Page 147 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

The Impact of Word of Mouth and the Facilitative Effects of Social Media 139

Building Trust and Providing Communication Motives in Social Media

There is evidence in the literature that consumers behave as if websites
themselves are the “primary” actors in online social networks, and that
online communities can act as social proxies for individual identification
(Brown, Broderick, & Lee 2007). Therefore, one can argue that the stronger
the match between an individual’s interests and those presented by the
website, the stronger the tie between the website and the user. That is, if
the respondent’s involvement with the website can be increased through
site usage, then usage has been found to drive site homophily, which drives
site tie strength (McPherson & Smith-Lovin, 1987) and ultimately the per-
ceived credibility of the information presented on the site, as well as its
informational value. Brown, Broderick, and Lee (2007) argued, “To gener-
ate a sense of group mind set and shared interests, online brand communi-
ties should include a wide range of interests that have a direct, but
non-intrusive, connection with the brand” (p. 15). Fournier and Lee
(2009) presented an in-depth case study of a successful, effective brand
community developed by Harley Davidson.
Recently, Awad and Ragowsky (2008) developed a model examining
how trust is developed in online websites that allow customers to post
perceptions and ratings of products offered for sale, as well as to commu-
nicate with each other. The authors found, in general, that WOM “quality”
affects online trust and ultimately one’s intention to shop online at a given
retailer. Interestingly, though, perceived WOM quality was found to differ
significantly as a function of gender. For men, it was found to be driven by
their ability to post information that could be shared by others. This
represents what was termed in the literature to be a focus-related utility
motivation (Balasubramanian & Mahajan, 2001). Focus-related utility is
the utility the consumer receives when adding value to the web-based
community through his or her contributions. For women, perceived
WOM quality was found to be a function of the responsiveness of other
consumers to their contributions and the interactions they had with such
consumers, all the while discounting the value of posting information.
This behavior is closely related to what is termed “consumption utility,”
which refers to consumers obtaining value through “direct consumption of
the contribution of other community constituents” (Balasubramanian &
Mahajan, 2001, p. 125). In addition, the behavior of posting to see the
responses of others is linked to the motivation of “approval utility,” where
the consumer gains satisfaction “when other constituents consume and
approve of the constituent’s own contributions” (Balasubramanian &
Mahajan, 2001, p. 126).