Video blogs: A qualitative and quantitative inquiry of recall and willingness to share

Abstract

In the last few years, user-generated video blogs (vlogs) have become very popular on video sharing communities and websites such as YouTube. Unboxing and Haul are a genre of video blogs on YouTube where consumers unbox a new product or display their new haul of clothes, to inform other consumers about latest product trends and fashion. Despite the increased viewership of the unboxing and haul vlogs, there is a void in understanding how much information do viewers retain from these vlogs and why and how viewers decide to share these vlogs in their social network. Our research examines how unboxing and haul vlogs influence viewers’ recall and their willingness to share these vlogs in their social network, revealing that vlogs’ usefulness, humor and involvement have a positive impact on viewers’ willingness to share. However, we did not find any relationship between willingness to share and recall. Furthermore, we qualitatively analyzed the content of viewers’ recall and the main reason of willingness to share, finding that female haul vlog viewers recall more brand names than male haul vlog viewers do and female unboxing vlog viewers pay more attention to vloggers than product information.