Non-face emojis in digital marketing: Effects, contingencies, and strategic recommendations
研究了数字营销信息中使用非面部表情符号（如食物、动物图标）对在线评论量的影响，发现其能提升评论量，但效果受表情符号功能（替代或补充文字）和卖家质量调节，为营销者提供了使用建议。
Non-face (NF) emojis are increasingly used to complement or substitute words in digital marketing messages, yet the effects, mechanisms, and contingencies of this communication strategy remain underexplored. In a large-scale longitudinal study of Airbnb listings, we show that NF emojis (vs. simple text) lead to an increase in eWOM volume, an effect we replicate experimentally. This effect is qualified by important boundary conditions whose underlying mechanisms are investigated in two additional experimental studies. At the message level, using multiple substitutive (vs. complementary) NF emojis reduces message evaluations and eWOM volume due to reduced processing fluency. At the source level, seller quality further moderates the interaction between emoji function and emoji number: for premium sellers, using multiple NF emojis reduces message evaluations and eWOM volume irrespective of their function due to reduced perceptions of competence. We distill these findings into detailed managerial guidelines for using NF emojis in digital marketing. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11747-022-00917-z.