Social Media and e-Business Transformation Minitrack

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Social media are online platforms that facilitate global collaboration and sharing among users. New social media applications in e-business and e-commerce appear everyday and results in enormous shocks to the ecosystem of individuals and businesses. Consumers can easily obtain information from a vast, geographically dispersed group of people in social platforms. Meanwhile, these social platforms give retailers a wealth of options for reaching potential customers, communication and collaboration, and creating values to customers. Furthermore, social media are increasingly being used in organizations to improve relationships among employees and nurture collaboration and the sharing culture.

The aim of this minitrack is to provide a forum for the exchange of research ideas and best practices related to social media in e-business environments. It also aims to raise awareness in terms of the latest developments in social media, and address the challenges of using social media. This minitrack is open to all types of research, conceptual or empirical. Examples of possible topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • The adoption, usage, and impact of social media upon consumers and businesses
  • Social media strategies and e-business models
  • Consumer engagement with organizations in social media
  • Enterprise 2.0 and social computing in organizations
  • Organizational learning and the use of social media
  • Knowledge management with social media
  • Crowdsourcing, collective intelligence, collaboration, problem solving with social media
  • Social commerce
  • Social media in marketing and consumer behavior
  • Social media for customer relationship management
  • Social identity, social capital, and social roles related to the use of social media
  • Policy, governance, and security issues related to the use of social media

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Christy M.K. Cheung (Primary Contact)
Hong Kong Baptist University
Email: ccheung@hkbu.edu.hk

Matthew K.O. Lee
City University of Hong Kong
Email: cbmatlee@cityu.edu.hk

Christian Wagner
City University of Hong Kong
Email: c.wagner@cityu.edu.hk

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Who do We Listen to More: Opinion Leaders or Friends? The Social Function of Conformity Behavior in Social Commerce
    ( 2017-01-04) Jia, Yanli ; Liu, Libo
    Online social information (e.g., product ratings and product purchase) is widely available on the social commerce sites and is believed to affect user purchase decisions. Drawing from the prior research on online conformity, we examine any differential impact of the online social information generated by opinion leader versus friends. By analyzing a large-scale data collected from a social commerce site, we found that user purchase decisions are influenced by the online social information both by opinion leaders and by friends. However, the information by friends has greater effect in comparison to that by opinion leaders. In addition, our results indicated that female users demonstrate greater tendency to conform to friends than opinion leaders, but not for male users. This study contributes to the existing literature by explaining how different types of social information influence users’ purchase decision and identifying the moderating role of gender on it. The results offer important and interesting insights to research and practice.
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    Perceived Individual Risk of Co-innovation in Collaborative Innovation Networks
    ( 2017-01-04) Abhari, Kaveh ; Davidson, Elizabeth ; Xiao, Bo
    Cultivating collective innovation while preserving the interest of the individual contributors is one of the main challenges collaborative innovation networks face. This challenge is riddled with difficulties in managing individuals’ co-innovation risks. The first step toward understanding co-innovation risks is the development of a valid and reliable model to measure the actors’ perception of risk. This paper conceptualizes co-innovation risk from actor’s perspective. It also proposes and tests a nomological network that illustrates the effect of risk on co-innovation behavior.
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    How to Increase Users' Social Commerce Engagement? A Technology Attractiveness Model
    ( 2017-01-04) Shen, Xiao-Liang ; Li, Yang-Jun ; Sun, Yongqiang ; Chen, Zhenjiao ; Zhang, Kem Z.K. ; Zhao, Sesia J.
    With the proliferation of social networking and electronic commerce, social commerce helps people engage in various forms of online social commercial activities through sharing their product or service knowledge and experiences. A better understanding of users' engagement in social commerce websites thus become increasingly important. Based on the attractiveness theory, this study proposes a research model that highlights the unique role of technology attractiveness, including task, social, and physical attractiveness, in promoting user involvement, which in turn affects social commerce engagement. Results demonstrate that users' perceptions of technology attractiveness are positively associated with their involvement with social commerce websites, and further stimulate engagement. In addition, website involvement partially and fully mediates the effects of social and physical attractiveness, respectively, on social commerce engagement. The limitations and implications of this study for research and practice are further discussed.
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    How Questions and Answers Shape Online Marketplaces: The Case of Amazon Answer
    ( 2017-01-04) Khern-am-nuai, Warut ; Ghasemkhani, Hossein ; Kannan, Karthik
    This paper uses data from two online shopping platforms to investigate the economic implications of the Q&A system. This research problem becomes increasingly important as many websites start to adopt the Q&A system. Yet, its economic implications have not been discussed in the previous literature. We employ the difference-in-differences analysis to examine the effect of Q&A elements on product sales. We find that question elements negatively affect sales while answer elements have a positive impact. Also, an increase in the number of question is positively correlated with the number of reviews. Meanwhile, an increase in the number of answers reduces the average length of reviews. Our findings suggest that incorporating the Q&A system could be a potential approach to drive sales. However, it is crucially important for managers to develop appropriate policies to gather necessary answers to questions asked on the platform in order to capitalize on such system.
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    Donation Behavior in Online Micro Charities: An Investigation of Charitable Crowdfunding Projects
    ( 2017-01-04) LIU, Lili ; Suh, Ayoung ; Wagner, Christian
    Charitable crowdfunding is a burgeoning online micro charity paradigm where fund seekers request micro donations from a large group of potential funders. Despite micro charities have gone digital for more than a decade, our knowledge on individuals’ donation behavior in online micro charities (e.g., charitable crowdfunding) remains limited. To fill this gap, this study develops a model that explains individuals’ donation behavior in charitable crowdfunding. Our model was tested using data collected from 205 individuals who have read charitable crowdfunding projects. The results reveal that empathy and perceived credibility of charitable crowdfunding jointly determine a funder’s intention to donate money. Furthermore, website quality and project content quality positively influence both empathy and perceived credibility. Also noteworthy is that initiator reputation is positively related to perceived credibility while project popularity is positively associated with empathy. The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of individuals’ donation behavior in online micro charities. \
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    An Exploratory Study on Consumers’ Attention towards Social Media Advertising: An Electroencephalography Approach
    ( 2017-01-04) Wang, Huichih ; Doong, Hersen
    This study aimed to demonstrate empirically that consumers’ attention is related to changes in the electroencephalographic (EEG) brain activity during the observation of a humorous or non-humorous advertisement displayed on social media. This study is innovative in three ways: first, social media is a popular platform for the testing of pre-launch advertisements. However, the online environment makes concealing real thoughts easy. Hence, the skill of observing consumers’ actual responses to advertising via brain activity has useful implications. Second, by examining how men and women differ neurologically in sensing humor, this study is a pioneer in testing the interaction effects from an EEG signal perspective. Third, by using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) methods rather than traditional means, such as correlation, a new lens for understanding neuromarketing might be built.
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    Introduction to Social Media and e-Business Transformation Minitrack
    ( 2017-01-04) Cheung, Christy MK ; Lee, Matthew K.O. ; Wagner, Christian