How ‘social’ are social media? A cross-cultural comparison of online and offline purchase decision influences

Traditional word of mouth (WOM) involves personal communications among family, friends, and others. Today, social media sites like Facebook offer the possibility of electronic word of mouth (eWOM), a mediated form of WOM. Little is known about the best way for marketers to use social media. Even less is known about international differences in consumer usage of social media and how eWOM influences consumer decision-making. This study helps address that research gap and uses cultural dimensions to compare the use of social media and other information sources for consumer decision-making across 50 countries. The results indicate that the use of information sources that influence online purchase decisions strongly varies by culture. For example, relationship-oriented collectivists rely to a greater extent than individualists on social media, which are an alternative for interpersonal WOM communication. Interestingly culture affects the influence of social media on purchases differently than the influence of traditional WOM through family or friends. Furthermore, there are major differences in online complaint behavior by country, due to cultural variations.     

Consumer Decision Making on the Web: A Theoretical Analysis and Research Guidelines

Recent empirical data on online shopping suggests that consumers have the potential to make better quality decisions while shopping on the web. But whether such potential is being realized by most consumers is an unresolved matter. Hence, the purpose of this research is to understand how (1) certain features of electronic environments have a favorable effect on the abilities of consumers to make better decisions, and (2) identify information‐processing strategies that would enable consumers to make better quality decisions while shopping online. A cross‐disciplinary theoretical analysis based on constructs drawn from economics (e.g., time costs), computing (e.g., recommendation agents), and psychology (e.g., decision strategies) is conducted to identify factors that potentially influence decision quality in electronic environments. The research is important from a theoretical standpoint because it examines an important aspect of online consumer decision making, namely, the impact of the electronic environment on the capabilities of consumers. It is important from both a managerial and public policy standpoint because the ability of shoppers to make better quality decisions while shopping online is directly related to improving market efficiency and enhancing consumer welfare in electronic markets.     

The entrepreneur's investor choice: The impact on later-stage firm development

This article analyzes how early-stage financing decisions may affect how entrepreneurial firms ultimately grow. This theoretical study considers an entrepreneur seeking early-stage financing from either a specialist or a generalist investor in the context of stage financing. It is assumed that an early-stage specialist is less efficient in assisting a venture beyond the early-stage round than a generalist. This leads to the following tradeoff: by initially selecting an early-stage specialist, the entrepreneur benefits from increased investor incentives in the first round. Such incentives generate additional value for the entrepreneurial venture, improving valuation in the interim round and thereby mitigating the risk of dilution against follow-up investors and potentially even of premature discontinuation of the project. However, early-stage specialists are more reluctant to finance later rounds. Conversely, using a generalist secures efficient follow-up funding but also leads to weaker investor incentives in the early stage. With this tradeoff, the presence of asymmetric information about the quality of entrepreneurial projects particularly affects generalists; entrepreneurs with strong projects more often choose specialists, while entrepreneurs with weak projects select generalists to secure efficient continuation. The use of convertible securities or adjustment warrants in contracts cannot always eliminate the effect of asymmetric information. Several empirical implications derived from this tradeoff are provided for optimal investor choice.     

Social media or shopping websites? The influence of eWOM on consumers’ online purchase intentions

This study empirically tests and compares the influence of friends’ recommendations on social media and anonymous reviews on shopping websites in the context of online purchase intention. For this purpose, we analyse the impacts of these two platforms based on the components of information adoption model (IAM) which are borrowed as information quality, information credibility, information usefulness and information adoption. We conduct a survey and find anonymous reviews as more influential on consumer’ online purchase intentions than friends’ recommendations on social media. However, as this result was contrary to that expected, we conduct another study through in-depth interviews in order to enlighten our results found in the first study. In Study 2, we find the reasons why consumers prefer anonymous reviews rather than friends’ recommendations. Information quantity, information readiness, detailed information and dedicated information are factors which make shopping websites superior than social media in terms of the impact of electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Academic and managerial implications are discussed.     

In Search of Negativity Bias: An Empirical Study of Perceived Helpfulness of Online Reviews

A basic tenet of psychology is that the psychological effects of negative information outweigh those of positive information. Three empirical studies show that the negativity bias can be attenuated or even reversed in the context of electronic word of mouth (eWoM). The first study analyzes a large sample of customer reviews collected from Amazon.com and concludes that negative reviews are no more helpful than positive ones when controlling for review quality The second study follows up with a virtual experiment that confirms the lack of negativity bias in evaluating the helpfulness of online reviews. The third study demonstrates that the negativity effect can be reversed by manipulating the baseline valences. This work challenges the conventional wisdom of “bad is stronger than good” and contributes to the understanding of the eWoM phenomenon.     

受资金限制的项目投资决策问题的研究

大型投资项目之间的独立关系要求投资者在进行投资决策时,必须对投资项目进行最优化处理以得到整体最优的投资方案,投资者在对相互独立的投资项目进行最优化处理时,也就意味着要找到一种投资方案,该投资可以使投资者获得最大的经济效益。     

Enhancing the parasocial interaction relationship between consumers through similarity effects in the context of social commerce

With the combination of social media and e-commerce, consumers usually gather all kind of available information for making their final purchase decisions online. From the perspective of interpersonal interaction, we proposed similarity (including external similarity and internal similarity) is an important peripheral informational processing route for consumers to make decisions. Built on the theories of similarity extrapolation, trust transfer and parasocial interaction (PSI), we examined whether similarity could enhance PSI relationship between consumers and the intention to do the social shopping and social sharing. The findings of PLS analysis in this study demonstrated that both external similarity and internal similarity significantly affected consumers’ PSI relationship forming and trust transfer, which in turn exerted profound impacts on consumers’ social commerce behaviors.     

Word-of-mouth Communication in Low-risk Product Decisions

Word-of-mouth communication is an elusive but powerful market force. While past studies of word of mouth have concentrated on high-risk products, this study demonstrates the power of word of mouth in influencing low-risk purchase decisions. The results indicate that word of mouth does not operate in isolation but in conjunction with media information sources. They also show that word-of-mouth behaviour is not random but is reinforced by needs of both informers and informees.     

项目投资现金流量估算方法的改进

现金流量估算的目的是对投资项目进行经济性描述,现金流量是项目投资决策分析最重要的基础性信息。我国现行教科书中阐述的项目现金流量估算方法存在诸多缺陷,影响了我国整体的项目投资决策分析的质量。在确定初始现金流量时不考虑资金时间价值,在确定营运期间现金流量时选择的折旧方法与折旧的经济实质相背离,在确定终结点现金流量时将预计残值与净残值混为一谈,是造成现金流量估算方法缺陷的主要原因。因此,估算过程中应贯彻时间价值理论、客观性及资本保全等原则。     

如何做好建筑工程的设计监理工作

设计费虽然只占工程全部投资的极少部分,但是,工程投资总量中绝大部分的投资由设计决定,工程设计决定着项目的建设投资,因此,做好建筑工程的设计监理工作势在必行.本文从保持设计监理部门的独立性、有效监控设计投资、有效监控设计质量、建立设计监理的激励机制四方面对设计阶段的监理工作进行了探讨.     

商业银行投资业务项目风险管理对策研究

风险是金融交易中不可避免的因素。在商业银行投资业务中,有效地进行风险管理是项目投资时银行必须考虑的问题,它是投资项目成败的关键、,为使投资决策做到科学化和精确化,商业银行应使用专业的风险管理方法来有效管理商行投资业务项目风险．并且要加强内部制度建设;实现银行投资业务风险管理手段的现代化;加强投资业务项目的组织管理.     

公路工程项目经济评价方法探讨

工程经济分析贯穿公路建设的整个过程,是项目可行性研究的有机组成部分和重要内容,对项目投资有着十分重要的影响,是决定项目投资命运的关键,是企业投资决策的前提.     

Ethical Environment in the Online Communities by Information Credibility: A Social Media Perspective

With the increasing popularity of social media, a new ethics debate has arisen over marketing and technology in the current digital era. People are using online communities but they have concern about information credibility through word of mouth in these platforms. Social media is becoming increasingly influential in shaping individuals’ decision-making as more and better quality information about products is made available. In this research, a social word-of-mouth model proposes using a survey to test the model in a popular travel community. The model highlights the role of social media and social support in social networking sites (SNSs), identifying increasing credibility and information usefulness resulting in an ethical environment to adopt word of mouth. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are both detailed.     

Form and content of replacement cost information: The impact upon investment criteria

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently required that certain registrants disclose specific current replacement cost information when filing their 10-K's. In the current research, unsophisticated investor surrogates were asked to perform an investment task using historical cost and/or variations of actual current replacement cost data for several companies. It was found that neither the content nor the form of the alternative information sets significantly affected the investor decisions.     

Is Online Word of Mouth Higher for New Models or Redesigns? An Investigation of the Automobile Industry

Changing consumer preferences, entry of new competitors with better products, and product improvements by existing competitors make new products a necessary investment for most companies. In addition to the investments in R&D and production of new products, firms also need to invest in advertising to promote them. The growing use of social media by consumers therefore makes online consumer conversations an attractive additional format for firms to promote products at a lower cost. This is particularly so in the automobile industry where advertising costs are very high. Whether consumers discuss a newly introduced product, and help to promote it, however, may depend on how new the product is. This is the question that we investigate in the context of the automobile category. Specifically, we examine whether online consumer conversations are more likely for new models (e.g., Chevy Volt introduced in 2010) or redesigns of existing models (e.g., the redesign of Chevy Impala in 2010). We use data from two online sites where consumers discuss automobiles – consumerreports.org and edmunds.com – for our analysis. Our empirical investigation also accounts for the effects of sales on word of mouth and the simultaneity between sales and word of mouth. Additionally, we also consider the effect of satisfaction on word of mouth and the endogeneity of satisfaction. Our results across two datasets suggest that redesigns stimulate significantly more conversations than new models. Managerial and research implications of the findings are discussed.     

The role of prototype fidelity in technology crowdfunding

The presentation of a prototype is pervasive when technology entrepreneurs pitch to potential resource providers. Yet, we know little about how the fidelity of a prototype—the degree to which it approximates the final product—can affect funding decisions. We study the relationship between prototype fidelity and resource acquisition of nascent technology ventures in online crowdfunding. Based on the community logic under which crowdfunding operates and the diverse motivations of funders to participate, we develop the seemingly counterintuitive idea that moderate prototype fidelity is more effective in gaining support from funders than high prototype fidelity. Across our three empirical studies, we find support for the hypothesis that prototype fidelity has an inverted U-shaped relationship with crowdfunding performance. This relationship is moderated by the materiality of the offered rewards and the quality of the prototype presentation delivered through the online interface.     

Effects of Word of Mouth Advertising on Consumer Risk Taking

The role of word of mouth advertising on modifying consumers' willingness to make risky product choices is analyzed. The authors present an information and perceived risk processing model of word of mouth advertising's influence on consumer behavior. Implications for advertising management are suggested.     

The effect of negative online customer reviews on brand equity and purchase intention of consumer electronics in South Africa

This study investigated the effect that negative online customer reviews have on brand equity and purchase intention. This research examined the influence of negative electronic word of mouth (eWOM) on brand equity, as influenced by customer review quality, product involvement and source credibility. A 3 (high quality review versus low quality review versus no review) × 2 (high product involvement versus low product involvement) factorial experiment with 236 respondents was conducted. The results revealed that the presence of negative eWOM has a significant detrimental effect on brand equity and purchase intention. Furthermore, the effect of negative online customer reviews is more detrimental to the brand equity of a high involvement product than a low involvement product. The results also revealed that high quality reviews are more influential than low quality reviews with respect to brand equity, and the difference between the levels of eWOM source credibility has no significant effect on brand equity.     

Altruistic eWOM marketing: More than an alternative to monetary incentives

As a form of word of mouth, online reviews are used to reduce uncertainty about service quality and direct consumer attitudes and behavior. As a consequence of the high persuasiveness and the broad accessibility of electronic word of mouth (eWOM), companies are very interested to proactively managing this form of customer-to-customer communication. Compared with traditional advertising provides, eWOM marketing is a more credible and low-cost alternative. So far marketers have commonly used monetary incentives to influence customer-to-customer communication. However, this form also includes potential negative consequences such as credibility loss through consumer skepticism and crowding-out effects. This study analyzed two new incentive programs for increasing recommendation likelihood that considered the activation of an altruistic form of motivation to overcome these drawbacks. Therefore, an experiment was designed with three experimental groups (incentive programs) vs. a control group (no incentive). Finally, the results are discussed while taking into account the advantages and drawbacks of the particular incentive program to deduce practical implications.     

Investigating innovation diffusion,social influence,and personal inner forces to understand people's participation in online e-waste recycling

By integrating the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), innovation diffusion theory (IDT) and social cognition theory (SCT), this study constructs a research model through which to explore the key factors and their influence mechanisms to understand people's participation in online e-waste recycling. Based on the ELM, we believe that people's behavioral intention to participate in online e-waste recycling is affected by the information processing of central and peripheral routes. Based on IDT, we take the perceived innovation characteristics as the key elements of the central route and consider social influence as the key element of the peripheral route. At the same time, we consider personal inner force factors, based on SCT, as the functional condition of the information processing mode to explore the moderating effects of privacy concern, pricing fairness concern, and environmental concern on the information processing of the central and peripheral routes. By taking discarded mobile phones as an example, we collect 475 valid samples to test our research model using the structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. The results confirm that perceived innovation characteristics and social influence are two factors that motivate people to participate in online e-waste recycling and that the three kinds of inner forces have different moderating effects on perceived innovation characteristics and social influence. Based on the above findings, this study puts forward some policy proposals.