The Influence Of User Interaction And Participation In Social Media On The Consumption Intention Of Niche Products

The potential of social media in helping businesses generate commercial values has attracted significant attention from researchers and practitioners alike in recent years. An important characteristic differentiating social media from traditional media is the central role of user interaction and participation in generating content that makes the platform sustainable and potentially profitable. It has been noted that social media may be particularly apt in promoting the sales of niche products, due to the tendency of consumers to generate reviews and discuss about such products that raise awareness about them. In this study, we build on and extend the extant literature to investigate how patterns of social interaction among the consumers in discussing about a niche product influence the overall level of participation, which in turn enhances consumption intention of the product. Through analyzing data from a social media site that allows consumers to comment on and discuss about books of philosophical genre (a niche product type), we show that the level of user participation can indeed have a significant positive effect on consumption intention. Furthermore, inclusiveness and betweenness centralization structures may enhance the participation level, but out-degree centralization has a detrimental effect. Implications for research and practice are discussed

Social network market: Storytelling on a web 2.0 original literature site

This article looks at a Chinese Web 2.0 original literature site, Qidian, in order to show the coevolution of market and non-market initiatives. The analytic framework of social network markets (Potts et al., 2008) is employed to analyse the motivations of publishing original literature works online and to understand the support mechanisms of the site, which encourage readers’ willingness to pay for user-generated content. The co-existence of socio-cultural and commercial economies and their impact on the successful business model of the site are illustrated in this case. This article extends the concept of social network markets by proposing the existence of a ripple effect of social network markets through convergence between PC and mobile internet, traditional and internet publishing, and between publishing and other cultural industries. It also examines the side effects of social network markets, and the role of market and non-market strategies in addressing the issues

Sustainable consumption: towards action and impact. : International scientific conference November 6th-8th 2011, Hamburg - European Green Capital 2011, Germany: abstract volume

This volume contains the abstracts of all oral and poster presentations of the international scientific conference „Sustainable Consumption – Towards Action and Impact“ held in Hamburg (Germany) on November 6th-8th 2011. This unique conference aims to promote a comprehensive academic discourse on issues concerning sustainable consumption and brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines. In modern societies, private consumption is a multifaceted and ambivalent phenomenon: it is a ubiquitous social practice and an economic driving force, yet at the same time, its consequences are in conflict with important social and environmental sustainability goals. Finding paths towards “sustainable consumption” has therefore become a major political issue. In order to properly understand the challenge of “sustainable consumption”, identify unsustainable patterns of consumption and bring forward the necessary innovations, a collaborative effort of researchers from different disciplines is needed

PROFILING SOCIAL MEDIA TOURISTS USING LITERATURE DURING 2015-2019: CRIMINAL PROFILING METHOD

With the continuous development of mobile commerce and the Internet, social media has deeply penetrated people’s lives and fundamentally changed the way of searching, reading and using travel-related information. With this backdrop, this research studied social media tourists (SMTs) who share or acquire information related to the hospitality and tourism on social media platforms. Based on 271 empirical articles retrieved from major databases and top hospitality and tourism journals in the recent five years from 2015 to 2019, this research developed a profiling framework about SMTs using criminal profiling method. The findings showed the possibility of using the criminal profiling method to analyze SMTs and provided a holistic personal, social-psychological, and behavioral profile of SMTs. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed

Managing technological transitions: prospects, places, publics and policy

Transition management (TM) approaches have generated considerable interest in academic and policy circles in recent years (Kemp and Loorbach, 2005; Rotmans and Kemp, 2003). In terms of a loose definition, a ‘transition can be defined as a gradual, continuous process of structural change within a society or culture’ (Rotmans et al, 2001, p.2). The development of TM, much of which has occurred within the context of the Netherlands, may be seen as a response to the complexities, uncertainties and problems which confront many western societies, in organising ‘sustainably’ various aspects of energy, agricultural, water, transport and health systems of production and consumption. Problems such as pollution, congestion, the vulnerability of energy or water supplies and so on are seen as systemic and entwined or embedded in a series of social, economic, political, cultural and technological relationships. The systemic nature of many of these problems highlights the involvement - in the functioning of a particular system and any subsequent transition - of multiple actors or ‘stakeholders’ across different local, national and international scales of activity. With this in mind, such problems become difficult to ‘solve’ and ‘solutions’ are seen to require systemic innovation rather than individual or episodic responses. The point being that ‘these problems are system inherent and… the solution lies in creating different systems or transforming existing ones’ (Kemp and Loorbach, 2005, p.125). In this paper we critically engage with and build upon transitions approaches to address their ‘applicability’ in the context of the UK. In doing this the paper addresses the prospective potential of transitions approaches, but also their relative neglect of places and publics. Through developing an argument which addresses the strengths and ‘gaps’ of transitions approaches we also analyse the resonances and dissonances between three themes – cities and regions, public participation and national hydrogen strategy – in the transitions literature and the UK policy context

Exploiting the impact of user-generated content on brand coolness and consumer brand engagement: A text-mining approach

This dissertation aims to comprehend the impact of deploying user-generated content (UGC) campaigns on consumers’ perceptions of brand coolness and consumer brand engagement. The trending concept of coolness in the beauty industry is studied through electronic word of mouth to understand if brands encouraging their users to post about their brand experiences leads to consumers perceiving them as cool and engaging more positively through those publications. The methodology in use is a netnography, along with a sentiment analysis technique. The analysis consisted in observing the interactions, incited by a user-generated content campaign led by a prestigious beauty brand - Drunk Elephant, between the brand and its online brand community on the social network Instagram for one year to avoid seasonal phenomena. The comments were retrieved using a text-mining tool and analyzed through Natural Language Processing according to their sentiment polarity, and trending topics identified. The data retrieved from the year of 2019 amounted to 67 321 interactions. Results show consumers’ perceptions of coolness can be positively influenced by adopting UGC campaigns, which can also lead to positive consumer brand engagement. Not only do these campaigns generate brand awareness, but they stimulate brand community’s expansion and influence consumers’ perceptions towards the brand. Beauty brands seeking to grow their status of coolness and consumer interactions should consider implementing user-generated content campaigns, as keeping up with the trends in the market is not only regarded as cool but is necessary to remain relevant in the ever-changing marketplace beauty has proven itself to be.Esta dissertação visa entender o impacto da utilização de campanhas de conteúdo gerado pelos utilizadores nas perceções dos consumidores da coolness de uma marca e interações entre marca e consumidores. A tendência coolness na indústria da beleza é examinada através de electronic word-of-mouth para compreender se encorajar os utilizadores a partilhar conteúdo sobre as suas experiências com as marcas, os leva a pensar na marca como cool e a interagir mais com essas publicações. A metodologia usada é uma análise netnográfica em conjunto com uma técnica de análise sentimental. A análise foi conduzida sob interações textuais, incitadas pela campanha da marca de prestígio de beleza – Drunk Elephant, entre a marca e a sua comunidade online na rede social Instagram durante um ano para evitar fenómenos sazonais. Os comentários foram extraídos por text mining e analisados através de processamento de linguagem natural, tendo em conta a polaridade do seu sentimento, e tópicos mais frequentes identificados. Os dados retirados do ano de 2019 totalizaram 67 321 interações. Os resultados demonstram que as perceções de coolness do consumidor podem ser positivamente influenciadas adotando o uso destas campanhas e podem conduzir a interações positivas. Não só estas campanhas criam visibilidade para a marca, como encorajam a expansão da comunidade da marca e influenciam as perceções dos seus consumidores. Marcas na indústria da beleza que procuram aumentar a sua coolness e interações com os consumidores devem considerar implementar campanhas de conteúdo gerado pelos utilizadores, de maneira a manter-se atuais num mercado em constante transformação

An Investigation into Consumers’ Continued Social Shopping Intentions

Social shopping (s-shopping), a novel online shopping model which connects consumers and leverages collaborative efforts, has achieved initial success. However, the continued usage remains a serious issue. To explore the consumers’ intentions to continually participate in s-shopping activities, we reviewed literature on sustaining IS usage and s-shopping technical designs and built a research model. To test the hypotheses, an online survey of s-shopping users was conducted in a leading Chinese social network site, Sina Weibo. The results confirmed that consumers’ perceptions of the usefulness and enjoyment of using the s-shopping system are critical predictors of their persistent usage. Moreover, informational social support from the virtual group also encourages ongoing participation in the collaborative shopping activities. In addition, personalization, social interaction and social presence support of the s-shopping system are discovered as remarkable antecedents of consumers’ usefulness, enjoyment and social support perceptions of the system. This paper fills in the research gap of s-shopping continuance and enriches s-shopping literature

A META-ANALYTIC REVIEW OF SOCIAL MEDIA STUDIES

Social media such as social networking sites, blogs, micro-blogs, Wikis, are increasingly and widely used in our daily lives. In the information system (IS) discipline, social media have become a hot research area and draw the attention of many scholars. The paper systematically reviewed social media studies published in Association for Information Systems (AIS) listed top 20 journals from 2009 to 2013. The publication time, journal preferences, research objects and research topics are discussed. Generally, the current social media studies including four areas, namely user, management, technology and information. Each area has distinct focuses and topics. By thoroughly analyzing the research topics, the authors formulate our projections and recommendations for future social media studies

Product Launch in a Declining Environment: The Blu-ray Disc – Opportunities and Struggle

Increasingly ICT-based virtual products are challenging physical products and markets. Obsolescence has become a real effect for an augmented number of established industries due to the facilitation of access, consumption, and permanent, immediate availability, which dematerialised products provide. Once again, Schumpeter’s Wind of Creative Destruction intensifies organisations’ permanent struggle for survival (1950). This paper presents long-term research in the optical disc industry, which has presented the optical disc format of Blu-ray as its latest innovation. It is an example of how an established industry launches a new product for finding new opportunities, but fights desperately against market resistance. The degree of innovation, the Blu-ray represents, may not be sufficient in the overarching battle of the physical place versus the virtual space (Kotler et al. 2002, Lam. 2004, Lamont et al. 1993, Scardigli et al. 1988). As the US market research institute In-Stat highlights, the optical disc market has declined for the 10th year in sequence (Kaufhold. 2010, IFPI. 2010). Sufficient evidence is available that the replication industry of optical discs may be confronted with an endgame scenario. The market climate may already be too hostile to support this industry’s desire for a renewal of consumers’ acceptance of the physical product, here the Blu-ray disc, and to create new market opportunities in the struggle against the industry’s potential obsolescence (Harrigan et al. 1983). Despite strong efforts of promotion and powerful market approaches, the Blu-ray disc could not find inroads to markets yet making this format sustainably successful. Evidence is that after a short period of time, Blu-ray discs’ available manufacturing capacities outperform consumers’ demand by >30%, consumer and replication prices fall sharply and many of the Home Entertainment’s content providers have little or no use for this format being a commodity and based on mass production (dvd-intelligence. 2010a, Kaufhold. 2010, Killer-Korff. 2010). Therefore, as research among the replication industry indicates, it presently seems more as though the Blu-ray format may not fulfil this industry’s needs and, with reference to Abernathy et al.’s research, may not lead to the renewal of industrial dynamics in a declining marketplace (1983, 1984). Further explanation for reasons can be found in the theories of innovation based on Utterback’s, Christensen’s and Christensen et al.’s studies of disruptive and discontinuous innovation (1996, 2003, 2003, 2004). Following the paper presented at the Sixteenth Annual South Dakota International Business Conference, this paper presents research about the Blu-ray format’s market problems. The introduction of the Transilience Organisation Innovation Map provided a conceptual approach for the initial explanation of the underlying reasons (Oestreicher. 2009). Research among European replication firms since concludes for Blu-ray that innovation in technology alone is not sufficient, when innovation’s second stream of market linkages is involved (Abernathy et al. 1983, 1984). The paper presents explanations, why the Blu-ray disc may not be sufficiently strong to support the replication industry in overcoming the odds impacting their strategic opportunities in a declining and eventually disruptive environment (Lamont et al. 1993, Yoo. 1992). The research methods applied are grounded theory and case study (Goulding. 2002, Charmaz. 2009, Eisenhardt. 1989, Davies. 2006). The overall intention of this long-term research is to contribute to a theory, which may also be relevant for other industries, like the publishing industry, whose struggle against dematerialisation of content is presently starting (Picard. 2003). Key Words: Radical vs. marginal innovation, Ideal Final Result, endgame strategies, theories of innovation, Blu-ra