Consumer experience sharing in online social media - Academy of Marketing Conference

Consumer experience sharing in online social media:

Individual characteristics and consumption experience

Dr. Zhibin Lin - Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK

Prof. Mauro de Oliveira – Centro Universitário da FEI, São Paulo, Brazil

AM2014 – Marketing Dimensions: People, Places and spaces.

NewCastleBusiness School

Introduction

Consumer experience sharing in online social media: Individual characteristics and consumption experience

• Increasing popularity of online social media

• More consumers are now using online social media for seeking consumption advice

• Understanding the factors driving users to voluntarily contribute knowledge and share information in online social media is important for both theory and practice

Aims and objectives

• There are two gaps in the literature. – First, there is a lack of considerations

of individual attributes (Wiertz & de Ruyter, 2007). Individual attributes such as consumer innovativeness may help researchers and marketers understand why consumers contribute their experience and knowledge in online media.


1

Aims and objectives– Second, there is little research into how

technology use experience influences customer’s participation in experience sharing in online social media, despite the extensive research on the impact of customer satisfaction and trust on positive word of mouth in the relationship marketing literature (Briggs & Grisaffe, 2010; Brown, Barry, Dacin, & Gunst, 2005; Garbarino & Johnson, 1999; Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, & Gremler, 2002; Keaveney, 1995; Ladhari, 2007; Matos & Rossi, 2008; Morgan & Hunt, 1994).


2

Aims and objectives• Therefore, this study attempts to fill the

above two gaps in the literature by developing a theoretical model testing the impact of consumer individual attributes and consumption experience on voluntary experience sharing in online social media.


Conceptual Model/Hypotheses


H1: Higher levels of innovativeness lead to higher levels of experience sharing in online social media.



H2: Higher levels of subjective knowledge lead to higher levels of experience sharing in online social media.



H3: Subjective knowledge partially mediates the relationship between innovativeness and experience sharing in online social media.



H4: Higher levels of perceived ease of consumption lead to higher levels of experience sharing in online social media.



H5: Higher levels of perceived usefulness of consumption lead to higher levels of experience sharing in online social media



H6: Perceived usefulness partially mediates the relationships between perceived ease of use and experience sharing in online social media.



H7: Higher levels of consumption trust lead to higher levels of experience sharing in online consumption communities.

Method• Web-based survey of airline passenger

self-service check-in experience using internet.

• Participants were recruited from a national frequent flyer forum in China.

• Only those who have previously used online flight check-in service were qualified to participate.


Sample ProfileSample (n=212):

• 66% male and 34% female. • The majority of the respondents (89%) were in the

age bracket between 30 and 39 years old, • Majority (91%) have a tertiary education

qualification. • They were mainly white-collar workers such as

company managers (40%) or professionals (35%). This profile matches the general profile of the frequent

flyer forum’s users.


Results…



The results show that high reliability.

Convergent

validity can also be established.


All item loadings on the respective construct are higher than others, another indication of discriminant validity!

Results


To further confirm the discriminant validity, this table shows that:

Squared roots of AVE are higher than any pair of construct correlations.


The path coefficients of the direct effects and t-values are also presented in this figure. The results show that:

1. Consumer innovativeness has a strong impact on experience sharing, supporting H1.

2. Support was also found for H2, which suggests the positive relationships between knowledge and experience sharing.



3. The relationship between perceived ease of use and experience sharing was not significant, rejecting H4.

4. Consistent with H5, perceived usefulness has positive relationship with experience sharing, but the relationship is rather weak.



5. The path coefficient from trust to experience sharing is not significant, thus H7 was not supported.


1. Innovativeness has both a significant direct effect and a total effect on experience sharing through knowledge, thus confirms

that knowledge performs a partial mediating role between innovativeness and experience sharing, supporting H3.


2. Perceived ease of use has a significant yet weak total effect on experience sharing, and given that it has no significant direct effect on experience sharing, the effect is fully mediated through perceived

usefulness, thus supporting a revised H6 as a full mediation hypothesis.

ContributionsConsumer experience sharing in online social media: Individual characteristics and consumption experience

Contributions1a. The study provides strong evidence that consumer innovativeness has both direct effect and indirect effect on experience sharing in online social media through self perception of knowledge.

The evidence indicates that consumer voluntary experience sharing is driven out of intrinsic motive of self enhancement (Packard & Wooten, 2013; Wasko & Faraj, 2005).


2. ‘Perceived ease of use’ and ‘perceived usefulness’ predict experience sharing, with ‘perceived usefulness’ performs a full mediation role, yet the relationships are somewhat weak.


3. Contrary to expectations, higher levels of consumption trust did not lead to higher levels of experience sharing in online consumption communities.


Implications for Marketing Strategy


Managers should try to identify innovative consumers to encourage their use of service technology.


1

Online social media can be both repositories of consumption knowledge and electronic word of mouth.

Firms could collaborate with online social media and direct their customers to those communities for knowledge seeking and service support so as to significantly reduce service costs.

Firms could also set up their own online community sites and help customers create and disseminate their knowledge.


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Managers could consider assign recognition status to expert users, such as silver, gold, platinum, diamond members, just like those grades in frequent flyer programs.


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Firms should aim to provide customers with exciting consumption experience, as mediocre service is unlikely to trigger customers to share their experience in online social media.


4

Limitation and future research


The context of this study was limited to a single consumption subject - online flight check-in.

Future research could compare the research model in other consumption contexts.


Further research on online social media will generate fruitful findings by integrating such predictors as consumption emotions (excitement, regret, frustration, etc.), personality attributes such as risk aversion, and outcome variables such as online opinion seeking and subsequent consumption decision behavior.


Finally, a more rigorous sampling technique and larger size could help improve the representativeness of the sample and generalization of the findings.


Thank you for your attention

Any questions?

Dr. Zhibin Lin - [email protected]

Prof. Mauro de Oliveira – [email protected]


mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Date post:	21-Jun-2015
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Consumer experience sharing in online social media - Academy of Marketing Conference

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