Can consumers be persuaded on brand microblogs? An empirical study

Building upon the persuasion theory in the social psychology literature, this study investigates how companies can use microblogging services to influence consumers’ participation and brand loyalty. We develop and empirically test our research model using an online survey in China. Our findings show that persuasion factors, including information quality, perceived similarity, and source credibility, increase community commitment. Perceived similarity and source credibility exhibit bias effects on information quality. Community commitment affects participation and brand loyalty, which is also influenced by participation. We expect that this research can contribute to the existing literature and provide marketers with important practical suggestions.     

The impact of online community position on online game continuance intention: Do game knowledge and community size matter?

This study attempts to investigate how a player's position in an online gaming community leads to his or her continuance intention toward a Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) from the perspective of social capital theory. Using subjective and objective data collected from 340 players in a representative MMOG, our results reveal that community position significantly affects community trust and perceived social value, which in turn positively influence MMOG continuance intention. Furthermore, this study provides support for the moderating effects of game knowledge and community size on the proposed model. This study concludes with research limitations and theoretical and managerial implications.     

Community engagement and online word of mouth: An empirical investigation

How customer engagement in a firm’s social media marketing platform ? online brand community ? might affect word-of-mouth behavior is an open research issue as well as a vital business problem in e-commerce. To this end, we collected a set of longitudinal data that include community engagement behavior, e-commerce transactions, and customers’ post-purchase reviews. Using a control function approach, we find that consumer engagement in a brand community not only increases the likelihood of generating post-purchase reviews but also increases the likelihood of posting positive online reviews. Furthermore, we find that customer tenure has a positive moderating effect.     

Positive and negative aspects of online community cultivation: Implications for online stores’ relationship management

We investigated how online community building might affect the development of relationships with customers of online stores. Adopting social identification and relationship marketing perspectives, we examined the positive and negative aspects of online community cultivation and tested the meditating mechanisms involved in member participation processes. A survey-based study, conducted with 913 online consumers, revealed that community interaction can lead to consumer power through community identification and relationship investments. Furthermore, we found that perceived e-tailer support negatively affected the relationship between identification and consumer power. We concluded with a discussion of the key managerial and research implications of our findings.     

Consumer behavior in online game communities: A motivational factor perspective

The concept of online communities has been used to improve customers’ loyalty in recent years. While studies on transaction community such as online auction have received more attention in the literature, entertainment community such as online game has seldom been addressed. This study applies the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and modifies the technology acceptance model (TAM) to propose a research model. An empirical study involving 356 subjects was conducted to test this model. The results indicate that customer loyalty is influenced by perceived enjoyment, social norms and preference. Perceived cohesion has an indirect impact on loyalty. In addition, the finding’s practical implication suggests that community managers must overcome the problems users encounter, including suffering from an unstable system, malicious players and grief players.     

The mediator role of self-disclosure and moderator roles of gender and social anxiety in the relationship between Chinese adolescents’ online communication and their real-world social relationships

Based on theory and previous research, we examined relationships among gender, social anxiety, self-disclosure, quality of real-world friendships and online communication by Chinese adolescent Internet users. Results indicated that online communication and self-disclosure are not related to quality of friendship, and online communication is positively related to self-disclosure. For adolescent boys and adolescents with high social anxiety, online communication can explain more variance in users’ self-disclosure, indicating that gender and social anxiety moderate the relationship between online communication and online self-disclosure.     

Exploring the effect of user engagement in online brand communities: Evidence from Twitter

Social media such as forums, blogs and microblogs has been increasingly used for public information sharing and opinions exchange nowadays. It has changed the way how online community interacts and somehow has led to a new trend of engagement for online retailers especially on microblogging websites such as Twitter. In this study, we investigated the impact of online retailers' engagement with the online brand communities on users' perception of brand image and service. Firstly, we analysed the overall sentiment trends of different brands and the patterns of engagement between companies and customers using the collected tweets posted on a popular social media platform, Twitter. Then, we studied how different types of engagements affect customer sentiments. Our analysis shows that engagement has an effect on sentiments that associate with brand image, perception and customer service of the online retailers. Our findings indicate that the level, length, type and attitude of retailers' engagement with social media users have a significant impact on their sentiments. Based on our results, we derived several important managerial and practical implications.     

In Face on Facebook: Brooklyn's Drag Community and Sociotechnical Practices of Online Communication

Recently, Brooklyn has seen an explosion of drag culture, with dozens of performers taking the stage in any given week. Social media plays a vital role for members of this community, simultaneously allowing self‐promotion and community solidarity. Drawing on focus group interviews, we analyze the communication practices of Brooklyn's drag performers, examining both the advantages and drawbacks of social media platforms. Using conceptual frameworks of faceted identity and relational labor, our discussion focuses on affordances and constraints of multifaceted identity in online contexts and theories of seamful design. We contend that by analyzing online communication practices of drag performers, it becomes possible to identify gaps between embedded ideologies of mainstream social media technologies and the localized values of outsider communities.     

Business engagement on Twitter: a path analysis

Social media services, such as Twitter, enable commercial businesses to participate actively in online word-of-mouth communication. In this project, we examined the potential influences of business engagement in online word-of-mouth communication on the level of consumers’ engagement and investigated the trajectories of a business’ online word-of-mouth message diffusion in the Twitter community. We used path analysis to examine 164,478 tweets from 96,725 individual Twitter users with regards to nine brands during a 5-week study period. We operationalized business engagement as the amount of online word-of-mouth messages from brand and the number of consumers the brand follows. We operationalized consumers’ engagement as the number of online word-of-mouth messages from consumers both connecting to the brand and having no connection with the brand as well as the number of consumers following the brand. We concluded that the business engagement on Twitter relates directly to consumers’ engagement with online word-of-mouth communication. In addition, retweeting, as an explicit way to show consumers’ response to business engagement, indicates that the influence only reaches consumers with a second-degree relationship to the brand and that the life cycle of a tweet is generally 1.5 to 4 hours at most. Our research has critical implications in terms of advancing the understanding of the business’s role in the online word-of-mouth communication and bringing insight to the analytics of social networks and online word-of-mouth message diffusion patterns.     

Understanding online consumers’ purchase intentions: a contribution from social network theory

There is a dynamic and interconnected international setting shaped by the power of the Internet and social media. To gain more consumers, understand their behaviours and needs, and maintain closest relationships with them, businesses should understand how consumers behave in social media and how they vary in their purchase intentions. In the scope of the study, we integrate the social network theory and the theory of planned behaviour to analyse online consumers’ purchase intentions and to investigate their structural positions by analysing their friendships in social networks. We target Twitter users to conduct analysis due to Twitter's popularity in use, market penetration, and opportunity to work with open-source data. This study contributes to a better theoretical understanding of online consumers’ purchase intentions by integrating multiple theoretical perspectives. It expands the literature by considering both online consumers’ friendship network in Twitter and their individual online purchasing intentions. The study also guides e-marketers to design proper strategies for potential and current consumers and target the right sets of people in the social networks.     

Psychological empowerment and user satisfaction: Investigating the influences of online brand community participation

The exponential growth of online brand communities has created a platform where empowered consumers can share knowledge and experiences and participate in community activities. Drawing from psychological empowerment theory, this study proposes a comprehensive framework integrating both social and functional views to investigate the determinants that enhance psychological empowerment and user satisfaction, which consequently influence online brand community participation. By shedding light on the explanatory path routes and highlighting the underexplored and distinctive role of psychological empowerment, this study provides theoretical contributions to illustrate how an enabling environment can be cultivated to drive consumer participation in brand value co-creation.     

The effects of social media based brand communities on brand community markers,value creation practices,brand trust and brand loyalty

Social media based brand communities are communities initiated on the platform of social media. In this article, we explore whether brand communities based on social media (a special type of online brand communities) have positive effects on the main community elements and value creation practices in the communities as well as on brand trust and brand loyalty. A survey based empirical study with 441 respondents was conducted. The results of structural equation modeling show that brand communities established on social media have positive effects on community markers (i.e., shared consciousness, shared rituals and traditions, and obligations to society), which have positive effects on value creation practices (i.e., social networking, community engagement, impressions management, and brand use). Such communities could enhance brand loyalty through brand use and impression management practices. We show that brand trust has a full mediating role in converting value creation practices into brand loyalty. Implications for practice and future research opportunities are discussed.     

A longitudinal study of leader influence in sustaining an online community

Previous research suggests that online leaders play an important role in sustaining community activities. Although the research has contributed to our understanding of how leaders develop effective ways to operate a community, most only provide a snapshot view of online leadership, thus paying little attention to changes in leaders in a communal context. In this study, we adopt the theory of networked influence to investigate the dynamics of online leadership using a longitudinal analysis. Data were collected from an online community in operation for 10 years. By conducting social network analysis using qualitative methods, we identified several types of emerging and coexisting online leadership, i.e., responsive expert leader, multiboard connectors, and social bond leader. The community’s sustainability did not rely on the same leaders throughout its temporal development but rather a “relay event” involving passing on the baton among different leaders with their specific leadership styles, which had a significant positive impact on the sustainability of user participation.     

Consumer's decision to shop online: The moderating role of positive informational social influence

While much of the current literature tends to focus on the direct effect of social influence on consumer online shopping behavior, our study drew heavily on social influence theory and argued for an alternative theory focusing on the moderating role of social influence. In particular, we explored how positive messages in online discussion forums may affect consumers’ decisions to shop online. We used a laboratory experiment in which the treatment group was required to read positive messages about online shopping experience in an online discussion forum. Positive social influence was found to reinforce the relationship between beliefs about and attitude toward online shopping, as well as the relationship between attitude and intention to shop. We believe our alternative theory provides new insight into the complex processes through which social influence is brought to bear on consumers’ online shopping decisions. Implications of our work are discussed.     

Online community and the personal diary: Writing to connect at Open Diary

Open Diary was the first online diary service to be created, in existence from 1998 to 2014. An ethnographic case study was performed in 2006–2008 to explore community-creation on the site, using the theory of sense of virtual community (Blanchard & Markus, 2002, 2004) to analyse site practices and the member experience. The study describes a cohesive community based on a culture of support, empathy and open sharing of personal lives enabled by anonymity and privacy protections. The article discusses these results in terms of community-creation online and compares Open Diary to current forms of life writing online, blogging in particular, arguing that it was the members’ and designers’ understanding and experience of the traditional pen-and-paper diary that enabled the building of a unique community on the site, creating an experience that is perhaps no longer possible to replicate due to the social and cultural changes that have occurred on the web since 1998.     

Framing norms in online communities

One problem many organizations deal with is how to effectively govern their online communities. Unlike employees, online community members often respond poorly to formal control mechanisms. This study develops theory on how moderators can build norms in online communities using frame analysis theory from the social movements literature. Through a case analysis of two communities focused on discussing recreational drugs, our findings demonstrate that norm formation is influenced by two phenomena: (1) norm acceptance, and (2) norm transience. Norm acceptance requires that moderators be consistent in their expression of norms. To a lesser extent, moderators must be credible in their expression of norms. If these things occur, the community will accept the norms. Norm transience, on the other hand, occurs when moderators are not sensitive to the community identity. If accepted norms are not aligned with community identity, they will be dropped by the community within one or two years.     

社会语义网社区发现标签传递算法研究

针对在线社会网络的特性和现有社区发现算法的不足,提出一种基于语义网技术的在线社会网络社区发现算法ISLPA(Improved Semantic Label Propagation Algorithm),即一种适用于大规模在线社会网络的社区发现和标识算法。ISLPA算法对语义标签算法SemTagP进行改进,在社区划分过程中将在线社会网络视为有向加权图,通过语义网和社会化标签技术,充分结合在线社会网络丰富的语义信息和网络拓扑特征进行社区划分。ISLPA算法不需要预先设定社区数量和大小,就能实现社区发现,并能根据标签自动识别划分的社区。算法接近线性时间复杂度,具有较高的效率。通过实验表明,ISLPA算法能有效划分和标识真实在线社会网络。     

Brand followers’ retweeting behavior on Twitter: How brand relationships influence brand electronic word-of-mouth

Twitter, the popular microblogging site, has received increasing attention as a unique communication tool that facilitates electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). To gain greater insight into this potential, this study investigates how consumers’ relationships with brands influence their engagement in retweeting brand messages on Twitter. Data from a survey of 315 Korean consumers who currently follow brands on Twitter show that those who retweet brand messages outscore those who do not on brand identification, brand trust, community commitment, community membership intention, Twitter usage frequency, and total number of postings.     

The Identification and Influence of Social Roles in a Social Media Product Community

This research focuses on the identification of social roles and an investigation of their influence in online context. Relying on a systemic approach for role conceptualization, we investigate member's activity, shared content and position in the network within a consumer to consumer social media‐based community (SMC) around a product. This investigation led to the identification of ten core roles, based on three key elements: object of interest (product, practice, and community), main contribution type (sharing information and seeking information), individual orientation (factual, emotional). We propose an explanation about how these roles, through their positioning, participate in the community dynamics and how they contribute to the creation and diffusion of cookery as a social practice, shaping the periphery around this practice.     

Effects of consumer visit to online community and product channel on local sales of large consumer goods: Evidence from real estate industry

Online intermediaries have become important information sources for consumers’ purchase decision making. However, the economic values of consumer visits to two online intermediaries, namely, online community and product channel, have not been well studied. By collecting a dataset on consumer visits from a large real estate website to match with local offline housing sales data, we empirically explore the respective, relative, and interaction effects of consumer visits to online communities and product channels on sales of large consumer goods. We control for relevant factors, account for potential endogeneity issues, and perform various robustness checks to validate the consistency of our findings. Our results show that consumer visits to online communities have a more significant effect than those to product channels in driving sales. However, the interaction effect of consumer visits to these two online intermediaries on sales is negative. We also find that consumer website-related experience has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between consumer visits to product channels and sales. Our findings provide important theoretical contributions and managerial implications.