Some preliminary empirical results

Here is a little update about my PhD thesis work!  As a reminder,  my doctoral research investigates a phenomenon at the juncture of online social networking and online shopping.  

Online social networks have become pervasive. For example, Nielsen reported that Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs[1], and Facebook, the leading social networking site, has now more than 700 million active users[2]. In the meantime, online shopping remains a growing trend, with 60% of North-American consumers shopping online monthly in 2010 compared to 33% in 2007 [3]. When merged together, online social networks and online shopping yield online social shopping networks (OSSNs), i.e., digital platforms used by consumers to engage with each other and with products, brands, or places.

Motivated by the growing importance of this new phenomenon and the limited research on it to date, my doctoral thesis will attempt to develop, assess, and extent a theory explaining the nature and origin of the value individual users derive from OSSNs, 

Hence,  this summer, I  started collecting some data for my thesis’ first empirical study. In this study, I start by asking the following questions:

For which purposes (i.e., for conducting which actions), how (i.e., via the support of which functions), and why (i.e., for which benefits) do people use online social shopping networks (OSSNs)? 

To answer these questions, I surveyed some users of OSSNs (such as Yelp, Kaboodle, Foursquare), incorporating open and close-ended questions in the questionnaires, and following a ‘laddering’ approach where I probed respondents about (1) the purposes for which they use their preferred OSSN,  (2) asked upward questions about the reasons for which the purposes are important to them and (3) asked downward questions about which functions are most useful in enabling these purposes.

Laddering approach used

This pilot study generated 36 usable questionnaires. After coding the open-ended responses and creating so-called ‘implication’ matrices representing the strength of users’ cognitive associations between use and value (upward), and between use and functions (downward), I obtained the results shown in the Figure presented below. They provide preliminary insights into the nature and origin of the value individuals gain when using an OSSN. To be continued…

Hierarchical Value Map

• The central ‘bubbles’ represent four use modes, i.e., the four key ways of using an OSSN  (for learning  about products, for asking others’ opinions about products, for sharing content with others, for bonding with others) that could be selected by  respondents.
• Upward arrows represent the instrumentality of the use modes for generating benefits (open-ended).
• Downward arrows represent the instrumentality of functions (close-ended) for engaging in the four use modes.

[1] http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/23/facebook-750-million-users/

[3] http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/understanding_changing_needs_of_us_online_consumer%2C/q/id/57861/t/2

Advertisement