Cross Cultural Online Communication (LETCIWB204IBC)
Institution
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (RU)
This is a summary of the first period of the cross cultural online communication course. It includes notes from the book, the lectures and powerpoints, and the articles that have to be learned in addition. I obtained a 9.2 on the exam with this summary.
Cross Cultural Online Communication (LETCIWB204IBC)
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Cross cultural online communication
WEEK 1
External communication
In the past: controlled information stream directed toward consumers (marketer generated content)
In the present: less controlled information stream directed towards consumers (consumer generated
content).
Tourism was growing faster than expected, and everywhere in the world we read reviews. Guest
reviews are very important, which used to be going to a travel agency.
Asynchronous communication: I can
communicate one thing, and the
receiver receives the message in a
different way. You can take your time to
craft a message in your own time. But if
there’s ambiguity in your message, it
can lead to miscommunications.
Synchronous communication: real-time
interactions, ambiguity can be resolved
easier. But you have face-to-face
pressure.
The credibility of a source depends on 2 factors:
- Perceived expertise
- Laypersons have little expertise
- Self-proclaimed expert has expertise
- Rated expert have a high level of expertise (most credible)
- Perceived trustworthiness
- Laypersons more trustworthy
- Self-proclaimed not so trustworthy
- Rated expert more trustworthy
Lay person: a person that writes a review on a subject that they don’t have expertise of, but you can
have more trustworthy because it’s just a normal person trying to share his experience with other
normal people, and not a corporate person that wants to persuade you.
Most trusted form of advertising is personal recommendations, followed by the consumer opinions
online (e-WOM).
Role of e-WOM in the consumer selection process.
There is a positive correlation between review rating and degree to which product was bought. Also,
e-WOM is more influential than traditional WOM. Because its spreading easier and faster, to more
people. There are also more people who can do it.
So speed, comfort, one-to-many and absence of face-to-face pressure (we can take our time and
we could be more honest, less influenced by social expectations so more likely to be truthful). `
Types of e-WOm users:
- Opinion leaders: regular posters and e-fluentials, very active
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, - Opinions followers: lurkers. Reading peoples comments but not really engaging in posting
ourselves (90%)
90% of users never leave a post (lurkers)
9% of users are responsible for the remaing 10% and are known as intermittent contributors.
1% of users contribute heavily and are responsible for 90% of the posts.
What motivates people to post reviews?
- For ego-focused reasons: when you have a bad experience and you want to have revenge
and for Self-presentation reasons: you want to present yourself as knowledgeable
- Socially focused: because you want to help others and you have a desire for social
interaction
We have a positivity bias, so positive movie tweets get retweeted more frequently than negative
ones. That doesn’t mean it’s more effective.
Effect of a review may depend on the type of product:
- Products for which the quality of information is easy to evaluate before purchase, such as
electronics, positive reviews are seen as more valuable.
- Products for which experience is more important than the product characteristics, such as
airlines and city trips, negative reviews are seen as more useful.
Implications for organizations
* Organizations can use e-WOM for online reputation management: monitoring your image and
reputation. But they don’t really have control over what is posted.
* They have the opportunity of web care, where they read and act on negative message. Also humor
can be introduced into web care (which can lead to cultural differences) .
* Using computational techniques, they can automatically see the overall automatic sentiment. An
automatic sentiment analysis: what is the overall company sentiment?
Webcare: directly responding to a negative review and to the larger audience. Ensure complainers
stop complaining and show company response adequately when customers are dissatisfied. Best
method is mediated immediacy:
- immediate (through the same public channel)
- As soon as possible (timely)
- Personal (signed with personal name, name people by their name)
Automatic analysis of reviews (also called opinion mining or sentiment analysis): a computer
evaluates subjective information by searching for a keyword. You can see if the reviews are overall
positive or negative. But they don’t include jargon, emojis, sarcasm, irony, abbreviations, new words.
Automatic sentiment analysis of e-WOM is still in the very early phase. Little research with
automatic analysis or quantitative analysis has examined the role of nationality, multilingualism or
culture. So there is a scientific gap in the research out there.
- Fake reviews rely more on superlatives to describe experiences: exaggerated language
- Phony reviews include more first-person perspective, a lot of I and me used
- More emphasis on external aspects and details: husband, business, vacation
But use of superlatives may be dependent on culture or language
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, WEEK 2
Research to e-WOM is limited, because it is mainly focused on English language. The automatic
analysis of e-WOM is also still limited.
Reviews are about expressing an evaluation: expressiveness, directness, politeness, openness.
Culture can be defined by dimensions,
norms, values, ideology and a belief system.
Individuals differ in
Culture is manmade so will be influenced by
the individual. Culture might directly
influence e-WOM, so there is an interactive
relationship between these 3 principles.
Hall
Iceberg model: the tip of the iceberg is visible, outsiders can view this. Like
artifacts, clothes, behavior.
Beneath this is the invisible part that is outside of conscious awareness.
Think of norms, beliefs, assumptions, values. They are the inner core of a
culture. To understand this, you have to live in it for a while. Visible
information to learn a culture is not enough.
Theory of proxemics: people from different cultures perceive space differently.
- Intimate space: partner
- Personal space: family
- Social place: friends
- Public space: workspace
Argentina is the closest, they accept strangers even closer than that Saudi Arabia accepts personal
acquaintances.
Monochronic vs polychronic, meaning of time across cultures
- Monochronic: emphasizes order, schedules, promptness, being on time, doing one thing at a
time (western). Time is more tangible than polychronic.
- Polychronic: less order, more things are happening at once, importance is on things being
finished. Stress completion of transactions.
High context vs low context (context in which communication takes place, shared knowledge)
- High context: communication is implicit and relies heavily on shared context. It values
harmony, hierarchical values, indirect communication, non-verbal cues, persons background.
Japan, Arabic, Latin America, Italy. A much wider perspective on communication, they take
phrasing, history, environment and posture into account.
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