Customer Information Sharing Behavior in Social Shopping Communities: A Social Capital Perspective

Social shopping communities provide online platform for customers to communicate their opinions and exchange product information. In this study, we explored the factors driving customer information sharing behavior in social shopping communities. We proposed and empirically tested an integrative theoretical model of customer information sharing based on social capital theory. We adopted an empirical analysis approach and collected subjective survey data and objective behavioural usage data over two months from 1,177 customers in a social shopping community. Our results generally support the theoretical model and our hypotheses. Our results show that customer information sharing is determined by social capital (i.e., indegree centrality, outdegree centrality, shared language, shared vision, and trust) factors. These results contribute significantly to the literature and provide important implications for future research and practice.