on the
ones. Therefore, being part of the online community is predicted to
intention to purchase the new product.
have a positive influence on the community members’ attitude toward
the product: In general, firms implement social media campaigns to quickly
reach a multitude of people (Cruz and Fill, 2008), especially in the case
H1. Sense of community has a positive influence on the attitude toward
of new product introductions. To achieve this, it is important that In-
the new product.
ternet users spread the word about the new product which could be
One of the main reasons for participating in an online community is done in terms of comments, pictures or videos (Hautz et al., 2014). In
involvement (Dwyer, 2007; Shang et al., 2006). As mentioned before, addition, there are various reasons for Internet users to share in-
involvement is also one of the main reasons for engaging in word-of- formation with others (for an overview see Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004).
mouth behavior (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). Building upon this lit- Related to a social media campaign for a new product introduction, the
erature, a community member's interest in the new product is assumed motivation of the community members to engage in word-of-mouth
to positively influence his or her activity in the community. The more a communication might be stimulated by the interest in and involvement
community member participates, the more he or she interacts with with the new product or the campaign in general (Mangold and Faulds,
other community members and the more connected he or she is within 2009). Since community members’ main reason for being part of the
the community. Thus, a positive relation is assumed between sense of community is the interest in and the enthusiasm about the new product
community and recommending the new product. This leads to the (Kozinets, 1999), only sharing positive opinions is of importance since
second hypothesis: otherwise, community members would simply not participate in the
online community. This leads to the following hypothesis:
H2a. Sense of community has a positive influence on the intention to
recommend the new product. H5a. The attitude toward the new product has a positive influence on
the intention to recommend the new product.
Sense of community has been shown to have a positive influence on
customers’ loyalty to the company and to a company's homepage (Kim Building upon research on the relation between attitude and beha-
et al., 2004). According to Liang et al. (2011), customer loyalty is often vior (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1977), a positive evaluation of the new pro-
measured by indicators like customers’ visits or customers’ purchases. duct should positively influence a community member's intention to
Furthermore, according to Kim et al. (2004), sense of community can be purchase. Thus, it is assumed:
associated with a community member's purchase behavior on a com-
H5b. The attitude toward the new product has a positive influence on
pany's homepage. In congruence with these findings of previous re-
the intention to purchase the new product.
search, we therefore relate sense of community to community members’
purchase intention and assume that: Fig. 1 summarizes the conceptual model containing the five hy-
potheses that are going to be tested in our empirical study. We predict
H2b. Sense of community has a positive influence on the intention to
that our independent variables (i.e., sense of community and a dummy
purchase the new product.
variable indicating if the community member is a product tester) po-
For years, product sampling has been an effective way to support sitively influence the attitude toward the new product, which in turn
the market introduction of new products (Marks and Kamins, 1988). mediates the positive influence on intention to recommend and inten-
Previous research was able to show that consumers’ direct experiences tion to purchase.
with new products (i.e., product trial) may positively influence their We add two covariates: First, we control for the attention commu-
attitude formation (for an overview see Kempf, 1999). Since we are nity members pay to the campaign in order to capture the amount of
investigating a social media tryvertizing campaign where several self-perceived cognitions about the campaign (Folse et al., 2010).
community members have been given the chance to try the product, we Second, we control for the credibility members assign to the informa-
assume that being able to try the product that is new to the market is tion provided in the online community since the credibility of social
predicted to have a positive influence on product attitude: media information increases its influence on consumer decision making
(Jiménez and Mendoza, 2013).
H3. Being able to test the product has a positive influence on the
attitude toward the new product.
In addition, researchers have also aligned product sampling to the

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Attention asked to report their attention to the campaign on a 7-point scale with
Campaign four items adapted from the scale used by Laczniak and Muehling
(1993). Their attitude toward the product was assessed on a 7-point
H2a/b
scale with four items adapted from the scales of McAlexander et al.
(2002) and of Ziamou and Ratneshwar (2003). Their sense of com-
Sense of
Community munity was measured using a 7-point scale with three items adapted
H1 a) Intention to from the scale of Peterson et al. (2008) as well the credibility of the
Attitude H5a/b Recommend
information that was provided within the community by using a 7-point
Product b) Intention to scale with five items adapted from the scale of Andrews et al. (2000). In
H3 Purchase addition, the community members were asked to report their intention
Product
Tester to recommend the new product on a 7-point scale with six items
adapted from the scales of Arnett et al. (2003) and of Harrison-Walker
H4a/b (2001). This scale comprised items that measured the intention to re-
Information commend the product in general as well as items that measured re-
Credibility commendation behavior within and outside the online community.
Their purchase intention was operationalized by a single item, asking
Fig. 1. Conceptual model. community members how likely they were to buy the new product in
the future with scale anchors ranging from highly unlikely (1) to highly
4. Description of the social media tryvertising campaign likely (7). Besides, they had to report user characteristics like their early
adoption behavior using a 7-point scale with four items adapted from
The empirical study tests the hypotheses developed in the previous the scales of Steenkamp and Gielens (2003) and Goldsmith and
section based on an international social media campaign and its asso- Hofacker (1991) as well as their demographic data (see Appendix for
ciated online community implemented to support the market launch of details).
a new durable product (i.e., high-end binoculars) that was targeted at a In addition to the survey data, the study collected behavioral data of
completely new set of customers (i.e., different from the company's the members of the online community. Of relevance is who published
existing customers). To quickly reach this new target group and to content on the Facebook application (i.e., photos or comments pub-
generate awareness and involvement with the new product, the firm lished by the community members in general as well as product reviews
implemented a social media campaign using an application on published by the product testers) and who liked the published content.
Facebook. With this information, it is possible to differentiate between active
The campaign started before the product was launched and was community members and inactive ones. Furthermore, where the
about creating an online community, enlarging this community and privacy settings of the community members permitted observing the
about generating awareness of and interest in the new product. To number of their direct friends on Facebook, this information was col-
become a member of the online community, users had to like the ap- lected as well.
plication that was set up for the new product on Facebook. To further
keep community members active on the platform, they had to manage 6. Results
different gamification tasks and were able to post photos while every
task was somehow related to the new product on the market. Then both The Facebook application generated 6221 members (i.e., the online
a jury as well as the community selected certain community members to community) until the time of the survey. Within the community, 128
become product testers. These community members were given the new photos were published which received 97 comments and 1956 likes
product, were able to try it and should share their experiences with the from community members. In addition, 235 product reviews were
community in the form of writing product reviews and posting photos. published by 16 product testers. These product reviews generated 318
To incentivize the community members to publish their experiences likes from other community members.
online and to actively participate in the community, the community In total, 185 community members participated in the survey. In the
members were able to collect points for their participation on the following, for those community members of whom the Facebook-ID was
platform. The most active community members that collected the most known, on the basis of this ID, the survey data is matched with the
points were able to win the new product. This way, user-generated behavioral data leading to a sub-sample of 171 community members
information was published online and thus kept users talking about the (see Table 1 for details).
new product. Since the opinions and experiences were published on the
Facebook application, the content could be shared with other friends on
6.1. Reliability analysis
Facebook, even with non-members of the community. In addition,
Facebook sends automated notifications to one's direct friends in-
We checked the reliability of our measures (i.e., attention to the
forming them about one's actions on the Facebook platform. Thus,
campaign, sense of community, information credibility, attitude toward
product awareness and further interest in the product and the campaign
the product and intention to recommend). Table 2 depicts the results of
could be generated even outside the online community and possibly
lead to new members joining the community.
Table 1
As the campaign progressed, the community members were invited
Survey data - Descriptives.
to take part in a survey to get additional information on their attitudes
and behavior. Every member of the online community was sent a Construct N Min Max Mean SD

message via Facebook that included the link to the online survey whose Attention Campaign 171 1.75 5 4.65 1.33
data is used to test the hypotheses that were developed in the previous Sense of Community 170 1 7 4.05 1.65
section. Information Credibility 171 1 7 5.89 1.01
Attitude 170 1 7 5.28 1.33
Product
Intention to recommend 171 1 7 4.56 1.71
5. Measures
Purchase Intention 155 1 7 4.16 1.79
Early Adoption Behavior 171 1 7 4.05 1.25
Those community members that took part in the online survey were

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Table 2 Table 3
Results of the reliability analysis. Mediation analysis for intention to recommend (model a) and intention to
purchase (model b).
Construct Number Standardized Cronbach's AVEb CRb
of itemsb factor loadingsb alphab Variables Parameter

Attention 4 0.854 0.851 0.599 0.854 DV: Attitude Product

Campaign 0.915 Constant 2.8778 (0.5669)***
0.635 Sense of Community 0.1585 (0.0646)**
0.653 Product Tester 0.6083 (0.3483)*
Sense of 3 0.930 0.898 0.767 0.907 Attention Campaign 0.1940 (0.0876)**
Community 0.963 Information Credibility 0.1391 (0.1051)
0.713 No. of observations 169
Information 4a 0.940 0.942 0.816 0.946 R-Squared 0.1915
Credibility 0.916 F-value (p-value) 9.7115 (< 0.001)
0.993 a) DV: Intention to b) DV: Intention to
0.745 Recommend Purchase
Attitude Product 4 0.942 0.947 0.819 0.948 Constant 0.8902 (0.7300) − 1.3933 (0.7012)**
0.941 Attitude Product 0.4318 (0.0935)*** 0.9760 (0.0898)***
0.822 Sense of Community 0.1925 (0.0787)** 0.0713 (0.0756)
0.910 Product Tester 0.0712 (0.4208) − 0.5167 (0.4042)
Intention to 6 0.932 0.953 0.783 0.955 Attention Campaign 0.2518 (0.1064)** − 0.0800 (0.1022)
Recommen- 0.948 Information Credibility − 0.0864 (0.1265) 0.1391 (0.1215)
d 0.906 No. of observations 169 169
0.863 R-Squared 0.2940 0.4815
0.956 F-value (p-value) 13.5757 (< 0.001) 30.2794 (< 0.001)
0.670
Notes: Standard errors in parentheses.
a
One item of the original scale was dropped due to its low factor loading * p < 0.1.
(< 0.3). ** p < 0.05.
b
Parameters after scale revision. *** p < 0.01.

our reliability test. Due to a factor loading less than a minimum ac- The results of the mediation analysis support this relationship (0.1585,
ceptable loading of 0.50 (Chin, 1998), one item of the construct ‘in- p = 0.0151). Thus, a higher sense of community does result in a more
formation credibility’ had to be deleted from the final model. Table 2 positive attitude toward the new product on the market. The results
further indicates that the Cronbach's alpha of all constructs is well show that the more a community member feels part of the online
above the minimally acceptable reliability level of 0.70 (Nunnally, community, the more he or she is connected to others in this commu-
1978), thus the constructs used in the model are reliable. The composite nity and the more the community is of importance to him or her (and
reliability is additionally reported. As Table 2 shows, the composite vice versa), the more positive is his or her attitude toward the new
reliability of all constructs is well above a recommended level of 0.70 product. Hypothesis H2a predicted that the higher a community
(Nunnally, 1978). In addition, the average variance extracted of all member's sense of community, the higher the intention to recommend
constructs is above 0.50 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). These results the new product. The more a member feels part of the online commu-
imply that the measurement scales are reliable (see Appendix for de- nity, the more likely it is that he or she will recommend the new pro-
tails). duct to others. The path coefficient is positive (0.1925) and significant
at the 5% level (p = 0.0155), thus hypothesis H2a is supported. Hy-
pothesis H3 suggested that being a product tester positively influences
6.2. Test of hypotheses the attitude toward the product that is new to the market. However, this
relationship is not significant (0.6083, p = 0.0826). Therefore, we do
Our hypotheses H1 to H5 represent two mediation models: in model not find support for a positive effect of being able to try and experience
a) the effect of sense of community and being a product tester1 on the the product on the attitude towards it. Hypothesis H4a postulated that
intention to recommend the new product is mediated by the attitude being a product tester positively influences the intention to recommend
toward the new product, while in model b) the dependent variable is the new product. The direct effect on the intention to recommend the
the intention to purchase. In both models, we control for attention to- new product is not significant (0.0712, p = 0.8659), thus H4a is not
ward the campaign and information credibility by including both supported by the results. Hypothesis H5a suggested a positive influence
variables as covariates. of product attitude on the intention to recommend and the results of the
We test our hypotheses using an SPSS macro for mediation analysis mediation analysis according to Hayes and Preacher (2013) support this
according to Hayes and Preacher (2013) that allows us to estimate a suggested relationship (0.4318, p < 0.001).
mediation model including various independent variables simulta- The indirect effect of sense of community on intention to re-
neously. Since we have got two dependent variables (i.e., intention to commend through attitude toward the product can be calculated by
recommend and intention to purchase), we estimate two different multiplying the coefficients of the specific direct effects (i.e.,
mediation models: model a) with intention to recommend and model b) 0.1585*0.4318) and results in 0.0684. To test this indirect effect for
with intention to purchase as dependent variable. significance, the SPSS macro by Hayes and Preacher (2013) uses the
The results for the direct effects are depicted in Table 3 both for bootstrapping method, which estimates the indirect effects by randomly
intention to recommend (panel a) and for intention to purchase (panel resampling the data sample. For our analysis, we generated the boot-
b). strap confidence intervals using 5000 bootstrap samples. The results of
As postulated by hypothesis H1, sense of community is supposed to this approach show that this indirect effect is significant since the 95%
positively influence the attitude toward the new product on the market. bootstrap percentile confidence interval does not include zero (0.0158,
0.1576). For the indirect effect of being a product tester on intention to
recommend through attitude toward the product, we perform the same
1
In the analyses, the dummy variable ‘product tester’ is indicating if the
community member had been chosen to being able to test the product (i.e., 1) analysis. This effect is positive (0.2627) and significant as well since the
or not (i.e., 0). 95% bootstrap percentile confidence interval does not include zero

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D. Baum et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

either (0.0176, 0.6041). Thus we can conclude that the effects of sense have negative consequences for the firm. The results of the mediation
of community and being a product tester on intention to recommend analysis above have shown that the attention to the campaign as well as
the new product are mediated by the community member's attitude the sense of community positively influence potential customers’ atti-
toward the product. In addition, the fact that someone is a product tude toward the new product. As outlined above, involvement with the
tester in a social media tryvertising campaign alone does not lead to social media campaign and the product is important for the dis-
more word-of-mouth communication. There is no direct effect on the semination of the new product information, the attitude towards the
intention to recommend the new product (see hypothesis H4a). With product as well as for a successful market launch (Shang et al., 2006;
regard to social media marketing, this finding is of interest, because Dwyer, 2007).
firms implement these social media tryvertising campaigns to reach To further examine the expected relationship between activity and
many people in a short period of time (Cruz and Fill, 2008). Our results attitude towards the product, we analyze the behavioral data of the
show that these campaigns do have an impact on online word-of-mouth community members. For this analysis, activity in the community is
communication (see hypotheses H2a and H5a), but that the fact that defined as any action on the platform. Since community members were
some of the online community members are given the possibility to try able to post photos, comments and product reviews (in the case of the
the product themselves alone does not guarantee the spread of new product testers) or to like content on the Facebook application, this
product information via social networking sites. behavioral data was used for a differentiation of active and inactive
For using the intention to purchase as dependent variable, the re- community members. Community members provided 128 photos, 97
sults for the direct effects are depicted in Table 3 (panel b). We find comments and 1956 likes in addition to 235 product reviews that
consistent results for hypotheses H1 and H3. The results show that the generated 318 likes. Therefore, a dummy variable was created in-
influence of sense of community on the intention to purchase is not dicating if the community member was active or not. Out of the 6221
significant (0.0713, p = 0.3470), thus H2b is not supported. Hypothesis community members, 1042 members were active during the campaign.
H4b hypothesized that being able to try the product leads to a higher This means that those members showed at least one action on the
intention to actually purchase the product that is new to the market. platform (e.g., liking a photo). Based on the survey and behavioral data,
The results here show that this assumed relationship is not significant a linear model regressed sense of community, attention to the cam-
either (-0.5167, p = 0.2029) and thus hypothesis H4b is not supported. paign, information credibility, early adoption behavior and the dummy
As postulated by hypothesis H5b, a more positive attitude toward the variable indicating whether the community member was active on the
new product leads to a higher intention to purchase. The direct effect of platform, on product attitude. Early adoption behavior (which was
product attitude on intention to purchase is positive (0.9760) and measured in the survey) is used as additional explanatory variable since
highly significant (p < 0.001), thus hypothesis H5b is supported by the it is assumed that individuals who are used to adopt new products on
results. the market earlier than others might also have a more positive attitude
We find that the indirect effect of sense of community on purchase toward new products on the market. The model is estimated as follows:
intention (0.1585*0.9760 =0.1547) is significant (95% bootstrap per-
centile confidence interval is (0.0277, 0.2841)). However, the indirect Attitude Product = β0 + β1 ·Sense of Community + β2 ·Attention Campaign
effect of being a product tester on purchase intention through attitude + β3 ·Information Credibility + β4 ·Early Adoption
toward the product is not significant (95% bootstrap percentile con-
+ β5 ·Active Participation + ε
fidence interval is (− 0.0258, 1.1667)). We thus conclude that only the
effect of sense of community on the intention to purchase the new The results depicted in Table 4 show the significant positive impact
product is mediated by the community member's attitude toward the of sense of community and attention to the campaign on attitude to-
product. Furthermore, our results show that implementing a social ward the product. The results also show a significant positive influence
media tryvertizing campaign does only partially influence the com- of early adoption behavior. In addition, the variable indicating if the
munity members’ purchase intention. While the results of model a) community member took an active or passive part significantly influ-
clearly demonstrate an influence of community members’ sense of ences the community member's attitude toward the new product. To
community on their intention to engage in word-of-mouth commu- conclude, community members that are actively participating in the
nication and recommendation behavior, we see by the results of model community and generating content on the platform do have a more
b) that the community members’ feeling of belonging together and positive attitude toward the new product on the market which is in turn
being part of this product-related community does not directly influ- relevant for their adoption and recommendation behavior.
ence their intention to purchase the new product (see hypothesis H2b). Furthermore, an active participation on the platform may have
We further see that the fact of being able to test the new product does additional positive effects. Since this social media campaign is using an
not directly influence purchase intentions (see hypothesis H4b). How- existing social networking website (i.e., Facebook) to promote the new
ever, the sense of community influence the attitude toward the new product, every community member's action on the platform may be
product which in turn is important for community members’ future
purchase behavior. Table 4
Based on the results of both model a) and model b), we also see that Regression results – Attitude product.
the attention community members pay to the campaign also sig-
Variables Parameter
nificantly positively influences community members’ attitude toward
the new product. Therefore, it can be concluded that social media Sense of Community 0.146** (0.064)
campaigns positively influence the success of a new product introduc- Attention Campaign 0.183** (0.087)
Information Credibility 0.127 (0.104)
tion.
Early Adoption 0.170** (0.075)
Active Participation 0.510* (0.299)
6.3. Post-hoc analysis Constant 2.358*** (0.592)
No. of observations 168
Supporting the market launch of a new product with the im- R Squared 0.213
F-Value (p-Value) 8.813 (0.001)
plementation of a social media campaign, participation of community
members is needed to further spread the word about the new product, Notes: Standard errors in parentheses. VIFs < 2.
keep people active on the platform and keep them talking about the * p < 0.1.
new product. ** p < 0.05.
However, no or little participation of community members may *** p < 0.01.

6
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seen by his or her direct friends on Facebook via the news feed. Aral and friends on the platform can be informed about the new product just by a
Walker (2011) point out that automated notifications via already ex- member's actions in the community, thus letting many potential con-
isting online social networks are beneficial for a fast diffusion of in- sumers know about the new product on the market.
formation and for product adoption within the network. In this study, we investigated one special form of social media
campaigns, namely tryvertizing campaigns. The special characteristic of
7. General discussion this kind of social media campaign is the fact that some members of the
related online community are selected and are given the new product to
Many retailers and manufacturers implement social media cam- being able to try it and to telling others online about their experiences
paigns to support the introduction of new products. This research ex- they made. While this approach certainly has various advantages (e.g.,
tends knowledge on the impact of social media campaigns by empiri- first-hand experiences of other customers might be much more credible
cally investigating the impact of a social media tryvertizing campaign than published online by the firm), we find that only the fact of being a
on the success of a new product introduction. The results show that product tester does not enhance community members’ intention to re-
campaign-related factors, namely the community members’ attention to commend or to purchase the product. Nevertheless, selecting various
the campaign as well as their sense of community both positively in- community members to become product testers – in combination with
fluence the community members’ attitude toward the new product on the incentive to select points for every activity on the platform – in-
the market. This gives marketers the possibility to enhance consumers’ creases the activity on the platform. This in turn may positively influ-
attitude toward the new product by trying to increase their attention to ence the interaction of the community members and hence their sense
the campaign and to strengthen their sense of community. of community as well as increase the reach of the campaign and the
Since community members’ sense of community also positively dissemination of the new product information. We conclude that social
impacts the community members’ intention to recommend the new media campaigns in general and tryvertising campaigns in particular
product, marketers should pay particular attention to the specific de- may be an effective means for supporting the market launch of products
sign of their social media campaign to fully exploit the benefits they and to positively influence the success of the new product introduction.
provide to turn their new product introduction into a success. Despite the gained insights into the impact of social media cam-
One possibility for firms to keep community members active could paigns on the success of new product introductions, several limitations
be to use elements of gamification within the scope of the campaign on have to be acknowledged. First, only a limited number of community
a more or less regular basis. Increased activity of the community members took part in the online survey. This as well as privacy settings
members is to raise their attention to the campaign and to what is going limited our ability to match the survey data with the behavioral data.
on in the community. In addition, increased activity on the platform Second, the data analyzed is limited to one product category. Analyzing
fuels the interaction with other community members which might lead social media campaigns that support the introduction of products from
to a further increase in their sense of community. Both sense of com- different categories might be an interesting subject of future research.
munity and attention to the campaign are noticeable factors for the In addition and given the multitude of dimensions and measures to
success of the new product introduction. Especially in the case of social evaluate the success of a new product introduction (Griffin and Page,
media campaigns that are implemented using existing online social 1993), it might be interesting to analyze the impact of social media
networks, activity of the community members increases the reach of the campaigns on the financial success of new product introductions by
campaign and accelerates the dissemination of the new product in- using additional accounting data.
formation. Via automated notifications the community members’ direct

Appendix

Constructs and Items

Attention to the Campaign (adapted from Laczniak and Muehling, 1993)

1) How much attention did you pay to the [brand name] campaign? b
2) How much did you concentrate on the [brand name] campaign? b
3) How involved were you with the [brand name] campaign? b
4) What kind of impression did you get about the [brand name] campaign? c
Sense of Community (adapted from Peterson et al., 2008)
1) I feel like a part of the [target group] community. d
2) I feel connected to the [target group] community. d
3) I have a good bond with others in the [target group] community. d
Information Credibility (adapted from Andrews et al., 2000)
1) not believable/ believable
2) untrustworthy/ trustworthy
3) not credible/ credible
4) of no use/of great use
5) I think the [target group] community is a reliable source of information. d
Attitude toward the Product (adapted from McAlexander et al., 2002; Ziamou and Ratneshwar, 2003)
1) I love the [product name]. d
2) What is your overall opinion of the [product name]? c
3) The [product name] is fun. d
4) The [product name] is one of my favorite products. d
Intention to Recommend (adapted from Arnett et al., 2003; Harrison-Walker, 2001)
1) In social situations, I often speak about the [brand and product name]. d
2) I bring up the [brand and product name] in conversations I have with friends and acquaintances. d
3) I share information about the [brand and product name] with others. d

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Constructs and Items

4) Since I know the [target group] community, I mention the [product name] to others quite frequently. d
d
5) I bring up the [brand and product name] in conversations I have with friends and acquaintances outside the [target group] community.
6) All in all, when you talk about the [brand and product name] would you say that this communication was… c
Purchase Intention
1) How likely are you to buy the [product name] in the future? a
Early Adoption (adapted from Steenkamp and Gielens, 2003; Goldsmith and Hofacker, 1991)
1) In general, I am among the first to buy new products when they appear on the market. d
2) I am very cautious in trying new and different products. [reverse coding] d
3) I enjoy taking chances when buying new products. d
4) Compared to my friends, I own a lot of products that are new to the market. d
Scale anchors: a) highly unlikely (1) to highly likely (7), b) none (1) to very much (7), c) very negative (1) to very positive (7), d) strongly disagree (1) to strongly
agree (7).

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Daniela Baum received her Ph.D. in electronic commerce from the Ludwig-Maximilians- Association for Consumer Research Conference, the European Marketing Academy
University of Munich, Germany. Previously, she studied business administration at the Conference, the Society for Consumer Psychology Conference and the International
University of Passau, Germany, and the Universidad de Málaga, Spain. Her research in- Congress of Applied Psychology.
terests include social media, user-generated content, and experimental methods. She has