Cable News Wars on the Internet: Competition and User-Generated Content

Author List: Sabnis, Gaurav; Grewal, Rajdeep;
Information Systems Research, 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2, Page 301-319.
Academics and practitioners alike recognize that user-generated content (UGC), such as blog posts, help not only predict but also boost performance (e.g., sales). However, the role of competition in the UGC domain is not well understood. Building on extant research pertaining to the UGC-performance relationship, the authors document empirical evidence for a relationship between competitor UGC and focal firm performance. Data from a 30-week period describe the viewership of competing cable news shows on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC during the 7:00 p.m. Ð9:00 p.m. time slots. They find evidence of a statistically significant relationship between competitor UGC and viewership and of heterogeneity in the direction of these competitive relationships, positive in some time slots and negative in others. The predictive power of UGC for viewership is enhanced by 3% to 5% simply by incorporating competitors' UGC, in addition to a show's own UGC. Thus, the study, as well as formulation of UGC-related marketing strategies, should incorporate competitive relationships.
Keywords: user-generated content ; social media ; competition ; cable news
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#131 0.283 media social content user-generated ugc blogs study online traditional popularity suggest different discourse news making anonymity marketing videos choices page
#209 0.164 results study research information studies relationship size variables previous variable examining dependent increases empirical variance accounting independent demonstrate important addition
#166 0.134 negative positive effect findings results effects blog suggest role blogs posts examined period relationship employees research employee bloggers reveal companies
#242 0.124 market competition competitive network markets firms products competing competitor differentiation advantage competitors presence dominant structure share using incumbent make important
#114 0.081 performance firm measures metrics value relationship firms results objective relationships firm's organizational traffic measure market study improve accounting measuring aggregate
#133 0.073 data predictive analytics sharing big using modeling set power inference behavior explanatory related prediction statistical generated substantially novel building million