From Marketer-Generated Content to User-Generated Content: Evidence from Online Health Communities

How should marketers engage with social media features in online communities to shape knowledge contributions from customers in their potential markets? This is an important question because customer contributions are important drivers of business value. We examine the effect of marketer generated content in online health communities on user-generated content, using longitudinal data from a leading online health community. We focus on the firm’s practice of knowledge investment, in which its marketers provide product information or share life experience by posting in the social interaction section of online health platforms. The results demonstrate that because of knowledge investment in healthcare markets, the use of platform’s social media feature by marketer influence both the quantity and linguistics features of customer-generated content.