Is It Possible for “Electronic Word-of-Mouth” and “User-Generated Content” to be Used Interchangeably?

The advance of web 2.0 that facilitates contents to be created, shared and exchanged through online platforms has led to profound changes in consumer behavior. Modern consumers appreciate nonprofessional-produced contents as they are perceived to be more trustworthy. As a result, electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) and usergenerated content (UGC) have become two of the most frequent researched objects over the last ten years in marketing area. However, extant studies have confounded these two concepts which may cause significant academic problems. In this paper the authors aim to disentangle eWOM and UGC by comparing their fundamental attributes. Findings prove that despite sharing similar attributes, eWOM and UGC are two distinctive concepts with different scope and meaning. It is thus concluded that eWOM and UGC cannot be used interchangeably. The results of this study provide important implications for future research.

All informal communications directed at consumers through Internet-based technology related to the usage or characteristics of particular goods and services, or their sellers Litvin et al., 2018, p.461 eWOM is the dynamic and ongoing information exchange process between potential, actual, or former consumers regarding a product, service, brand, or company, which is available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet Ismagilova et al., 2017, p.18 Source: authors' elaboration, based on literature cited "oral, person-to-person communication between a receiver and a communicator whom the receiver perceives as noncommercial, regarding a brand, a product, or a service." (Arndt, 1967(Arndt, , p.1967. This definition associates WOM with a communication process that comprises three components: the communicator (source of information), the message and the receiver; in which the communication's content pertains to a certain commercial entity. The information providers and receivers are believed to have some existing professional, social, or family ties (Tham, Croy, & Mair, 2013). Furthermore, in spite of the fact that the communication is about commercial organizations, the information providers are not commercial motivated or at least they are perceived as being unbiased from the receivers' view.
The appearance of web 2.0 has seminally changed the way people communicate, interact as well as the way information is disseminated. The relationships between individuals has been exploded from micro to macro level thanks to the ability to develop new interpersonal relationship via online social networks (Sarma & Choudhury, 2015). At the same time, information is diffused with "speed of light" across online platforms without any spatial or temporal boundaries. As a consequence, Web 2.0 broadens WOM communication networks (Fotis, 2015) and the term "eWOM" began to be used widely. Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh, & Gremler (2004) propose one of the most widespread definitions of eWOM: "Any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet." (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004, p.39) This approach links eWOM to the dissemination of commercial entity-related information on the Internet. The information providers here can be understood as Internet end-users who have consumed or may consume a particular product/service in the future, and may not be acquaintances of the information receivers due to the anonymous and interactive nature of the Internet. Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) also emphasize the emotional aspect of eWOM, however, it is considered as limiting as this approach classifies eWOM into two stages: positive and negative. Wang & Rodgers (2010, p.212) argue that the valence values of eWOM "are often beyond a simple dichotomy". Some eWOM can contain both positive and negative valences while some can be fundamentally neutral. For example, a tourist who has visited a tourism destination can write only facts about that place without any negative or positive valence.
To surmount this limitation, Kietzmann & Canhoto (2013) introduce a new definition of eWOM (see table 3-1) which is basically similar to the one proposed by Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004). Nonetheless, Kietzmann & Canhoto (2013) supplements that eWOM can be neutral instead of being merely positive or negative, in other words, eWOM can be emotional-oriented or informational-oriented.
To the other extreme, Goldsmith (2006) gives emphasis to the diffusion of eWOM on the Internet based on web 2.0 applications by interpreting eWOM as: " […] consumption-related communication on the Internet, which can be diffused by many Internet applications such as online forums, electronic bulletin board systems, blogs, review sites, and social networking sites." (Goldsmith, 2006, p.410). This approach draws attention to the conveyance of information characteristic of eWOM. In this way, it is understood that eWOM merely requires content conveyance by users (Cheong & Morrison, 2008). Litvin, Goldsmith, & Pan (2008) develop a definition of eWOM based on the traditional concept of WOM: "all informal communications directed at consumers through Internet-based technology related to the usage or characteristics of particular goods and services, or their sellers". (Litvin, Goldsmith, & Pan, 2018, p.461).
This approach once again stresses that the content of eWOM communication has to appertain to products/services or companies/organizations and be available on the Internet. Unlike other authors that restrict information providers to those who have consumed or may consume a particular product/service in the future, Litvin et al. (2008) include producers as communicators of eWOM. Germane to this judgment, Lindgreen & Vanhamme (2005) argue that there have been more and more companies that have adopted viral marketing practices, which has blurred the boundary between commercial messages and WOM.
In a more recent definition, beside reaffirming the limit of eWOM's content and its availability on the Internet, Ismagilova, Dwivedi, Slade, & Williams (2017) consider eWOM as "a dynamic and ongoing information exchange process": "eWOM is the dynamic and ongoing information exchange process between potential, actual, or former consumers regarding a product, service, brand, or company, which is available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet." (Ismagilova et al., 2017, p.18).
In fact, there is no denying that eWOM is a "dynamic and ongoing" process as online messages can spread spontaneously. Notwithstanding, the association of eWOM with an "information exchange process" may hold true for some contexts, but not for all: according to Cheung & Lee (2012), individuals own different patterns in the way they present and exchange opinions through eWOM. People with good consumption experiences may simply post compliments on products or services to reward the providers without seeking any information exchange. Therefore, it is more reasonable to regard eWOM as an information dissemination process than an information exchange process as once the information is made publicly available, it is an information dissemination per se.
Interestingly, whilst being independent of commercial influence is a salient characteristic of traditional WOM, it seems to be ignored in eWOM definitions. The fact that consumers have effects on each other through communication, which is highly valued by marketers, has long been proven by numerous social researchers. The advent web 2.0, on the one hand, has empowered consumers to amplify their influences on a much larger number of audiences. On the other hand, marketers have also been given opportunities to manage interpersonal influence through opinion leaders and the like. Consequently, it can be said that eWOM can either be dependent or independent of commercial purposes. Based on the above discussion, the following features of eWOM are identified:  Information dissemination  Potentially unknown provider and receiver relationship  Commercial entity-related content  Online availability

Elaboration of UGC's definitions
UGC has been widely recognized as an important phenomenon since 2005 (Bruns, 2016). Being considered as the "broadest term" (Colistra, Buchman, & Duvall, 2017;Holton, Coddington, & Dezύñiga, 2013), there is no yet a formal and unanimous definition of UGC. Krumm, Davies, & Narayanaswami (2008) state: ''UGC comes from regular people who voluntarily contribute data, information, or media that then appears before others in a useful or entertaining way ...'' (Krumm, Davies, & Narayanaswami, 2008, p.10) This approach focuses attention on the content contribution of ordinary people voluntarily. Regular people are understood as Internet end-users, who are not conventional media producers. As stated by Krumm et al. (2008), contents contributed by regular people must be the first to appear, which means that UGC should be an original that has not been created before. The limitation of this approach is that it frames the purposes of creating UGC only to be useful or entertaining for content consumers, whilst overlooks other motivations such as expressing oneself or achieving fame. Similarly, Tang, Fang, & Wang (2014) define UGC as: "media content created by users to share information and/or opinions with other users". (Tang et al., 2014, p.41). This approach suffers the same limitation as the previous one that it limits the motivation to generate UGC within sharing "information and/or opinions", neclegting other motivations. In the same vein, Daugherty et al. (2008) define UGC as: "media content created or produced by the general public rather than by paid professionals." (Daugherty et al., Journal of Marketing and Consumer Research www.iiste.org ISSN 2422-8451 An International Peer-reviewed Journal Vol.65, 2020, p.18). Bruns (2006 proposes: "User-generated content (UGC), sometimes also referred to as user-created content (UCC), is a generic term that encompasses a wide range of media and creative content types that were created or at least substantially cocreated by "users"-that is, by contributors working outside of conventional professional environments." (Bruns, 2016, p.1). UGC comes from regular people who voluntarily contribute data, information, or media that then appears before others in a useful or entertaining way Krumm et al., 2008, p.10 Media content created or produced by the general public rather than by paid professionals Daugherty et al., 2008, p.16 UGC usually applied to describe the various forms of media content that are publicly available and created by end-users Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p.61 Media content created by users to share information and/or opinions with other users Tang, Fang, & Wang, 2014, p.41 User-generated content (UGC), sometimes also referred to as user-created content (UCC), is a generic term that encompasses a wide range of media and creative content types that were created or at least substantially cocreated by "users"-that is, by contributors working outside of conventional professional environments Bruns, 2016, p.1 UGC comprises three characteristics as follow: 1. UGC is characterized by a degree of personal contribution 2. UGC must be published 3. UGC is created 'outside the realm of a profession and professional routines Naab & Sehl, 2017, p.1258 Source: authors' elaboration, based on literature cited As can be seen from the above approaches, there is a unanimity among authors that being created outside the commercial market context by users is a significant feature of UGC. Here, conventional professional producers refers to professional writers, publishers, journalists, licensed broadcasters, etc. that create content for commercial purpose. Stoeckl, Rohrmeier, & Hess (2007) believe that the majority of UGC generators are amateurs without monetary motivation. UGC is perceived as "non-professional grassroots movement outside institutional context and without expectation of remuneration or profit" (Arnhold, 2010, p.30). UGC can thus be interpreted as a result of the integration of the user into the media production process (Bowman & Willis, 2003). Nevertheless, the content of UGC should not be understood to be entirely amateur although it is not produced by professional media producers, it may still be well generated by skillful and professional-level knowledgeable users (Bruns, 2016). Bruns (2016) goes a step further than previous authors in specifying what is considered as creative content, accordingly, creative content can be totally newly created or can be a product of the collaboration with existing contents. Even so, the minimum amount of creative effort is not easy to define because it depends on the context (Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD), 2007).
Despite the fact that UGC is generated and disseminated through web 2.0 platforms, it can be said that the above presented definitions have not addressed an element that UGC must be publicized in cyberspace. This void is filled by the definition of UGC offered by OECD in 2007, which was also adopted by Kaplan & Haenlein (2010) and Naab & Sehl (2017) (see table 2). Accordingly, any content in order to be regarded as UGC should possess three central characteristics: a) Publication requirement: UGC is required to be made available through publicly accessible transmission media. In accordance to this requirement, e-mail, two-way instant messages and the like are excluded (OECD, 2007). b) Creative effort: UGC is "characterized by a degree of personal contribution" (Naab & Sehl, 2017, p.1258. Internet users must contribute to a content themselves (these creative works can be original photographs, audios, videos, or even thoughts expressed or comments) or at least collaborate with the existing contents to construct new ones, however, the minimum amount of personal contribution needed to qualify for UGC remains vague (Arnhold, 2010). Based on this requirement the mere reproductions of existing content are not considered as UGC (e.g., copying an existing newspaper article and posting it on a personal blog (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010), copying a part of a television show and posting it on an online video platform (OECD, 2007)). c) Creation outside of professional routines and practices: This characteristic distinguishes UGC from content produced by the traditional media producers. It may be argued that "the creation purpose of UGC is shifting from non-profit to profit" (Arnhold, 2010, p.30) because of its tremendous potential in influencing consumer behavior. OECD (2007) itself admits that commercialization of UCC has been a growing trend. Such term as "user-generated content marketing" has become typical for the effort of marketers to try to engage consumers by making use of UGC. However, despite the fact that commercialization of UGC is an undeniable trend, it is necessary to maintain this requirement to differentiate UGC from marketing-generated content or organization-generated content (OECD, 2007). The third criterion proposed by OECD (2007) that requires UGC to be independent from commercial purpose calls for a reconsideration on the source of UGC. In the case of professionals who create content outside their primary employment, for instance, a journalist writes about his hobby in his free time, then this content can still be deemed as UGC. Thus, any Internet users should be reckoned with UGC creators as long as they build content without commercial purpose regardless they are professional media producers or not.
On the basis of the above approaches and discussion, the three characteristics of UGC offered by OECD (2007) will be applied for the purpose of this study because they reflect the fundamental attributes shared by the numerous and various content types published by the Internet users (Ochoa & Duval, 2008), however, the title of the third characteristic will be replace by "free from commercial purpose" to better serve its requirement.

Comparison between eWOM and UGC
A comparison between the characteristics of eWOM and UGC is presented in table 5-1. Based on the identified characteristics of eWOM and UGC, it can be said that these two concepts share similar features: First, both eWOM and UGC are information dissemination processes as once the information is made publicly available, it is an information dissemination per se. Second, there is a high possibility that the creators and receivers of eWOM and UGC are strangers to each other because within web 2.0 platforms, content is shared for an undetermined number of recipients, the message senders present content in cyberspace without knowing who is reviewing the information and vice versa (Tham et al., 2013). Third, eWOM and UGC must meet the publication requirement that requires the content to be publicized to a selected group or an uncertain number of people through publicly accessible transmission media on the Internet. To the other extreme, there are dimensions that are not attribute to both eWOM and UGC: The first distinction that may be identified between eWOM and UGC is that of creative effort. Smith et al., (2012) state that the difference between eWOM and UGC depends on whether the content is generated by users or only conveyed by users. A content in order to be regarded as UGC must be a pure creative product or at least a hybrid form combining self-made work with existing content. Conversely, besides generating new information such as writing reviews or comments, merely sharing or forwarding amateur or professional-produced contents pertaining to commercial entities can also be considered as an action of generating eWOM. The second distinctive feature that discriminates between eWOM and UGC refers to content scope. Whilst regarding to commercial entities such as a product, service, brand or company is one the most striking characteristics of eWOM, such criterion is neither directly nor indirectly mentioned in the definitions of UGC, in other words, UGC has no boundary in terms of content scope. The third and final attribute that distinguishes eWOM and UGC concerns being "free from commercial purpose". A content is deemed as UGC if it is generated outside an institutional or commercial market context, in the meantime, eWOM is not impacted by such criterion.
To sum up, it can be said that UGC and eWOM are two closely related concepts with overlapping attributes. However, they possess significant different features that make it impossible to use these two concepts interchangeably. The relation between UGC and eWOM can be depicted as in figure 5-1.

Contribution and Implications
This article contributes to the understanding of eWOM and UGC in several ways. First, it raises the importance to clearly differentiate between closely-related academic concepts in order to avoid academic problems at the very first stage of studies (e.g., researchers who study the motivations to generate eWOM or UGC may gain inaccurate results if they confuse between eWOM and UGC). Second, it enriches the existing literature by identifying four characteristics that represent eWOM. Particularly, eWOM is an information dissemination process, the relationships between eWOM providers and receivers are little known, the content of eWOM pertains to commercial entities and eWOM must be online available. Most importantly, this study has proven that eWOM and UGC are two distinctive concepts with conspicuous different attributes in spite of sharing similarities. This is valuable information for those whose studied objects are related to eWOM or UGC as it lays the ground for identifying a spectrum of eWOM or UGC, determining their production motivations, exploring their influences on consumer behavior, etc. By and large, this article advances our knowledge and understanding of eWOM and UGC, and underpins future researches appertaining to these two concepts.

Limitations, Future research and Conclusion
This study is subject to certain limitations that need to be addressed in future research. While the concepts of eWOM and UGC were well elaborated, the motivation to generate eWOM and UGC have not been taken under consideration. This highlights the need for further investigation of impetus of eWOM and UGC, thereby more information about the discrepancy or similarity between the two concepts may be uncovered. Additionally, eWOM and UGC are likely to evolve over time due to the continuous development of intelligent web services and new Internet-based software applications, in consequence, future studies could reexamine the concepts of eWOM and UGC and their relation based on the change of technology. What is more, it will be interesting for future researches to deeply analyze how eWOM and UGC are commercialized and its effects on consumer behavior.
In conclusion, this study seeks to answer the question "Is it possible for eWOM and UGC to be used interchangeably?" by elaborating their definitions to identify their characteristics, based on which a comparison between the two concepts were implemented. It has been found that eWOM and UGC possess parallel features: information dissemination, potentially unknown provider and receiver relationships, and online availability. On the other side, UGC owns features that eWOM does not: UGC requires user's personal contribution in its contents whilst eWOM merely requires content conveyance by user, UGC has no limit in respect of content scope whereas eWOM is posited to be related to commercial entity, and UGC is required to be independent from commercial purpose while eWOM is not. Overall, findings of this study support the viewpoint of Hautz et al. ( 2014) and Smith et al. (2012) that eWOM and UGC are two separate concepts and as a result they cannot be used interchangeably.