Understanding the Exchange Intention of an Individual Blogger

This research explores the issue of how a blogring, a circle/community of blogs with a common theme (Xanga 2008; Chua and Xu 2007), could be utilized to form a loosely distributed exchange of products for monetary and nonmonetary returns. Specifically, we present a research model that identifies factors influencing a blogger’s intention to participate in a commercial exchange, a commercial activity involving a blogger and a reader within a blogring. A blogring is conceptualized as a natural segmentation of user-alike whereby members (i.e., bloggers and readers) converge toward common interests reflected in the blog contents (Kumar et al. 2004; Gumbrecht 2004). The formation of this social network provides bloggers with the social capital to engage in collaboration and cooperation with other members (Putnam 2000; Peece 2002). Economizing on this social capital, bloggers could engage in product, service, and/or money exchanges. We term this process the 376 Part 6 Workshop Paper Contributions Blogger-Reader Similarity Interest Focused Blog Content Interest Focused Relationship