Mickey D’s Has More Street Cred Than McDonald’s: Consumer Brand Nickname Use Signals Information Authenticity
研究发现消费者在社交媒体上使用品牌昵称（如“Mickey D's”指代麦当劳）会增强其他用户对信息真实性的感知，进而提升购买意愿和信息分享行为，但该效应仅适用于用户生成内容而非企业发布内容。
Consumers often observe how other consumers interact with brands to inform their own brand judgments. This research demonstrates that brand relationship quality–indicating cues, such as brand nicknames (e.g., “Mickey D’s” for McDonald’s, “Wally World” for Walmart), enhance perceived information authenticity in online communication. An analysis of historical Twitter data followed by six experiments (using both real and fictitious brands across different online platforms [e.g., online reviews, social media posts]) show that brand nickname use in user-generated content signals a writer’s relationship quality with the target brand from the reader’s perspective, which the authors term “inferred brand attachment.” The authors demonstrate that inferred brand attachment boosts perceived information authenticity and leads to positive downstream consequences, such as purchase willingness and information sharing. The authors also find that this effect is attenuated when brand nicknames are used in firm-generated content. How consumers’ relationships with brands are portrayed and perceived in a social context (e.g., via brand nickname use) serves as a novel context to examine user-generated content and provides valuable managerial insight regarding how to leverage consumers’ brand attachment cues in brand strategy and online information management.