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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects that reference prices and associated information sources (websites that consumers use to explore and their friends who have similar perspectives on value) have on deal evaluation and intention to disseminate electronic word of mouth (eWOM).

A stratified survey is conducted to empirically test the relations between reference prices, associated information sources (the top five Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) websites and top five Facebook friends with similar perspectives and values on consumption), deal evaluation, and eWOM intention. The study uses a Facebook API to help participants pick five Facebook friends to act as their favorite sources for advice on shopping.

The results suggest that consumers’ deal evaluations (as shaped by the recency effects of previous exposure to prices and the influence of Facebook friends and C2C websites) have carry-over effects on their eWOM intentions. The influence of Facebook friends and C2C websites on deal evaluation is as powerful as that of reference price, especially concerning the mean and the lowest prices.

The findings encourage marketers to invest their resources in targeting online groups, and suggest that C2C website marketers should set their offer prices between the mean and the lowest prices.

This study extends prior research on the motives for eWOM dissemination and elaborates an approach to initiate eWOM intention through deal evaluation.

Organizational fields are shaped by both the relations that organizations forge and the language they express. The structure and discourse of organizational fields have been studied before, but seldom in combination. We offer a methodological approach that integrates relations and expressions into a comprehensive visualization.

By mapping networks and discourse as co-constitutive, the method illuminates the mechanisms active in organizational fields. We utilize social impact evaluation as an issue field shaped by the presence of an interstitial community, and compare this structure with simulated alternative field configurations.

The simulations reveal that variation in organizations’ openness to adopting concepts from adjacent meaning systems alters field configurations: differentiation manifests under conditions of low overall openness, whereas moderate receptivity produces hybridizations of discourses and sometimes the emergence of an interstitial community that bridges domains. If certain organizations are open while others remain focused on their original discourse, then we observe integration in the discursive domain of the invariant organizations.

The observations from the simulations are represented by visualizing organizational fields as topographies of meaning, onto which interorganizational relations are layered. This representation localizes organizations and their interactions in a cultural space while emphasizing how meanings of relationships and organizational expressions vary with different field configurations. By adding meaning to network data, the resulting maps open new perspectives for institutional research on the adaptation, translation, and diffusion of concepts.

Nowadays, online platforms which provide products or services try to implement their homegrown communities to facilitate users' social interactions. Reviewers' activities in these communities can reflect their interests. Based on the theory of homophily, the authors aim to explore the impacts of the reviewer preference similarity and opinion similarity on the rate of product diffusion.

First, the authors construct reviewer similarity network based on their common interests and propose typical network metrics to measure reviewer preference similarity. Second, the authors measure reviewer opinion similarity with natural language processing. Finally, based on a panel data from an online video platform in China, both the fixed-effect and random-effect panel data models are constructed.

The authors find that reviewer preference similarity has a positive effect on the product diffusion, whereas reviewer opinion similarity has a negative effect on the diffusion. Furthermore, temporal distance moderates the relationship between reviewer similarity and the product diffusion. As a double-edged sword, review preference similarity hinders product diffusion in the initial phase, whereas benefits it in the later phase. Reviewer opinion similarity is always detrimental to product diffusion, especially in the initial phase.

This paper extends the understanding of homophily from the micro peer level to the group level by constructing reviewers' similarity network and highlights the important role of reviewer preference similarity and opinion similarity in product diffusion. The results also provide important insights for managers to design and implement diversity strategies for better product adoption in the community context.

The spread of rumors on social media has caused increasing concerns about an under-informed or even misinformed public when it comes to scientific issues. However, researchers have rarely investigated their diffusion in non-western contexts. This study aims to systematically examine the content and network structure of rumor-related discussions around genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on Chinese social media.

This study identified 21,837 rumor-related posts of GMOs on Weibo, one of China's most popular social media platforms. An approach combining social network analysis and content analysis was employed to classify user attitudes toward rumors, measure the level of homophily of their attitudes and examine the nature of their interactions.

Though a certain level of homophily existed in the interaction networks, referring to the observed echo chamber effect, Weibo also served as a public forum for GMO discussions in which cross-cutting ties between communities existed. A considerable amount of interactions emerged between the pro- and anti-GMO camps, and most of them involved providing or requesting information, which could mitigate the likelihood of opinion polarization. Moreover, this study revealed the declining role of traditional opinion leaders and pointed toward the need for alternative strategies for efficient fact-checking.

In general, the findings of this study suggested that microblogging platforms such as Weibo can function as public forums for discussing GMOs that expose users to ideologically cross-cutting viewpoints. This study stands to provide important insights into the viral processes of scientific rumors on social media.

This study examines users' information selection strategy on knowledge-sharing platforms from the individual level, peer level and societal level. Though previous literature has explained these three levels separately, few have simultaneously examined their impacts and identified the dominant one according to their effect strengths. The study aims to fill this research gap of the competitions among different levels of information selection mechanisms. Besides, this study also proposes a three-step decision-tree approach to depict the consumption process, including the decision of first-time exposure, the decision of continuous consumption and the decision of feedback behavior participation.

This study analyzed a clickstream dataset of a Chinese information technology blogging site, CSDN.net. Employing a sequential logit model, it examined the impacts of self-level interest similarity, peer-level interest similarity and global popularity simultaneously on each turning point in the consumption process.

The authors’ findings indicate that self-level interest similarity is the most dominant factor influencing users to browse a knowledge-sharing blog, followed by peer-level interest similarity and then global popularity. All three mechanisms have consistent influences on decision-making in continuous information consumption. Surprisingly, the authors find self-level interest similarity negatively influences users to give feedback on knowledge-sharing blogs.

This paper fulfills the research gap of the dominance among three-levels of selection mechanisms. This study's findings not only could contribute to information consumption studies by providing theoretical insights on audience behavior patterns, but also help the industry advance its recommendation algorithm design and improve users' experience satisfaction.

Peer review – The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2020-0475

This paper aims to investigate how recommendations from close- versus distant-others influence consumer preferences. This paper explores how the consumption setting (public vs private) differentially affects the relative weight given to recommendations from these two sources.

Through five scenario-based experiments and an internal meta-analysis, this paper examines whether consumers are more likely to follow recommendations from distant- (vs close-) others in public consumption settings. As a test of the underlying process, this study also investigates the mediating role of distinctiveness-signaling motivation in why consumers overweight recommendations from distant others in public settings, and the moderating role of atypical product design.

The findings of this study support the hypothesis that recommendations from distant-others have a greater impact on consumer preferences in public consumption contexts, as opposed to recommendations from close-others. This result can be attributed to the heightened salience of consumers’ distinctiveness-signaling motives in public consumption contexts, leading them to prioritize exhibiting uniqueness over conforming to close-others’ recommendations. However, this study also reveals that the presence of alternative sources of distinctiveness, such as atypically designed products, can mitigate this effect, leading consumers to seek conformity to close-others’ recommendations even in public consumption contexts.

This research did not look into the possible culture impact on the nonconforming consumption behavior. Previous research indicates that in collectivist cultures, nonconformity and distinctiveness are valued less (Kim and Drolet, 2003). This may imply that even with provoked signaling motives, collectivist consumers may not exhibit divergence from close-others. In fact, they may do the exact opposite and possibly become even more conforming to recommendations from close-others.

This research shed light on the business practice regarding word-of-mouth (WOM). Specifically, this research results suggest that for publicly consumed product, companies may need to seek a nontraditional WOM and use less WOM from consumer’s close-others.

Marketers often use referrals and recommendations from close-others to shape consumers’ preferences. In contrast, this study shows that for publicly consumed products, consumers may diverge from conforming to their close-others.

Social influence plays a crucial role in determining the size of information diffusion. Drawing on threshold models, we reformulate the nonlinear threshold hypothesis of social influence.

We test the threshold hypothesis of social influence with a large dataset of information diffusion on social media.

There exists a bell-shaped relationship between social influence and diffusion size. However, the large network threshold, limited diffusion depth and intense bursts become the bottlenecks that constrain the diffusion size.

The practice of viral marketing needs innovative strategies to increase information novelty and reduce the excessive network threshold.

In all, this research extends threshold models of social influence and underlines the nonlinear nature of social influence in information diffusion.