How online social ties and product-related risks influence purchase intentions: A Facebook experiment

  • Authors:

  • Jyun-Cheng Wang;Ching-Hui Chang

  • Affiliations:

  • Institute of Service Science, National Tsing-Hua University, 101 Kuang-Fu Road, Sec. 2, Hsinchu, Taiwan, ROC;Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing-Hua University, 101 Kuang-Fu Road, Sec. 2, Hsinchu, Taiwan, ROC

  • Venue:
  • Electronic Commerce Research and Applications
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Drawing on information processing theory and the stimulus-organism-response model, we developed research hypotheses about consumers' decision-making processes. Specifically, we examined the effects of online tie strength, perceived diagnosticity, and product-related risks on consumers' purchase intentions. We conducted a field experiment on Facebook to test these hypotheses. We found that the product information and recommendations provided by friends with whom consumers have strong ties are perceived as having a high level of diagnosticity. The latter increases the probability that the consumers will purchase the product in question. Product-related risks moderate the effect of tie strength on perceived diagnosticity. For high-risk products, the information and recommendations provided by strong-tie contacts have a greater effect on purchase intentions than the information and recommendations provided by weak-tie contacts. However, we did not find this effect for low-risk products. We discuss the implications of our findings for both theory and practice.