Exploring the propensity to share product information on social networks.

Abstract

The study aims to identify the motivational factors that leverage opinion disseminators to share product information in online social networking sites in two given conditions – product-specific condition and general condition. The study further makes an attempt to discover any new potential motives and investigate their relative importance in online social networking context. An online questionnaire survey is viralized through social networking websites within personal contacts and network groups for recruitment of worldwide users of the same. Drawing on the findings, the study confirms theoretical motives found in previous literature as well as discovers some new ones. Both the type of samples indicate Dispense Jubilance and Resentment as the most important motives; additionally, principal component analysis regenerates Recognition, Sociability and Vengeance as other important motives for Product-Specific Sample, and Advocacy and Economic Incentives for General Sample. Interestingly, this study finds three new motives such as Narcissism for General Sample, and Bandwagon Talk and Time-Pass for Product-Specific Sample. Regression Analysis illustrates that a significant part of the General Sample population were predisposed by narcissistic motives to share product information among users of online social network.