How Consumers Persuade Each Other: Rhetorical Strategies of Interpersonal Influence in Online Communities
Journal Title: BAR: Brazilian Administration Review - Year 2012, Vol 9, Issue 3
Abstract
Persuasive messages are central to interpersonal influence in online communities, where consumers interact mainly through text. We employed a combination of netnography and computer-mediated discourse analysis to investigate how consumers exchange information related to products and brands in an online community. We identified a set of rhetorical strategies used by community members, including setting expectations, claiming expertise, prescribing, and celebrating acquiescence. Consumers employ these rhetorical strategies to influence each other's consumption decisions, report consumption decisions back to the community, and to gauge their influence on each other's choices. We compare this process to traditional types of interpersonal influence and discuss how our findings contribute to advancing the burgeoning literature on interpersonal influence in online contexts.
Authors and Affiliations
Scaraboto, Daiane; Rossi, Carlos Alberto Vargas; Costa, Diego
Creativity and Innovation in the Context of Team-work: an Evaluation in the Self-management Cells and Quality Control Circles of Ambev S.C. Branch
This paper is about changes in the business world. The main goal is to study the implications related to people’s creativity expression owing to work organization in small groups in the Ambev S.C. branch. This is a qual...
Cause Related Marketing: Consumers’ Perceptions and Benefits for Profit and Non-Profits Organisations
This study is an attempt to understand consumers’ perceptions regarding Cause Related Marketing [CRM]. The research findings were based on a survey of 200 consumers in the Brighton area and published data. The research...
Organizational Decline Research Review: Challenges and Issues for a Future Research Agenda
Organizational decline is related to the deterioration of the resource base and performance of an organization for a sustained period of time. Although some studies have been conducted, it remains an understudied phenom...
Anomalies and Investor Sentiment: Empirical Evidences in the Brazilian Market
This study examined the relationship between investor sentiment and value anomalies in Brazil. In addition, it analyzed if pricing deviations caused by investors with optimistic views are different from those caused by...
Organizational Change and the Meaning of Time
This paper probes into the social process of sense making in changing organizations, trying to observe how participant individuals interpret contextual events and configure their notion of time. This notion of time then...