Can webcare responses really convey ‘consumer language’? Consumers’ perception of the Conversational Human Voice and their satisfaction of webcare responses to different types of eWOM Marith van der Horst ANR 401229 / SNR 2029643 Master’s Thesis Communication and Information Sciences Specialization Business Communication and Digital Media School of Humanities and Digital Sciences Tilburg University, Tilburg Supervisor: Dr. C.C. Liebrecht Second reader: Dr. P.J.F.J. Broeder January 2020 CONSUMERS’ CHV PERCEPTION AND SATISFACTION TO EWOM 2 Preface After five and a half years of studying at Avans University of Applied Sciences Breda and Tilburg University, I can proudly say that I am ending this journey with my master thesis. The decision to continue studying at Tilburg University brought me a lot of new knowledge, skills, and opportunities. Especially in the field of webcare for which I wrote this thesis and worked on with great pleasure. Although, the completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the support and guidance of several people. First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. C.C. Liebrecht, for her enthusiasm, guidance, and above all, critical view and valuable input. She helped me to improve the quality of my thesis and contributed to successful completion. Also, I would like to thank the second reader of my thesis, Dr. P.J.F.J. Broeder, for his willingness to provide feedback. A final thank you goes to all the respondents who were willing to invest their time and helped me with the pre-test and experimental questionnaire. And a special thanks to my parents and closest friends for their support and advice during my educational journey so far. Marith van der Horst January 2020, Koudekerke CONSUMERS’ CHV PERCEPTION AND SATISFACTION TO EWOM 3 Abstract To increase the effectiveness of webcare responses, organizations use linguistic elements to induce a human tone of voice in their responses, referred to as the Conversational Human Voice (CHV, Kelleher, 2009; Kelleher & Miller, 2006). Arguably, the linguistic elements could differ in contribution to the perceived communication style. Previous research investigated the relation between the linguistic elements and the perception of CHV among webcare employees, focusing on neutral eWOM (Liebrecht & Van Hooijdonk, 2019). However, little is known to what extent the linguistic elements contribute to the perception of CHV among consumers and other types of eWOM. In this study, an online experiment (N = 137) was conducted with a 14 (type and amount of linguistic elements) x 2 (type of eWOM: neutral and negative) mixed-design to investigate the contribution of the linguistic elements to the consumers’ perception of CHV and satisfaction of the webcare response for neutral and negative eWOM. The results showed that webcare responses with linguistic elements engender the perception of CHV and satisfaction. Also, differences between categories of linguistic elements were found, whereas combinations of elements contributed to a greater extent. In contrast to the expectations, the type of eWOM did not influence the consumers’ perception of CHV and satisfaction of the webcare response. Keywords: webcare, Conversational Human Voice, conversational linguistic elements, satisfaction, neutral and negative eWOM CONSUMERS’ CHV PERCEPTION AND SATISFACTION TO EWOM 4 Table of contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 5 Theoretical Framework .............................................................................................................. 8 CMC and social presence ....................................................................................................... 8 Conversational Human Voice in webcare .............................................................................. 9 Conversational linguistic elements ...................................................................................... 10 Perception of conversational linguistic elements ................................................................. 12 Perception of linguistic categories ....................................................................................... 14 Perception of merging linguistic categories ......................................................................... 17 Type of eWOM in webcare .................................................................................................. 18 Method ..................................................................................................................................... 20 Design .................................................................................................................................. 20 Materials .............................................................................................................................. 20 Pre-test ................................................................................................................................. 24 Participants ........................................................................................................................... 25 Instrumentation .................................................................................................................... 26 Procedure ............................................................................................................................. 27 Results ...................................................................................................................................... 28 CHV and satisfaction in webcare responses ........................................................................ 28 The use of linguistic categories in webcare responses ......................................................... 32 Combined categories in webcare responses ......................................................................... 36 Conclusion and discussion ....................................................................................................... 40 Theoretical and practical implications ................................................................................. 44 Limitations and future research ........................................................................................... 46 References ................................................................................................................................ 49 Appendices ............................................................................................................................... 54 Appendix A – Experimental materials ................................................................................. 54 Appendix B – Pre-test materials .......................................................................................... 58 Appendix C – Pre-test questionnaire ................................................................................... 59 Appendix D – Pre-test reliability scores .............................................................................. 63 Appendix E – Experimental questionnaire .......................................................................... 66 CONSUMERS’ PERCEPTION AND SATISFACTION REgARDINg CHV 5 Introduction More than ever, consumers voice their complaints and questions about organizations on social media. To prevent the negative and incorrect messages from reaching others, organizations have started to actively monitor consumers’ electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and engage in conversations with them, referred to as webcare (Van Noort & Willemsen, 2012). Webcare requires a different style of communication from organizations compared to corporate communication, as real-time dialogues on social media are more informal, personal, and focusing on human interaction (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Oegema, Kleinnijenhuis, Anderson, & Van Hoof, 2008). For instance, the webcare response of the LinkedIn Social Support Team in Figure 1 contains such a communication style, which is characterized by a greeting (Hi Sam), personal pronouns (you, your), a shortening (DM), a non-verbal cue (:)), and a signature (FN). Figure 1. Webcare response LinkedIn Social Support Team (2019). The use of greetings, personal pronouns, shortenings, non-verbal cues, and human representatives reflects a human tone of voice in the organization’s response, known as Conversational Human Voice (CHV, Kelleher, 2009). In webcare responses, CHV is characterized by linguistic elements that are typically not associated with a corporate tone of voice. In addition to the aforementioned elements, the use of humor, communicating invitingly, and informal language are also belonging to CHV (Van Noort, Willemsen, CONSUMERS’ PERCEPTION AND SATISFACTION REgARDINg CHV 6 Kerkhof, & Verhoeven, 2015). By adopting CHV in their communication, the organization’s tone of voice becomes more humanized, which makes consumers perceive as they are communicating with an actual person rather than an organization (Kwon & Sung, 2011; Park & Lee, 2013). Previous research has shown that including CHV increases the effectiveness of a webcare response, which induces positive effects on the organization’s reputation and trustworthiness (e.g., Park & Cameron, 2014; Sweetser & Metzgar, 2007). However, up to now much of the research on the perception of CHV has been a theoretical operationalization of CHV and distinction of the linguistic elements (e.g., Crijns, Cauberge, Hudders,