The antecedents and consequences of social interactions in firm-sponsored community : a social network perspective

The firm-sponsored online brand communities thrive on value-adding interactions. Existing studies, however, ignore the reasons for social interaction. A sufficient understanding of the factors driving social interactions and ultimately affecting community outcomes is still lacking. Our research examines how social interactions occur and influence consumer purchase behavior from a social network perspective, drawing on the theories of planned behavior and homophily. Our exponential random graph (ERG) models show that consumer-specific traits (e.g., deal proneness) and similarity on tenure, location, and deal proneness positively drive social interactions, while similarity on age, premium-product propensity does not. Our two-stage least square (2SLS) regressions find that social interactions among co-located consumers strongly influence purchase behavior. Our study contributes to the social interaction literature by emphasizing the types of social interactions and their antecedents and consequences with various consumer purposes. Our findings open a new research direction and novel business applications in firm-sponsored community management.