A Woke Approach to User-generated Content: How Product Involvement and Gender Influence What We Post

Although gender is often utilized as a dummy control variable in user-generated content research, studies are often conducted in online communities of products that are disproportionately used by male users. In a similar fashion, existing studies also concentrate on communities of high-involvement products, even though online communities of low involvement products are emerging. In continuation of Soylemez’s work insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2021a);, this study utilized ELM and the equity theory and investigated how two personal factors insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(gender and product involvement); influence the relative generation of brand-oriented and community-oriented content. The study found that members of high-involvement product communities generate more brand-oriented content than community-oriented content, whereas members of low-involvement product communities generate more community-oriented content than brand-oriented content. A significant gender-product involvement interaction exists. Managerial and theoretical implications are also discussed.