Proceedings of 7th Asia-Pacific Business Research Conference
25 - 26 August 2014, Bayview Hotel, Singapore ISBN: 978-1-922069-58-0
A Study on the Social Influence Process of a Virtual
Community
Cedric Hsi-Jui Wu* and Hsiao-Chun Liao**
In recent years, consumer behavior and business model change quickly
because of the rapid development of Internet and information technology.
In addition, previous studies have suggested that one of the success
factors of e-commerce is using virtual communities as a marketing channel,
such as facebook, twitter etc. This is because those virtual community
members frequently browse within the community, updating their personal
information, sharing knowledge, and making them into a necessary part of
their lives. Therefore, virtual communities have established in large
quantities and provide a variety of diversified services. Therefore, the
commercialization process of the virtual community is like a kind of
business model. How to attract online users to purchase a product or
service of the virtual community is the most important issue. This study
explores the conception of social identity and social influence on purchase
intention to use a virtual community service. Use of a virtual community
service can be regarded as consumer behavior by social factors. This study
relies on the link between social identity, social influence and purchase
intention in the social identity literatures. This study also proposes a
concept model, and expects to contribute to the literature on the social
influence process.
Key Words: Virtual community, Social identity, Social Influence, Purchase Intention.
*Professor, Cedric Hsi-Jui Wu, Dept. of Business Administration, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan.
Email: cedric@mail.ndhu.edu.tw
**Ph. D student, Hsiao-Chun Liao, Dept. of Business Administration, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan.
Email: d9732007@ems.ndhu.eud.tw