Sanghyub John Lee

The digital revolution has spurred significant growth in online reviews and user-generated content. Traditional methods used in Marketing for analysing large datasets have limitations, emphasising the need for improved analytical approaches, particularly with the advent of artificial intelligence technology. This research used a state-of-the-art transformer model to analyse extensive online book reviews to accurately identify six specific emotions in the reviews of both fiction (hedonic) and nonfiction (utilitarian) genres. This study collected 3,157,703 reviews of 15,293 books voted ‘best book of the year’ on GoodReads.com over the past decade. Our findings reveal noticeable differences in emotional intensity across genres, with nonfiction displaying a slightly higher level of joy, and fiction showing higher levels of anger, sadness and surprise. Joy emerged as the dominant emotion across genres; however, it does not necessarily have a direct impact on book ratings. This study emphasises the intricacies of reader emotions, serving as a significant case study for marketers and publishers aiming to optimise their strategies in the contemporary literary market. The study contributes to the literature on the impact of consumers’ emotional responses, how they are reflected in social review commentary for high-involvement online products, and their impact on product ratings.

Mindfulness challenges allow consumers to track meditation frequency through posting social media updates documenting their regular meditations. However, little is known about the effects of mindfulness on consumers in these representative online settings. In one study (1a and 1b) the research utilises two types of data to explore how a contemplative practice such as mindfulness influences online behaviour. Specifically, consumers who have completed a 60-day online meditation challenge showed an increase (vs. decrease) in original tweets (vs. retweets) (study 1a), and further, consumers who completed the challenge (vs. did not complete) showed higher (vs. lower) positive sentiment of original tweets. Despite some research showing engagement in social media as maladaptive, we provide a positive and unexpected contribution to show that mindfulness has a positive effect on how consumers may engage with social media. Further, we contribute a novel research method based on Twitter that advances immediate and unique marketing methods. Finally, we expand the practical application of mindfulness by exploring how consumers are organically, and consequentially, practicing mindfulness in field settings.