Taking shopping advice from virtual communities

Abstract

As the proliferation of Internet, people getting used to search information online, consumers who need decision support for purchase also looking for advice through Internet, or ask for advice within virtual communities. In order to understanding the advice taking behavior provided by community members, this study tries to identify the antecedents of advice taking by normative social influence that is suitable in the context of virtual communities. The mediation layer, the informational influence utilizes to predict the consumers` advice taking intention. Based on these two kinds of social influence, the investigation would be conducted by testing two factors in each kind of social influence: advice rating and consistency conceive as normative factors whereas advice quality and advisor credibility represent the informational influence. According to the results the factors of social influence both exert significant effects on the informational factors. In addition, the informational factors also have salient impacts on the advice taking.