The Effect of Marketer-Generated Content and User-Generated Content on Perceived Product Quality

User-generated content (UGC) and marketer-generated content (MGC) are two types of information facilitating consumers’ decision-making process in online markets. Among the prior research in MGC and UGC, limited attention has been paid to the impact of MGC textual content as well as the role of MGC and UGC interplay in online markets. To fill in the research gaps, in this paper, we first define four types of combined information of MGC and UGC. Then through the theoretical lens of signaling theory and the framework of hypothesis-testing theory, we hypothesize their impact on consumers’ perception of product quality and subsequent purchase intention. By putting forward an online experiment design to test our hypotheses, the paper intends to extend the MGC-UGC research in online markets and to reveal the antecedents of consumers’ perceived product quality from MGC-UGC interplay