Existing research demonstrates that industry competitiveness influences the effectiveness of marketing actions. However, limited scholarly attention has been paid to how service companies should communicate on social media under different levels of industry competitiveness. The current research seeks to address this gap in the literature by analyzing social media communication, brand impression, and financial data from two large samples of service companies and by employing state-of-the-art methods of machine learning. Study 1 demonstrates that industry competitiveness positively (negatively) moderates the impact of persuasive tone (volume) of social media communications on company value. We argue that these effects stem from investors’ expectations about the impact of these communication styles in facilitating differentiation and improving brand impressions in a congested competitive environment. Consistent with this mechanism, Study 2 reveals that as an industry becomes more cluttered, persuasive tone (volume) becomes more (less) effective in impacting consumers’ brand impressions. The findings provide important insights for service companies that operate under different levels of industry competitiveness.

现有研究表明，行业竞争力影响营销活动的有效性。然而，学术界对不同行业竞争力水平下服务公司应如何在社交媒体上进行沟通的关注有限。目前的研究旨在通过分析来自两个大型服务公司样本的社交媒体传播、品牌印象和财务数据，并采用最先进的机器学习方法来解决文献中的这一空白。研究 1 表明，行业竞争力正向（负向）调节社交媒体传播的说服力（音量）对公司价值的影响。我们认为，这些影响源于投资者对这些沟通方式在拥挤的竞争环境中促进差异化和改善品牌印象的影响的预期。与这一机制一致，研究 2 表明，随着行业变得更加混乱，有说服力的语气（音量）在影响消费者的品牌印象方面变得更加（更少）有效。这些发现为在不同行业竞争力水平下运营的服务公司提供了重要的见解。