Exploring how video digital storytelling builds relationship experiences

The purpose of the paper is to explore how digital storytelling enables a consumer relationship experience in online peer-to-peer communities. Within the value cocreation framework, digital storytelling is interpreted as an encounter communication practice where consumers adopt the role of storytellers and story receivers. This study adopts a qualitative multimethod approach to investigate the meanings contained in video stories and the linkage to relationship experience. A case study based on the Airbnb’s social platforms was analyzed through the degrees-of-freedom analysis instrument (DFA) and through a systematic dimensional qualitative research called BASIC IDS (an acronym for behavior, affect, sensation, imagery, cognition, interpersonal relations, drugs, and sociocultural factors) to yield psychological valuable insights into the multidimensional construct of consumer relationship experience. The analysis unveils that, within the social media realm, storytelling enables rational, emotional, and relationship experiences. A relationship experience occurs when members of peer-to-peer communities, not only are rationally and emotionally engaged by the story, but are also moved to action going beyond a vicarious role-taking process. Specifically, relatability, a shared sociocultural background, and the drug dimension conceptualize the consumer relationship experience. Implications build on the need for companies to enhance the power of stories through favoring consumers’ video making and integrating consumers’ flow of stories between multiple social media platforms.