The Effect of the Online Social Network Structure Characteristics on Network Involvement and Consumer Purchasing Intention: Focus on Korean Social Promotion Sites

The study aims to understand how the characteristics of online social network structure (tie strength, network density, network centrality and homophily, etc.) can impact consumer purchase intention through network involvement. This study focuses on social promotion sites (social commerce sites) like TicketMonster which is the most popular deal-of-the-day website in South Korea etc. These sites have a social aspect. Each promotion is valid only if a certain minimum number of consumers purchase the deal, and the news of these deal-of-the-day websites spreads virally through Facebook updates and Twitter tweets or other social network sites on a daily basis as people encourage family, friends and others within their social networks to sign up for the offer, so that the deal becomes available to all. So we propose and analyze that a consumer’s decision for purchasing in the deal-of-the-day websites is affected by the characteristics of the online social network structure through consumers’ network involvement. The results of this study are: Strong ties with friends can increase their affective involvement to the network. And network density, network centrality and homophily can both increase SNS users’ affective involvement and cognitive involvement to the online social network, both of which can increase their purchase intention to the recommended deals by their friends in SNS.