How Consumers Use and Propagate Information in Digital World

Abstract

With the advent of technology and the emergence of social media, information-sharing amongst consumers has increased exponentially. Consumers now can discuss their purchases with different people in different formats, in person or online (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010; Berger and Iyengar, 2013). Both researchers and marketers have acknowledged word of mouth (WOM) as a significant driver for consumption decisions (Akpinar & Berger, 2017). However, research regarding how consumer will use or share information in the digital world is still unclear.This dissertation research is trying to investigate the drivers of how consumers use, or share,information in digital environment – and how this is different from such behavior in offline environments. My first essay focuses on examining how consumers utilize information received from others in the digital world. Specifically, I investigate why, under certain conditions,consumers are more likely to utilize information received from socially distant others more than that received from close others.While the first essay examined how consumers use information from others, the next two essays investigate the key drivers of information generation by consumers. My second essay examines how purchase-type differentially moderates information generation by consumers on offline vs online platforms. My third essay centers on the effect of social exclusion, an impactful all-pervasive online phenomenon, on consumer’s information sharing behavior.