Understanding consumer-to-consumer influence on the Web.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This dissertation explores the source credibility issues encountered in online consumer-to-consumer interactions. While quite a bit of research has investigated source credibility in face-to-face interactions, little is known about the source credibility cues consumers use in online environments. The first study, a descriptive investigation into online consumer-to-consumer interactions, provides evidence of the hypothesized source credibility cues: source polarity, specific vocabulary, grammar, and deference between group members. Findings from this study also support the belief that these online venues are examples of communities. By establishing the “communitiness” of these online venues, relevant research in the area of in-group/out-group effects can be applied to understanding the relationships between members of the community as well as between members and non-members of these communities.
Findings from Study 2, a controlled experiment, support the belief that a source's polarity as well as his use of technical vocabulary impacts his credibility. Additionally, the effect of these cues on credibility is found to be stronger in discussion boards than in chat rooms. The third study, a scenario based experiment, investigates how marketers can best learn from consumers in these online environments. The Internet is providing marketers with an opportunity both to observe consumer-to-consumer interactions as well as to interact with consumers in the same environments. It is important for marketers to understand the nature of online source credibility, as well as to understand under what conditions consumers will be most willing to interact with marketers in online environments. The findings from Study 3 support the hypothesis that privacy concerns and authority concerns impact a consumer's willingness to interact with a marketer in an online venue. Lastly, consumers are most willing to interact in venues such as a chat room on the company's website or in a third party sponsored chat room than in a random chat room where they are expecting only to be interacting with other consumers.