Abstract
What drives people’s decisions to share product and service experiences? Several studies show that a sender’s emotional arousal is a relevant factor for social sharing. Experimental studies by the Nuremberg Institute of Market Decisions (NIM) confirm that increased arousal is associated with higher levels of social sharing. The results show that the emotional state of arousal, which was determined by voice analysis, should be a relevant variable for marketing managers to estimate whether or not consumers will share their experiences in social media. At least for spoken reviews, there is also an indication that higher arousal can even increase persuasiveness. To increase the chances of sharing positive reviews of a product or service, marketing managers should charge their brands and products with emotions, such as joy or surprise, as these activate more than pure satisfaction.