Social influence in marketing has generally been conceptualized in terms of conformity, where the individual's attitudes and behaviour are influenced by real or imagined group pressure. This is a one-way influence process where the group (majority) influences the individual. This research extends this conceptualization of social influence to include the influence of minority or deviant opinions. A simultaneous social influence paradigm is adopted, in which individuals may not only experience conformity pressure from the majority, but may also be subject to persuasion by minority opinions in the group. Such situations may arise in consumer groups as such organizational buying committees or families. Several conditions that may determine the extent of conformity or minority influence were delineated. It was hypothesized that the extent of social identification with a minority or majority source, i.e., source-similarity, would determine the extent of its influence. It was proposed that issue-involvement would play an important role in determining conformity versus minority influence effects, as well as interact significantly with source-similarity. The role of other mediating variables in this social influence process, such as source credibility and source feelings, were also explicated. An empirical test of the theory was undertaken through a 2 (high/low similarity) X 2 (high/low involvement) factorial design. Subject were exposed to persuasive communication from both a majority and a minority source, who advocated contrary positions. The two sources always assumed opposite social identities, and thus when one source was similar to the subject, the other was dissimilar. As anticipated, the minority opinion was more persuasive when the minority was similar, rather than dissimilar. However, this effect was dependent on the level of involvement. The results were generally consistent with the proposed model, with both similarity and involvement playing a crucial role in determining the extent of minority influence. Source credibility and feelings towards the source were both significant mediators in the social influence process. This research indicates a further need to explore the role of involvement in such simultaneous influence contexts using other consumer contexts, and it opens several avenues for future research.

Social influence in marketing has generally been conceptualized in terms of conformity, where the individual's attitudes and behaviour are influenced by real or imagined group pressure. This is a one-way influence process where the group (majority) influences the individual. This research extends this conceptualization of social influence to include the influence of minority or deviant opinions. A simultaneous social influence paradigm is adopted, in which individuals may not only experience conformity pressure from the majority, but may also be subject to persuasion by minority opinions in the group. Such situations may arise in consumer groups as such organizational buying committees or families. Several conditions that may determine the extent of conformity or minority influence were delineated. It was hypothesized that the extent of social identification with a minority or majority source, i.e., source-similarity, would determine the extent of its influence. It was proposed that issue-involvement would play an important role in determining conformity versus minority influence effects, as well as interact significantly with source-similarity. The role of other mediating variables in this social influence process, such as source credibility and source feelings, were also explicated. An empirical test of the theory was undertaken through a 2 (high/low similarity) X 2 (high/low involvement) factorial design. Subject were exposed to persuasive communication from both a majority and a minority source, who advocated contrary positions. The two sources always assumed opposite social identities, and thus when one source was similar to the subject, the other was dissimilar. As anticipated, the minority opinion was more persuasive when the minority was similar, rather than dissimilar. However, this effect was dependent on the level of involvement. The results were generally consistent with the proposed model, with both similarity and involvement playing a crucial role in determining the extent of minority influence. Source credibility and feelings towards the source were both significant mediators in the social influence process. This research indicates a further need to explore the role of involvement in such simultaneous influence contexts using other consumer contexts, and it opens several avenues for future research. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Communication

This research explores the impact of interactive communication on business-to business (B2B) relationships. In the past decade the internet and especially social media as a mode of communication has grown rapidly in both consumer and business markets. Drawing on marketing channels and communications literature this paper identifies the dimensions of interactive communication and develops a theoretical framework to examine their impact on satisfaction, commitment, and advocacy. Media synchronicity theory and the concept of the internet as an alternative to the real world are used to distinguish between digital and non-digital modes of communication. Relationship marketing is used to identify the dimensions of interactivity: rationality, social interaction, contact density, and reciprocal feedback. The framework developed is usedto explore the influence of face-to-face (F2F), digital, and traditional, impersonalcommunications on the dimensions of interactivity.Hypotheses linking the mode of communication: personal, digital, and impersonal with the dimensions of interactivity and relational outcomes are empirically examined with data from the commercial printing and graphic design industry. Confirmatory Factor Analysis is used to analyze the measurement and structural model. Personal, F2F communication has the greatest impact on social interaction, reciprocal feedback, and number of contacts. Digital communication has a weaker effect on these dimensions and impersonal communication has the weakest effect. Personal and Digital have equal impacts on rationality and rationality is the only dimension of interactivity positively associated with relationship satisfaction. Contact density has a negative impact on relationship satisfaction and this negative impact is greater with personal communication that it is with digital. The study shows that affective commitment leads to advocacy in a B2B channel, but trust and calculative commitment have no impact on advocacy. The findings of the study have implications for both managers and researchers regarding the mode and content of communications in B2B relationships. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

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Thesis (MTech (Marketing))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2015. / The rapid growth of social media has resulted in digital information and communications technology (ICT) channels for individuals to connect with each other and the rest of their world. Consequently, social network sites (SNS) and other mobile applications have become an integral part of life, as well as a daily destination for billions of individuals, offering them novel and an instant means of communication in this interactive ICT space. Internet, social media and smartphone usage are also expanding prolifically in developing countries such as South Africa (SA). This incremental expansion of social media usage is directly related to the progression of Internet usage across the globe, primarily as a result of the irrevocable dissemination of smartphones. The use of social media has become the most common activity among modern adolescents and young adults (referred to as Generation Y or Millennials). SNS such as Facebook, Mxit, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and numerous others have grown exponentially in recent years, enabling Generation Y with a portal for entertainment and communication. The increase of social media adoption has captured the attention of marketers and consumers alike on a global scale, and with the quickly changing communication environments, marketers now confront new challenges in terms of understanding consumer behaviour, attitudinal responses and consumption patterns in the new millennium. Social media brings with it powerful opportunities for brands to engage with young consumers; create real time conversations; and provide immediate feedback via interactive marketing communications at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional media advertising. Internet and social media usage, as well as access, grown has prolifically in SA, while minimal research has been conducted regarding attitudes towards social network advertising (SNA). Millennials are sophisticated and technology savvy, therefore, social media is important to them to maintain contact with their friends, and to continually interact in the digital environment. Hence, it is important for organisations to strategically market their brands in a way that would appeal to this market, which is notoriously difficult to reach. Furthermore, Generation Y consumers have huge buying power and also exert a major influence on their household purchase behaviour, so their social media usage and attitudes towards various ICT platforms media are important to marketers. A complete knowledge base of this generation will enable brands to increase their marketing communication effectiveness when targeting this cohort. Yet, many organisations have used SNA without truly discerning the real attitudinal effect that it has on their young consumers

Social commerce (s-commerce) relies on social media to support the buying and selling activities between customers and sellers. S-commerce sites have nowadays enabled their sellers to form their individual community, constitutes invited members of other shoppers, serving as trusted agents or targets and share shopping information and experience with their new customers. This study termed this new facet of communities as social commerce individual vendor community (SCIVC). A recent business paradigm of s-commerce sites indicates that customers spend a little time with s-commerce sellers and/or members in SCIVC, and thus swift trust, a quickly formed trust in a new relationship, deems be more appropriate representing as a basis of their trust building formulated. From the perspective of trust transfer theory, this thesis firstly develops the swift-based trust transfer process model and then examines how both swift trusts factors of individual sellers and members in SCIVC would affect customer trust in s-commerce sites. Secondly, this thesis verifies how the social support affects the model constructs of the swift-based trust transfer process, and subsequently how they further affect relationship outcomes on s-commerce sites. In this thesis, we quantified social support based on functional customer orientation construct and relational customer orientation construct; whereas respective swift guanxi and swift credibility constructs used to measure factors of swift trust factor between a customer with their seller and between a customer with their members of SCVIC. Lastly, we measured relationship outcomes by the following factors: repurchase intention, social shopping intention (i.e. measured by WOM adoption), and social sharing intention (i.e. measured by WOM intention). Based on a survey of 287 s-commerce shoppers from a s-commerce site - WeChat, our results revealed that the customer trust in s-commerce sites can be transferred from both respective swift trusts. This implies that their trust can be influenced by s-commerce parties, that are individual sellers and members of SCVIC. Our results also showed that the proposed social support factors, namely functional and relational customer orientation, both have mainly a positive relationship on respective swift guanxi, swift credibility, and customer trust factors, and subsequently influenced the three proposed factors of relationship outcomes. Exceptional insignificant cases included the relationship between relationship customer orientation and customer trust, the relationship between swift guanxi and WOM adoption and the relationship between swift credibility and WOM intention. In conclusion, this thesis makes three main contributions. First, it confirms consumer trust in s-commerce sites can be transferred from their sellers via guanxi trust and members in SCVIC via credibility trust. Second, it confirms functional and relational customer orientation have a profound total effect on both the proposed relationship mediator of trust and relationship outcomes. Lastly, it confirms the proposed customer orientation constructs and relationship mediator of trust promote not only s-commerce shopping behavior through collaborative sharing and social shopping but also individual-based repeat buying decisions.

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Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Technology Degree in Information Technology, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2014. / Social computing researchers are devoting efforts to understand the complex social behaviour of people using social networking platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, so as to inform the design of human-centered and socially aware systems. This research study investigates the factors of perceived trust, user satisfaction, social norm and perceived behavioural control, to develop a model for predicting the continuance intention of people to use online social networking for business transactions. In order to validate the predictive capability of the model developed, an online survey was used to collect 300 useable responses from people who have used LinkedIn and Twitter social networking platforms for business transactions at least once. The Partial Least Square (PLS) mathematical analysis tool was thereafter used to perform confirmatory factor analysis, analysis of measurement and structural models. The study results provide significant evidence in support of the factors of perceived trust, social norm and user satisfaction, as determinants of the continuance intention of people using online social networking platforms for business transactions. Perceived trust was found to exhibit a strong relationship with social norm and explains a variance of (R2=0.47). In addition, social norm explains a variance of (R2=0.44) and user satisfaction explains a variance of (R2=0.42), resulting in the model predicting (R2=0.56) continuance intention. In addition, the research model was tested for the moderating effects of usage habit, which were found to significantly moderate relationships between continuance intention and perceived trust, PBCand social norm, resulting in an improved predictive capability of (R2=0.89). The moderating result indicates that a higher level of habit increases the effect of perceived trust, Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC) and social norm on continuance intention. This result confirms the theoretical argument that the strength of user satisfaction to predict continuance, is strengthened by usage habit. The results of this research study generally have practical implications for individuals who desire to offer commercial services on online social networking technologies, to seriously consider building trust and maintaining user satisfaction to sustain their businesses. They should also think of strategies embedded in peer pressure, to attract, retain and establish trustworthy relationships with customers.

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Technology Degree in Information Technology, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2014. / Social computing researchers are devoting efforts to understand the complex social behaviour of people using social networking platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, so as to inform the design of human-centered and socially aware systems. This research study investigates the factors of perceived trust, user satisfaction, social norm and perceived behavioural control, to develop a model for predicting the continuance intention of people to use online social networking for business transactions. In order to validate the predictive capability of the model developed, an online survey was used to collect 300 useable responses from people who have used LinkedIn and Twitter social networking platforms for business transactions at least once. The Partial Least Square (PLS) mathematical analysis tool was thereafter used to perform confirmatory factor analysis, analysis of measurement and structural models. The study results provide significant evidence in support of the factors of perceived trust, social norm and user satisfaction, as determinants of the continuance intention of people using online social networking platforms for business transactions. Perceived trust was found to exhibit a strong relationship with social norm and explains a variance of (R2=0.47). In addition, social norm explains a variance of (R2=0.44) and user satisfaction explains a variance of (R2=0.42), resulting in the model predicting (R2=0.56) continuance intention. In addition, the research model was tested for the moderating effects of usage habit, which were found to significantly moderate relationships between continuance intention and perceived trust, PBCand social norm, resulting in an improved predictive capability of (R2=0.89). The moderating result indicates that a higher level of habit increases the effect of perceived trust, Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC) and social norm on continuance intention. This result confirms the theoretical argument that the strength of user satisfaction to predict continuance, is strengthened by usage habit. The results of this research study generally have practical implications for individuals who desire to offer commercial services on online social networking technologies, to seriously consider building trust and maintaining user satisfaction to sustain their businesses. They should also think of strategies embedded in peer pressure, to attract, retain and establish trustworthy relationships with customers. / M