Examining customer information sharing behavior in online social shopping communities

: a social capital and social network perspective

Abstract

Online social shopping communities are a special form of social media that offer customers a fertile ground for expressing their opinions and exchanging product information, thus having the potential to transform the way online customers acquire knowledge in everyday life. Given the tremendous customer information sharing opportunities in online social shopping communities, this study explores the factors that drive customer information sharing behavior in online social shopping communities. Many academic studies have focused on the impact of customer knowledge (e.g., in the form of electronic word of mouth) on customer purchasing decisions. However, customer motivations in sharing information in online social shopping communities have received less attention. Compared with traditional online communities, online social shopping communities provide directed social network features that facilitate the formation of various relationships among customers. Specifically, customers can be the 'following' of fellow customers (i.e., outdegree tie) and/or 'being followed' by other customers (i.e., indegree tie) in an online social shopping community. In this study, we pay special attention to the directed social network features of online social shopping communities and explore the moderating role of directed social network features in customer information sharing behavior. This study advances theoretical understanding on information sharing by exploring the influence of the three key dimensions of social capital (i.e., cognitive, relational, and structural) building on directed social network. This study postulates that directed social network features (i.e., incoming and outgoing proximities) play a moderating role in customer information sharing behavior in online social shopping communities. The research model is empirically tested by analyzing online survey, network and behavioral usage data from 1,177 customers of an online social shopping community for a period of three months. The results indicate that cognitive, relational, and structural dimensions of capital are positively associated with customer information sharing behavior. Furthermore, the results show that incoming proximity exerts a negative moderating effect, whereas outgoing proximity has a positive moderating effect. This research has four significant contributions. First, as previous work has primarily focused on customer information sharing in traditional online communities, the present study examines such behavior in the context of a new and important social media, that is, online social shopping communities. Second, this study extends the social capital theory by examining the contingent effects of the directed social network feature. It examines how directed social network features affect relationship between social capital and customer information sharing behavior. These extensions provide a good understanding of the insignificant results in existing literature and enhance the generalizability of the conclusions. Third, this study uses subjective (e.g., surveys) and objective data (e.g., actual behaviors) to test the proposed research framework in a longitudinal setting, unlike previous studies that collected data primarily through subjective measures (e.g., surveys or experiments). The combined method research design is helpful to broaden understandings and comprehensions to the proposed research questions, and provides the opportunity to gain valuable insights from different perspectives to obtain a complete view of the phenomenon. This study intends to provide additional theoretical and empirical investigation aimed at advancing the understanding on customer information sharing behavior in online social shopping communities.

Date of Award	2 Oct 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Kwok On Matthew LEE (Supervisor)