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The purpose of this paper is to explore whether online communities meet their potential of providing environments in which social relationships can be readily established to help patients cope with their disease through social support. The paper aims to develop and test a model to examine antecedents of the formation of virtual relationships of cancer patients within virtual communities (VCs) as well as their effects in the form of social assistance.

Data were collected from members of virtual patient communities in the German‐speaking internet through an online survey to which 301 cancer patients responded. The data were analyzed with partial least square (PLS) structural equation modeling.

Virtual relationships for patients are established in VCs and play an important role in meeting patients' social needs. Important determinants for the formation of virtual relationships within virtual communities for patients are general internet usage intensity (active posting vs lurking) and the perceived disadvantages of CMC. The paper also found that virtual relationships have a strong effect on virtual support of patients; more than 61 per cent of the variance of perceived social assistance of cancer patients was explained by cancer‐related VCs. Emotional support and information exchange delivered through these virtual relationships may help patients to better cope with their illness.

In contrast to prior research, known determinants for the formation of virtual relationships (i.e. marital status, educational status, gender, and disease‐related factors such as the type of cancer as control variables, as well as general internet usage motives, and perceived advantages of CMC as direct determinants) played a weak role in this study of German cancer patients. Studies on other patient populations (i.e. patients with other acute illnesses in other cultures) are needed to see if results remain consistent.

Participants and administrators of patient VCs have different design criteria for the improvement of VCs for patients (e.g. concerning community management, personal behaviour and the usage of information in online communities). Once the social mechanisms taking place in online communities are better understood, the systematic redesign of online communities according to the needs of their users should be given priority.

Little research has been conducted examining the role of VCs for social relationships and social networks in general and for patients in particular. Antecedents and effects of virtual social relationships of patients have not been sufficiently theoretically or empirically researched to be better understood. This research combines various determinants and effects of virtual relationships from prior related research. These are integrated into a conceptual model and applied empirically to a new target group, i.e. VCs for patients.

Proactive personality is believed to relate to greater interpersonal helping and lower turnover intentions. Accrued social capital should play a mediating role in this relationship. This paper seeks to address these issues.

The authors used structural equation modeling to analyze the longitudinal data collected from 174 individuals at three points in time. Two dimensions of social capital, i.e. the resource dimension as indicated by information exchange and the relational dimension as indicated by trust relationships were specified.

After controlling for the Big Five personality dispositions, information exchange and then trust relationships sequentially mediated the relationship of proactive personality with helping and turnover intentions.

The research highlights the importance of understanding proactive personality through the social capital perspective. Multiple source data collection method is recommended for further validation of the results.

The research highlights the importance of recruiting individuals high on proactivity, and the importance of further developing and motivating these individuals by cultivating meaningful interactions and nurturing trustful relationships at work. Then, proactive employees would be more likely to engage in helping behavior and to stay with the company.

The paper takes the social capital approach in examining the outcomes of proactive personality. It reveals that resource‐ and relation‐related social capital constructs mediate, in sequence, the relationships of proactive personality with outcomes.

Nowadays, companies are seeking to create meaningful and long-term relationships with their customers. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the role of parasocial and social aspects of consumption in building trustworthy and loyal relationships in both offline and online services.

Two studies were conducted using the survey research method. The first study collected data from 285 soccer fans, and the second study collected data from 298 Facebook consumers.

The study confirms the proposed model and suggests that parasocial and social relationships act as significant antecedents of service brand loyalty in both offline and online services.

This is the first study that examines parasocial and social relationships in tandem and their role in developing loyal relationships with service brands. It also confirms that social relationships in a service setting play a significant role in predicting brand trust and loyalty.

To the extent that customer relationships with service providers provide value to service firms suggests that these relationships can be viewed as social capital. This paper seeks to use social capital as a theoretical framework to examine the effect of these relationships on customer loyalty.

Data were collected using an online survey of 342 adult consumers of services.

Results of structural equation modeling analyses indicate that social capital variables explain unique variance in customer responses. The effect of each of the three forms of social capital – structural, cognitive, and relational – are contingent on whether the service is personal (e.g. hairstylist, medical services) or non‐personal (e.g. mechanic, banker).

This research suggests that customer relationships can be viewed as social capital and that the form and content of such relationships are important in terms of influencing customer loyalty.

Managers can build “social capital” by focusing on its three forms – structural, cognitive, and relational social capital. The paper provides prescriptions for such relationship building activities. Such social capital translates into firm value/profits through customer loyalty.

This study uses a theoretical framework from research in social capital to help explain the value of customer relationships with individual service providers to the firm. The idea of social capital is compelling to service managers since it implies that investments in relationship building tactics have real results for firm profitability.

Recent scholarship has highlighted the complexity of buyer-seller relationships in emerging markets and called for a better understanding of the cultural norms shaping such relationships. This paper aims to draw on social capital theory to explore the role of networks and relational norms, such as wasta, in Arab culture on consumer relational behaviors. The Arab market constitutes a significant economy and social networks and relational norms are of significant value in Arab culture.

A qualitative approach was used to address the research questions. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 male and female consumers across Lebanon over a four-month period.

Social networks are heavily used in relational behaviors to achieve four types of goals, namely, self-serving goals, unity goals and equality goals and relationship maintenance goals. In fulfilling these goals consumers create economies of favors that aim at the using and maintenance of communal bonds.

This study was conducted in one geographical context. While Lebanon shares many of its characteristics with other Arab countries, future research should aim at exploring the influence of social networks in other Arab and emerging market contexts.

Consumers have different motivations between formal and informal markets. The research suggests that small sellers in highly embedded markets need to use their social networks and to make their stories authentic and known within their communities to facilitate emotional connections with consumers.

Emerging markets offer opportunities to extend our understanding of marketing theory and practice. This research provides a richer understanding of Arab consumers and suggests that wasta relationships play a role in consumptive decisions and not just in business negotiations. Wasta, as a cultural form of cultural capital, is heavily used in consumption as a coping mechanism to overcome market inefficiencies.

Growing evidence asserts that individuals are inclined to buy impulsively in the social commerce environment due to interactive elements. However, extant literature does not reveal the influence of emerging digital celebrities and their communities on impulse buying, although users may encounter them synchronously. Hence, this study explores the impact of parasocial relationships and social climate on impulse buying following the stimulus–organism–response framework with the incorporation of the urge to buy. Besides, this research investigates the role of hedonic and utility gratification-seeking behavior in parasocial relationships following uses and gratifications theory (UGT).

An empirical research study was conducted on Facebook, and data were collected from Pakistani users who followed digital celebrities. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach was employed to analyze the valid data of 231 respondents.

The results indicate that integrated constructs significantly influence impulse buying with complementary partial mediation of urge to buy. Besides, social climate significantly interacts the relationship of parasocial relationships and impulse buying. Further, passing time, enjoyment and information seeking has a significant impact on parasocial relationships, except for self-presentation.

This research provides key knowledge to comprehend the overall phenomenon of emerging digital celebrities through the integration of their parasocial relationships and the social climate of their communities, with potential intervening and interaction effects. This study also unveils the role of gratifications in building digital celebrities' parasocial relationships.

Digital humanities aim to use a digital-based revolutionary new way to carry out enhanced forms of humanities research more effectively and efficiently. This study develops a character social network relationship map tool (CSNRMT) that can semi-automatically assist digital humanists through human-computer interaction to more efficiently and accurately explore the character social network relationships from Chinese ancient texts for useful research findings.

With a counterbalanced design, semi-structured in-depth interview, and lag sequential analysis, a total of 21 research subjects participated in an experiment to examine the system effectiveness and technology acceptance of adopting the ancient book digital humanities research platform with and without the CSNRMT to interpret the characters and character social network relationships.

The experimental results reveal that the experimental group with the CSNRMT support appears higher system effectiveness on the interpretation of characters and character social network relationships than the control group without the CSNRMT, but does not achieve a statistically significant difference. Encouragingly, the experimental group with the CSNRMT support presents remarkably higher technology acceptance than the control group without the CSNRMT. Furthermore, use behaviors analyzed by lag sequential analysis reveal that the CSNRMT could assist digital humanists in the interpretation of character social network relationships. The results of the interview present positive opinions on the integration of system interface, smoothness of operation, and external search function.

Currently, the system effectiveness of exploring the character social network relationships from texts for useful research findings by using the CSNRMT developed in this study will be significantly affected by the accuracy of recognizing character names and character social network relationships from Chinese ancient texts. The developed CSNRMT will be more practical when the offered information about character names and character social network relationships is more accurate and broad.

This study develops an ancient book digital humanities research platform with an emerging CSNRMT that provides an easy-to-use real-time interaction interface to semi-automatically support digital humanists to perform digital humanities research with the need of exploring character social network relationships.

At present, a real-time social network analysis tool to provide a friendly interaction interface and effectively assist digital humanists in the digital humanities research with character social networks analysis is still lacked. This study thus presents the CSNRMT that can semi-automatically identify character names from Chinese ancient texts and provide an easy-to-use real-time interaction interface for supporting digital humanities research so that digital humanists could more efficiently and accurately establish character social network relationships from the analyzed texts to explore complicated character social networks relationship and find out useful research findings.

The association between social media and jealousy is an aspect of the dark side of social media that has garnered significant attention in the past decade. However, the understanding of this association is fragmented and needs to be assimilated to provide scholars with an overview of the current boundaries of knowledge in this area. This systematic literature review (SLR) aims to fulfill this need.

The authors undertake an SLR to assimilate the current knowledge regarding the association between social media and jealousy, and they examine the phenomenon of social media-induced jealousy (SoMJ). Forty-five empirical studies are curated and analyzed using stringent protocols to elucidate the existing research profile and thematic research areas.

The research themes emerging from the SLR are (1) the need for a theoretical and methodological grounding of the concept, (2) the sociodemographic differences in SoMJ experiences, (3) the antecedents of SoMJ (individual, partner, rival and platform affordances) and (4) the positive and negative consequences of SoMJ. Conceptual and methodological improvements are needed to undertake a temporal and cross-cultural investigation of factors that may affect SoMJ and acceptable thresholds for social media behavior across different user cohorts. This study also identifies the need to expand current research boundaries by developing new methodologies and focusing on under-investigated variables.

The study may assist in the development of practical measures to raise awareness about the adverse consequences of SoMJ, such as intimate partner violence and cyberstalking.

This paper aims to refine conceptual treatment of the social facet in business relationships and reinforce its significance in the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) research tradition by integrating the concept of social capital in its original interpretation into the actor-resource-activity (ARA) model.

The paper begins by indicating some typical conceptual challenges associated with application of social capital in IMP. This is followed by a conceptual clarification that explores the origin and the essence of social capital in economic sociology. Finally, the paper proposes integrating social capital in its original interpretation into IMP’s ARA model and presents four propositions on how social capital is created in interaction between business actors.

The paper shows how bridging Bourdieu’s theory of social capital with the IMP approach may solve the identified conceptual challenges. This paper’s main contribution is a cyclical model depicting how social capital is created in business networks. It is integrated into the ARA model and designed specifically for studying the social facet of business relationships.

The paper is expected to aid IMP researchers in empirical contexts where the social component in business relationships is particularly prominent. As such, the novel approach presented could be used to further understand how social exchange processes are related to relationship governance, relationship initiation and development.

The proposed model shows how social capital is generated through the dynamic interplay in the social facets of actor, activity and resource dimensions, emphasising its creation dynamics. The model integrates insights from the classic works in economic sociology to strengthen the social side of IMP’s socioeconomic interface and is intended to be used as a tool for empirical application.

As conviviality can nurture community social capital, this paper aims to investigate how such capital can give rise to economic behaviour in terms of developing business relationships.

The empirical analysis was based on case studies of Italian businesses recognised as active communities that periodically organise convivial activities to fuel reciprocal collaboration. The case studies were constructed by combining a collection of secondary data, in-depth interviews and participant observations.

This paper shows how: community social capital in convivium emerges from self-narrative stimulated by ritual practices; social trust mobilising a convivial social capital is fuelled by knowledge generated through sharing and empathic relationships; community-based social relations embed business relations and if mediated, community-based business relations can also embed a community business.

The originality of the paper is twofold as it contributes: to understanding how conviviality can be used as a strategic tool for entrepreneurs to develop business relationships from convivial relations; and to finding intersection points between studies on business relationships from social capital and studies on entrepreneurship from community social capital.