Three essays on consumer behavior in Virtual Community: eWOM, online trust, and dynamic impacts on brandselection

published_or_final_versionabstractBusinessDoctoralDoctor of Philosoph

Understanding consumer-to-consumer interactions in virtual communities: The salience of reciprocity

Virtual communities (VCs) represent popular social environments in which people interact by exchanging resources such as information, ideas, and advice about their common interests. Existing research lacks an explication of why people help others in VCs and how such voluntary behaviors drive subsequent attitudes (VC commitment) and behavioral intentions (online co-shopping). This article adopts resource exchange theory to examine how two routes of interactivity (structural vs. experiential) influence reciprocity and affect commitment and co-shopping. Using a netnography study and an online survey, the authors confirm the significant effects of structural and experiential routes of interactivity on reciprocity. Reciprocity has critical effects on social system maintenance by enhancing commitment to the community and intention to co-shop. The results also identify partially mediated relationships among various variables, which suggest that the effects of the experiential route on VC commitment and co-shopping operate partly through reciprocity.Virtual community Reciprocity Resource exchange theory Interactivity Structural route Experiential route

Passion transfer across national borders

The transfer of a leader's passion to employees is crucial to successful innovation, but it becomes especially challenging when the organization becomes large and complex. This study examines both the antecedents and consequences of corporate leaders’ passion transfer in the context of multinational corporations (MNCs). We consider two types of passion among leaders: “self-enhancing” passion, which enhances a leader's own self-identity, and “self-transcending” passion, which helps members share an organizational identity. Our empirical data, collected at the level of the parent firm and subsidiaries, show that the successful transfer of a leader's passion from headquarters to local staff is significantly and positively associated with innovation. Passion transfer is positively affected by both types of leaders’ passion and mutual communication, and negatively affected by incentive-based organizational barriers. We also find that self-enhancing passion affects innovation both directly and indirectly through passion transfer, whereas self-transcending passion affects innovation only through passion transfer.This study was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (Grant Numbers: NJ2019026; NS2018050); and the Human Resource Development Research Base of Jiangsu Province, China (grant number: 2017ZSJD002)