General Discussion
In this paper, we analyzed how the use of human or corporate voice in brand communication influences consumers' responses towards the brand on social media. More specifically, we analyzed this influence in different contexts in which the tone of voice may have a positive or negative effect on a consumer's responses depending on its interaction with the consumer's context (namely, his/her consumer goal and his/her situational involvement with the service). From a theoretical contribution perspective, our investigation responds to a gap in the electronic commerce literature, i.e., the lack of constructs concerning the social aspects of communication between consumers and companies (Liang and Turban 2011). The concept of human voice is still underexplored in the marketing literature and it can address the effects of strategies with different degrees of personal or corporate tone of voice when communicating with customers. This work also contributes by highlighting circumstances likely to explain the disparate results of previous work about the effects of several factors associated with closeness and humanness in brand communication (for example, Steinmann, Mau, and Schramm-Klein 2015; Van Noort and Willemsen 2012). It is possible that different consumption situations in previous work were major conditioners of their results. As suggested by our findings, the use of human or corporate voice can interact with the consumer goals and the level of situational involvement. It is even possible that the tone of voice interacts with other consumption attributes not explored in this research that might have been a limitation of previous work's findings.
