Interesting Research at ICIS – Part 1

ICIS, the International Conference on Information Systems, was in Phoenix this year (December 15-18). As THE major conference in the Information Systems field, it is always very insightful to explore its proceedings and get to know what our community is working on and what types of contributions are being generated.

Hence, this post is the first of a series of others (probably 3,4..surprise!) in which I draw a synthesis of some of my picks for ICIS 2009…not at all exhaustive, just a thin slice of a this consequent set of research material 🙂

Advertising Efficiency on Social Networks

My first pick is a paper from researchers at the National University of Singapore which is about advertising and the role of a social network in the persuasion process. Drawing on theories of social influence, it investigates the interactions between the types of products advertised on social network sites (hedonic vs. utilitarian), the endorser (network member) product expertise (low vs. high), and the tie strength (strong vs. weak tie) between the endorser and the consumer. Below is the Figure of the research model they present in the paper.

RESULTS – There are two principal observations from the laboratory experiment:

• In the case of hedonic products (e.g., designer cloth) for which consumers’ evaluation process is mostly affect-driven: the strongest determinant of persuasion is the strength of the relationship between the network member endorsing the product and the consumer –> close friends have the most persuasion power in these situations. In this situation, the influence process is normative rather than informational.
• In the case of utilitarian products (e.g., microwave, personal computer) for which consumers react more rationally, with for example, considerations about convenience and product quality: the strongest determinant of persuasion becomes the endorser’s expertise –> whether your close friend or no, what matters is whether the endorser gives the signal that he or she is a competent source of knowledge on the product of interest. Hence, in this situation the influence process is more informational rather than normative.

And this is the reference for those interested in reading the paper 🙂

Wen, C., Tan, B., and Chang, K. 2009. “Advertising Effectiveness on Social Network Sites: an Investigation of Tie Strength, Endorder Expertise and Product Type on Consumer Purchase Intention,” Thirtieth International Conference on Information Systems, Phoenix, Arizona.