The effect of network characteristics on online customer engagement:

Guide(s)

Shainesh, G

Department

Marketing

Area

Marketing

University

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Place

Bangalore

Publication Date

3-31-2024

Year Awarded

March 2024

Year Completed

March 2024

Year Registered

June 2017

Abstract

Many studies on customer engagement (CE) implicitly analyze the network to which a customer belongs. However, most studies examine engagement at the brand level rather than the network level. As a result, there is a dearth of research about how network structure influences CE in online review networks, By creating and evaluating theoretically derived hypotheses about the impact of network structure on online CE.-as determined by the total number of upvotes a review receives-we add to the body of literature on online CE behavior, This Is achieved by analyzing the ego network in which a reviewer resides. The first part of the thesis introduces interactions with online reviews as a type of CE behavior and builds a conceptual model based on conformity theory to study the effects of informational and normative influences. In the second part, this conceptual model is tested using a publicly available dataset comprising of review-level data and user-level data of individual user networks of an online opinion platform (Yelp). We specifically look at data on restaurant reviews for this study. We find evidence that online consumer engagement behavior largely depends on the customers' network structure within the review platform. Furthermore, we discovered that the information contained in the review impacts the total number of votes a review receives. For this reason, a customer's ability to leverage their network to obtain greater engagement results for their reviews is equally as important as their knowledge or writing skills when sharing information through reviews. This study contributes to the literature on online CE behavior by using conformity theory to pinpoint how factors related to review authors, review readers, and the review itself impact other users' involvement with focal users' review contributions. From our study, homophily, network density of alters, and centrality tend to increase the useful votes a reviewer receives. These results encourage managers to track the increase in value created by the network of users on online review networks since these metrics can help understand customers' influence on other customers in driving transactions.

Pagination

xi, 133p.

Copyright

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Document Type

Dissertation

DAC Chairperson

Shainesh, G

DAC Members

Prabhu, Ganesh N; Mishra, Ashis

Type of Degree

Ph.D.

Relation

DIS-IIMB-FPM-P24-09

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