Predicting eWOM in a B2B International Trade Fair

This research aims to explain the volume of eWOM in the context of international trade shows based on (1) social media content strategies, (2) social media message features, and (3) time frame (posting date ex ante COVID-19 crisis or posting date ex post COVID-19 crisis). The data were collected from Twitter, using a tweet as the unit of analysis. In total 3,482 tweets were analyzed: 1,930 tweets from January 1, 2019, to March 10, 2020 (period 1, posting date ex ante COVID-19) and 1,552 tweets from March 11, 2020, to August 31, 2021 (period 2, posting date ex post COVID-19). Our results show, on one side, that the usage of some social media content strategies (informational and transformational strategies) and some social media message features (videos, mentions and photos) influences the eWOM volume. On another side, tweets published in ex ante COVID-19 predicted eWOM volume better than ex post.