TY - JOUR
T1 - Product engagement and identity signaling
T2 - The role of likes in social commerce for fashion products
AU - Xu, Pei
AU - Liu, De
PY - 2019/3
Y1 - 2019/3
N2 - Motivated by a lack of understanding of user engagement with identity-relevant products, we distinguish between two mechanisms by which existing likes affect subsequent engagement: observational learning (OL) by observing the number of existing likes, and social influence (SI) by observing the likes of one's social connections. Using a novel panel dataset of 930 handbags, we find that, contrary to most OL studies, OL has a negative effect on subsequent likes, and the effect is mitigated by SI. By contrast, OL has a positive effect on clicks, and the effect diminishes as SI increases. We attribute our findings to identity signaling.
AB - Motivated by a lack of understanding of user engagement with identity-relevant products, we distinguish between two mechanisms by which existing likes affect subsequent engagement: observational learning (OL) by observing the number of existing likes, and social influence (SI) by observing the likes of one's social connections. Using a novel panel dataset of 930 handbags, we find that, contrary to most OL studies, OL has a negative effect on subsequent likes, and the effect is mitigated by SI. By contrast, OL has a positive effect on clicks, and the effect diminishes as SI increases. We attribute our findings to identity signaling.
KW - Identity signaling
KW - Observational learning
KW - Social commerce
KW - Social influence
KW - User engagement
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85046351908&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85046351908&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.im.2018.04.001
DO - 10.1016/j.im.2018.04.001
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85046351908
SN - 0378-7206
VL - 56
SP - 143
EP - 154
JO - Information and Management
JF - Information and Management
IS - 2
ER -