Examining The Impact Of Television-Program-Induced Emotions On Online Word-Of-Mouth Toward Television Advertising

The proliferation of media platforms allows marketers to gauge con- sumers' opinions toward brands directly from online word of mouth (WOM). In this paper, we exploit a large-scale television program (the Super Bowl 2016) and exogenous game events that may cause a positive emotional context for fans of the winning team while creating a negative emotional context for fans of the losing team to investigate the impact of television-program-induced emotions on viewers' online WOM behavior toward ads that were aired during program breaks. The results obtained from a difference-in-differences analysis with coarsened exact matching generally support our hypotheses on the direct and congruence effects of television-program-induced emotions. Findings on the direct effect suggest that television-program-induced emotional shocks have a significant effect on the arousal and valence of viewers' online WOM toward ads. We additionally find that a match between television-program-induced emotional shocks and the emotional content of ads leads to a more significant increase in the arousal and more favorable valence of online WOM responses to ads. We discuss the implications of our findings for advertisement design and media planning strategies.