Understanding consumers' collective action on the Internet - a definition and discussion of relevant concepts for research (original) (raw)

Particularities of the European Consumer’s Behavior in Online Environments

Studies in Business and Economics, 2016

Although it is no longer a novelty that the Internet has now become “fashionable”, being a means of informing, socializing and trading, which is being increasingly used by the general public, it is now imperative to study the implications of its use both on the consumer, including all the roles that it can take (initiating, financing, influencing, decision making, actual consumption of goods and services) and on the marketer, who is forced to consider the Internet as a marketing tool that can be used as a lever to generate positive reactions from the consumers. Against this background, the orientation of the individuals towards the online environment, defined by specialized literature as “the second life”, comes to justify, on the one hand, the consumers’ need for social interaction, and, on the other hand, the need for comfort and speed in identifying optimal alternatives. This paper aims to address only a facet of the behavior of the digital consumer, proposing a theoretical and i...

ONLINE COMMUNITIES AS REFERENCE GROUPS IN CONSUMER DECISION-MAKING

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.

Making sense of e-commerce as social action

Information Technology & People, 2005

Purpose -To provide a social-theoretic framework which explains how e-commerce affects social conditions, such as availability of information and equality of access to information, influences actors' behavior, shapes e-commerce business models, and in turn impacts industry structure. Design/methodology/approach -Empirical investigation based on one-hour interviews with owners/managers of nine vehicle dealerships and six vehicle buyers in a large US metropolitan region. The hermeneutic method of understanding was used, involving a circular process from research design and attentiveness to data, to data collection and interpretation. This circular process exemplified the dialectic relationship between the theoretical framework (derived from Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action) and empirical data, through which interpretation and theoretical explanations grounded in the data emerged. Findings -Demonstrates that e-commerce gives rise to increasing competition among the dealers, decreasing prices and migration of competition to price, decreasing profitability of the average dealer, and erosion of traditional sources of competitive advantage. Moreover, e-commerce emancipates and empowers vehicle purchasers while reducing the power of automobile dealers.

Consumer Collectives: A History and Reflections on Their Future

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2021

This article provides a history of the treatment of consumer collectives in the social sciences literature. It highlights some of the insights derived from recent work in consumer research on consumer collectives which we organize under a heuristic taxonomy distinguishing packs, tribes, and bands. All of this suggests some future directions for consumer collectives and areas for future research. The proliferation and diversification of digital technologies will continue to shape and be shaped by consumer collectivities. Platforms are likely to accelerate and diversify consumers' collective uses of their affordances. Algorithms seem destined to play a bigger role in the formation and management of collectives. Both geography-free and local collectives are likely to develop further. The article concludes with synopses of the competitive and invited articles in this issue, which richly portray the behaviors and meanings that shape and are shaped by consumer collectives.

Webactivism and the dynamics of consumerist resistance : Analytical framework and experimental study

RIMHE : Revue Interdisciplinaire Management, Homme & Entreprise, 2016

Distribution électronique Cairn.info pour ARIMHE. © ARIMHE. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.

The Behavior of Online Consumer Opinions Case Tunisian Communities

Research in World Economy

Online consumer opinions are an essential source of information on goods and services, with the framework of a Research Online Purchase Offline behavior. However, in a virtual environment, there are two types of consumers: opinion leaders and "lurkers" who do not participate in virtual communities. This research presents the results of a qualitative study on the obstacles and motivations for the participation of "lurkers" in Social Media and especially case of Facebook groups. It shows that even though "Lurkers" consider virtual communities as a public space that can triturate their confidentiality, in some cases they can manifest themselves and give rise to new behavior, which is "mobilizing behavior".Background/Objectives: The main purpose of the research is to study and understand, through a preliminary qualitative study, the barriers, and motivations of passive users in a virtual community on Facebook. The theoretical scope of this researc...

Collective Consuming: Consumers as Subcontractors in Electronic Markets

The Information Society, 2006

In this article, contrary to popular belief, it is argued on the basis of Transaction Cost Economics that consumers will become dependent subcontractors on electronic markets. Consumers invest time and effort building up a relation with a producer or e-tailer; an investment that is idiosyncratic. The producer or e-tailer only needs to invest in generic assets that enable him to automate the process of collecting and processing customer information she needs to differentiate products and discriminate prices. As subcontractors consumers face high switching costs and are thus dependent on producers or e-tailers. Virtual communities of consumers that organize countervailing power will not mitigate this tendency.