Consumption on the Internet: Who’s influencing who?

PDF
Published: Sep 1, 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/homvir.21218
Keywords:
cultural industrie cultural consumption consumer behavior herd behavior social network analysis opinion leaders strong ties influencers
Konstantinos Kasaras
Social Sciences Department, Hellenic Open University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4287-0819
Georgios-Michail Klimis
Dept. of Communications, Media and Culture, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2223-2465
Martha Michailidou
Dept. of Communications, Media and Culture, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0527-5444
Abstract

This paper exhibits the results of the experiment that took place at Panteion University of Athens. For the operationalization purposes of the experiment, a web site was constructed that hosted 12 songs from unknown artists, while 196 students participated. The main research question is related to how we decide to consume or decline a cultural product, after getting information about the decisions of the previous participants. Namely, to what extent each successive actor complies with the group behavior after observing their preceding choices and possibly abandons his own private selection. In order to estimate whether this imitation tendency can cause mass consumption phenomena, we used the cross-sectional absolute deviation (Chang et al., 2000) which measures the existence of herding. The decisions of the previous participants in the first experimental group were presented as the impersonal choice of users and in the second as the preferences of the opinion leaders in a network of participants. According to the outcomes of the research the influence of the impersonal mass choice is stronger compared to that of the opinion leaders who failed to cause a phenomenon of high statistical value.

Article Details
  • Section
  • Articles
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

· Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

· Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

· Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (preferably in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
Author Biographies
Konstantinos Kasaras, Social Sciences Department, Hellenic Open University
MA, PhD. Adjunct Academic Staff. Social Sciences Department, Hellenic Open University
Georgios-Michail Klimis, Dept. of Communications, Media and Culture, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
PGDip.Sc, MBA, PhD. Professor, Dept. of Communications, Media and Culture, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
Martha Michailidou, Dept. of Communications, Media and Culture, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
B.Sc (Hons), MA, PhD. Assistant Professor, Dept. of Communications, Media and Culture, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
References
Adorno, T. (1991). Culture industry reconsidered. Στο J.M. Bernstein (Επιμ.), The culture industry: Selected essays on mass culture. London: Routledge.
Allen, B.L. (1965). Situational factors in conformity. Στο L. Berkowitz (Επιμ.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 2 (σσ. 133-175). New York: Academic Press.
Anand, N. & Peterson, R.A. (2000). When market information constitutes fields: Sensemaking of markets in the commercial music industry. Organization Science, 11 (3), 270-284.
Anderson, L.R. & Holt, C.A. (1996). Information cascades in the laboratory. American Economic Review, 87 (5), 847-862.
Ariely, D. & Carmon, Z. (2000). Gestalt characteristics of experiences: The defining features of summarized events. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 13, 191-201.
Ariely, D. (1998). Combining experiences over time: The effects of duration, intensity changes, and on-line measurements on retrospective pain evaluations. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 11, 19-45.
Ariely, D. (2000). Consumers’ decision making and preferences. Journal of Consumer Research, 27 (2), 233-248.
Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational. USA: Harper Collins.
Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G. & Prelec, D. (2003). Coherent arbitrariness: stable demand curves without stable preferences. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118 (1), pp. 73-105.
Arnold, J., Robertson, I.T., & Cooper, C.L. (1991). Work psychology: Understanding human behaviour in the workplace. London: Pitman.
Arthur, B.W. (1996). Increasing returns and the New World of business. Harvard Business Review, 74 (4), 100-109.
Asch, S.E. (1951). Effects of group pressure on the modification and distortion of judgments. Στο H.S. Guetzkow (Επιμ.) Groups, leadership and men: Research in human relations (σσ. 177-190). Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press.
Baddeley, M. (2010). Herding, social influence and economic decision making: Socio - psychological and neuroscientific analyses. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society B, 365 (1538), 281-290.
Banerjee, A.V. (1992). A simple model of herd behavior. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107 (3), 797-817.
Barabasi, A.L. & Reka A. (1999). Emergence of scaling in random networks. Science, 286 (5439), 509-512.
Barabási, A.L. (2002). Linked, the new science of networks. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus.
Bearden, W.O. & Etzel, M.J. (1982) Reference group influence on product and brand purchase decisions. Journal of Consumer Research, 9 (2), 183-194.
Becerra, E.P. & Korgaonkar, P.K. (2011). Effects of trust beliefs on consumers' online intentions. European Journal of Marketing, 45 (6), 936-962.
Bickart, B. & Schindler, R.M. (2001). Internet forum as influential sources of consumer information. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 1 (3), 31-40.
Bikhchandani, S., Hirshleifer, D. & Welch, I. (1992). A theory of fashion, custom, and cultural change. Journal of Political Economy, 100 (5), 992-1026.
Bilton, C. (2007). Management and creativity: From creative industries to creative management. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Blackwell, R.D, Miniard, P.W. & Engel, J.F. (2001). Consumer behaviour, 9th Edition. Orlando Florida: Harcourt College Publishers.
Blau, P.M. & Schoenherr, R.A. (1971). Structure of organizations. New York: Basic Books.
Blau, P.M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. New York: J. Wiley.
Blau, P.M. (1977). A macrosociological theory of social structure. American Journal of Sociology, 83 (1), 26-54.
Blau, P.M. (1977). Inequality and heterogeneity: A primitive theory of social structure. New York: Free Press.
Bonabeau, E. (2004). The perils of the imitation age. Harvard Business Review, 82 (6), 45-54.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Brossard, D. (2013). New media landscapes and the science information consumer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Vol. 110. Suppl. Issue: Supplement 3, 14096-14101.
Brown, J.J. & Reingen, P.H. (1987). Social ties and word-of-mouth referral behavior. The Journal of Consumer Research, 14 (3), 350-362.
Brown, J., Broderick, A.J. & Lee, N.J. (2007). Word of mouth communication within online communities: conceptualizing the online social network. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 21 (3), 2-20.
Bunn, M.D. (1993). Taxonomy of buying decision approaches. Journal of Marketing 57, (1), 38-56.
Burt, R.S. (1997). The contingent value of social capital. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42 (2), 339-358.
Campbell, D.T. & Stanley, J.C. (1963). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Chang, E.C., Cheng, J.W. & Khorana, A. (2000). An examination of herd behavior in equity markets: an international perspective. Journal of Banking and Finance, 24 (10), 1651-1679.
Chevalier, J. & Mayzlin, D. (2006). The effect of word of mouth on sales: Online book reviews. Journal of Marketing Research, 43 (3), 345-354.
Chiou, J.S. & Cheng, C. (2003). Should a company have a message board on its websites? Journal of Interactive Marketing, 17 (3), 50-61.
Christie, W. & Huang, R.D. (1995). Following pied piper: do individual returns herd around the market? Financial Analysts Journal, 51 (4). Σελ. 31-37.
Daniel, E. & Klimis, G.M. (1999). The impact of electronic commerce on market structure: An evaluation of the electronic market hypothesis. European Management Journal, 17 (3), 318-325.
Dewey, J. (1910/2007). How we think. New York: Cosimo.
Drehmann, M., Oechssler, J. & Roider A. (2007). Herding with and without payoff externalities — an internet experiment. Science Direct International Journal of Industrial Organization, 25 (2), 391-415.
Earls, Μ. (2007). Herd: How to change mass behaviour by harnessing our true nature. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
Easley, D. (2010). Networks, crowds and markets: Reasoning about a highly connected world. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Economou, F., Kostakis, A. & Philippas, Ν. (2010). An examination of herd behaviour in four Mediterranean stock markets. European Union EESF Conference. Ανακτήθηκε 21 Δεκεμβρίου, 2014, από http://www.vietnamica.net/op/wp-ontent/uploads/2010/06/511.pdf
Einhorn, H.J., Hogarth, R.M. & Klempner, E. (1977). Quality of group judgment. Psychological Bulletin, 84 (1), 158-172.
Eliashberg, J. & Shugan, S.M. (1997). Film critics: Influencers or predictors? Journal of Marketing, 61 (2), 68-78.
Emons, W. (1997). Credence goods and fraudulent experts. Rand Journal of Economics 28 (1), 107-119.
Featherman, M.S., Miyazaki, A.D. & Sprott, D.E. (2010). Reducing online privacy risk to facilitate e-service adoption: the influence of perceived ease of use and corporate credibility. Journal of Services Marketing, 24 (3), 219-229.
Foxall, G. (1990). Consumer psychology in behavioural perspective. London; New York: Routledge.
Frank, R.H. & Cook, P.J. (1995). The winner-take-all society. New York: The Free Press.
Freud, S. (1923/2013). The Ego and the Id. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. An Amazon Company, USA.
Friedkin, N. (1982). Information flow through strong and weak ties in intraorganizational social networks. Social Networks, 3 (4), 273-285.
Galton, F. (1907). Vox populi. Nature, 75 (7), 450-451.
Garber, P.M. (1990). Famous first bubbles. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 4 (2), 35-54.
Gigone, D. & Hastie, R. (1997). Proper analysis of the accuracy of group judgments. Psychological Bulletin, 121 (1), 149-167.
Goel, S., Hofman, J., M. Lahaie, S., Pennock, D.M. & Watts, D. (2010). Predicting consumer behavior with Web search. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Vol. 107, Issue 41, 17486-17490.
Goldenberg, J., Han, S., Lehmann, D.R. & Hong, J.W. (2009). The role of hubs in the adoption process. Journal of Marketing, 73 (2), 1-13.
Golub, B. & Jackson, M. (2012). How homophily affects the speed of learning and best-response dynamic. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127 (3), 1287-1338.
Grandon, G. (2012). Informing on a rugged landscape: Homophily versus expertise. Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, 15, 49-91.
Granovetter, M. (1974). Getting a job: A study of contacts and careers. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University.
Hansell, S. (1984). Cooperative groups, weak ties, and the integration of peer friendships. Social Psychology Quarterly, 47 (4), 316-328.
Haythornthwaite, C. (2002). Strong, weak and latent ties and the impact of the new media. The Information Society, 18 (5), 385-401.
Hildebrand, C., Häubl, G., Herrmann, A. & Landwehr, J.R. (2013). When social media can be bad for you: Community feedback stifles consumer creativity and reduces satisfaction with self-designed products. Information Systems Research, 24 (1), 14-29.
Hippel, E., Ogawa, S. & De Jong, J.P.J. (2011). The age of the consumer-innovator. MIT Sloan Management Review, 53 (105), 27-35.
Hirsch, P.M. (1972). Processing fads and fashions: An organizational set analysis of cultural industry systems. American Journal of Sociology, 77 (4), 639-659.
Hirschman, E.C. & Holbrook, M. (1982). Hedonic consumption: Emerging concepts, methods, and propositions. Journal of Marketing, 46 (3), 92-101.
Hirschman, E.C. (1983). Aesthetics, ideologies and the limits of the marketing concept. Journal of Marketing, 47 (3), 45-55.
Holland, C.P. & Mandry, G.D. (2013). Online search and buying behaviour in consumer markets. 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE-USA, 2918-2927.
Homans, G.C. (1950). The Human Group. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Homans, G.C. (1958). Social behavior as exchange. American Journal of Sociology, 63 (6), 597-606.
Homans, G.C. (1961). Social behavior: Its elementary forms. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World Harcourt.
Howard J.A. & Sheth, J.N. (1969). The theory of buyer behaviour. London: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Jiménez, F.R. & Mendoz, N.A. (2013). Too popular to ignore: The influence of online reviews on purchase intentions of search and experience products. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27 (3), 226-235.
Katz, E. & Lazarsfeld, P.F. (1955/2009). Personal influence: The part played by people in the flow of mass communications. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.
Kim, J.S. & Ratchford, B.T. (2013). Consumer choice and use of multiple information sources for automobile purchases. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 16 (3), 7-40.
Klein, L.R. & Ford, G.T. (2003). Consumer search for information in the digital age: An empirical study of prepurchase search for automobiles. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 17 (3), 29-49.
Kotler, P., Keller, K.L., Koshy, A. & Jha, M. (2009). Marketing management – A South Asian perspective, but China and Japan also contribute. 13th Edition. India: Prentice Hall.
Kozinets, R.V., Hemetsberger, A. & Schau, H.J. (2008). The wisdom of consumer crowds: Collective innovation in the age of networked marketing. Journal of macromarketing, 28 (4), 339-554.
Kretschmer, M., Klimis, G.M. & Choi, C.J., (1999). Increasing returns and social contagion in cultural industries. British Journal of Management, 10 (1), 61-72.
Labrecque, L.I., Esche vor dem J., Mathwick, C., Novak, T.P. & Hofacker, C.F. (2013). Consumer power: Evolution in the digital age. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27 (4), 257-269.
Leibenstein, H. (1950). Bandwagon, snob, and Veblen effects in the theory of consumer’s demand. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 64 (2), 183-207.
Leskovec, J., Adamic, L., & Huberman, B. (2007). The Dynamics of viral marketing. ACM Transactions on the Web, 1 (1), Article No 5.
Levin, A.M., Conway, M. & Rhee, K. (2004). Money for nothing and hits for free: the ethics of downloading music from peer-to-peer web sites. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 12 (1), 48-60.
Lobel, I., Dahleh, M., Acemoglu, D. & Ozdaglar, A.E. (2011). Bayesian learning in social networks. Review of Economic Studies, 78, 1201-1236.
Lorenz, J., Rauhut, H., Schweitzer, F. & Helbing, D. (2011). How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect. National Academy of Sciences, 108 (22), 9020-9025.
Ma, L., Krishnan, R. & Montgomery, A. (2010). Homophily or influence? An empirical analysis of purchase within a social network. Ανακτήθηκε 21 Δεκεμβρίου, 2014, από http://community.mis.temple.edu/seminars/files/2011/02/krishnan-homophily-influence.pdf
Marsden, P.V. (1987). Core discussion on networks of Americans. American Sociological Review, 52 (1), 122-131.
Maslow, A. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50 (4), 370-396.
McAleer, M. & Radalj, K. (2013). Herding, information cascades and volatility spillovers in futures markets. Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper, No. 13-086/III. Ανακτήθηκε 21 Δεκεμβρίου, 2014, από http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:NBN:nl:ui:15-1765/40584
McCroskey, J.C., Richmond, VP. & Daly, J.A. (1975). The development of a measure of perceived homophily in interpersonal communication. Human Communication Research, 1 (4), 323-332.
Meesters, Y., Ruiter, M.J. & Nolen, W. A. (2012). Placebo use in depression research: Some ethical considerations. Ανακτήθηκε 21 Δεκεμβρίου, 2014, http://www.intechopen.com/books/contemporary-issues-in-bioethics/placebo-use-in-depression-research-some-ethical-considerations
Milgram, S., Bickman, L. & Berkowitz, L. (1969). Note on the drawing power of crowds of different size. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13 (2), 79-82.
Miller, F.G., Wendler, D. & Swartzman, L.C. (2005). Deception in Research on the Placebo Effect. PLOS Medicine, 2 (9). Ανακτήθηκε 21 Δεκεμβρίου, 2014, από http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020262
Moon, E. & Han, S. (2011). A qualitative method to find influencers using similarity-based approach in the blogosphere. International Journal of Social Computing and Cyber-Physical Systems, 1 (1), 56-78.
Nataraajan, R. & Bagozzi, R.P. (1999). The year 2000: Looking back. Psychology & Marketing, 16 (8), 631-642.
Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Noah, Μ.P. (1998). Birds of a feather sing together. Social Forces, 77 (2), 453-485.
Pan, L-Y. & Chiou, J-S. (2011). How much can you trust online information? Cues for perceived trustworthiness of consumer-generated online information. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 25 (2), 67-74.
Pavlov, I.P. (1927/1960). Conditional Reflexes. New York: Dover Publications.
Persky, J. (1995). The ethology of Homo economicus. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9 (2), 221-231.
Peter, J.P. & Olson, J.C. (1996). Consumer behavior and marketing strategy, 4th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Pinson, C. & Jolibert, A.J.P. (1998). Consumer behaviour: An overview of current approaches and issues. Στο M.F. Lambkin, G.F. van Raaij & B. Helibrunn (Επιμ.), European perspectives on consumer behaviour (σσ. 5-59). Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall Europe.
Prakash, B.A., Beutel, A., Rosenfeld, R. & Faloutsos, C. (2012), Winner takes all: competing viruses or ideas on fair-play networks. Στο A. Mille, F.L. Gandon, J., Misselis, M., Rabinovich & S. Staab (Επιμ.), International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2), April 16-20, 2012, Lyon, France, 1037-1046.
Ribeaux, P. & Poppleton, E. (1978). Psychology and work. London: Macmillan Education.
Richmond, V.P. (1977). The relationship between opinion leadership and information acquisition. Human Communication Research, 4 (1), 38-43.
Ritzer, G. & Jurgenson, N. (2010). Production, consumption, prosumption: The nature of capitalism in the age of the digital ‘prosumer’. Journal of Consumer Culture, 10 (1), 13-36.
Rogers, E.M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations. 5th Edition. New York: Free Press.
Salganik, M.J. & Watts, D.J. (2008). Leading the herd astray: An experimental study of self-fulfilling prophecies in an artificial cultural market. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71 (4), 335-338.
Salganik, M.J. & Watts, D.J. (2009). Web-Based experiments for the study of collective social dynamics in cultural markets. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1 (3), 439-468.
Salganik, M.J., Watts, D.J. & Dodds, P.S. (2006). Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market. Science, 311 (5762), 854-856.
Schiffman, L.G. & Kanuk, L.L. (2007). Consumer behaviour. 9th Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Shiller, R. (1995). Conversation, information and herd behavior. American Economic Review, 85 (2), 181-185.
Shrum, W. (1991). Critics and publics: Cultural mediation in highbrow and popular performing arts. American Journal of Sociology, 97 (2), 347-375.
Simmel, G. (1904/1971). On individuality and social forms. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Simon, H.A. (1997). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organizations. 4th Edition. New York: The Free Press.
Skinner, B.F. (1938). The behavior of organisms. An experimental analysis. New York: Appleton-Century.
Skinner, B.F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: The Free Press, Collier Macmillan, Ltd.
Skinner, B.F. (1972). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Smith, D., Menon, S. & Sivakumar, K. (2005). Online peer and editorial recommendations, trust, and choice in virtual markets. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 19 (3), 15-37.
Smith, L. & Sorensen, P. (2000). Pathological outcomes of observational learning. Econometrica, 68 (2), 371-398.
Statt, D.A. (1997). Understanding the consumer: A psychological approach, Basingstoke: Macmillan Business.
Steininger, D.M. & Gatzemeier, S. (2013). Using the wisdom of the crowd to predict popular music chart success. ECIS 2013 Proceedings. Paper 246. Ανακτήθηκε 21 Δεκεμβρίου, 2014, από http://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2013_cr/215/
Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds: Why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies and nations. New York: Doubleday.
Trochim, W. & Donnelly, J.P. (2006). The research methods knowledge base. Vol. 3, Issue 1. Publisher: Atomic Dog.
Utz, S., Kerkhof, P. & Joost van den, B. (2012). Consumers rule: How consumer reviews influence perceived trustworthiness of online stores. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 11 (1), 49-58.
Veblen, T. (1982). Η θεωρία της αργόσχολης τάξης. Η οικονομική μελέτη των θεσμών. Μτφρ. Γ. Νταλιάνης. Αθήνα: Κάλβος.
Wang, O. & Shukla, P. (2013). Linking sources of consumer confusion to decision satisfaction: The role of choice goals. Psychology and Marketing, 30 (4), 295-304.
Watts, D.J. & Dodds, P.S. (2007). Influentials, networks, and public opinion formation. Journal of Consume Research, 34 (4), 441-458.
Weimann, G. (1991). The influentials: Back to the concept of opinion leaders? Public Opinion Quarterly, 55 (2), 267-279.
Weng, J. Lim, E.P., He, Q. & Jlang J. (2010). TwitterRank: finding topic-sensitive influential twitterers. WSDM ‘10 Proceedings of the third ACM international conference on Web search and data mining. New York, 261-270.
West, P.M. & Broniarczyk, S.M. (1998). Integrating multiple opinions: The role of aspiration level on consumer response to critic consensus. Journal of Consumer Research, 25 (1), 38-51.
Whitehead, A.N. (1967). Science and the modern world. New York: The Free Press.
Wilkie, W.L. (1994). Consumer behaviour. 3rd Edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Zelditch, M. (1969). Can you really study an army in the laboratory? A sociological reader on complex organization (σσ. 528-539). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Zinkhan, G.M. (1992). Human nature and models of consumer decision making. Journal of Advertising, 21 (4), 138-149.
Ρούσσος, Π.Λ. & Τσαούσης, Γ. (2002). Στατιστική εφαρμοσμένη στις κοινωνικές επιστήμες. Αθήνα: Ελληνικά Γράμματα.