How does social networking affect consumer shopping decisions?

The author is @http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13666.html ">socialbeta content contributor @ 曹宇 Charlie.

The previous blog, which talked about the framework and analytical methods of the information and relationships of social networks, is how they are influenced in the framework of information and relationships, from the point of view of the electrical quotient, when user roles in social networks are consumers. Here, what we call influence refers to the mutual influence that comes from social networks, or from the inner members of social-networking sites, and that influence can have a positive effect on consumer buying decisions.

As we all know, when consumers are making a purchase decision, the influence of strong relationships is enormous. Strong relationship is loved ones, acquaintances or friends, they are able to exert influence, because there are other relationships between strong relationship can not be compared to the degree of trust. Strong relationships usually exert influence in reality.

So what happens to social networks or social-networking sites? This depends on the information and relationship structure of the website.

First, it depends on whether the site supports strong social networking. Support strong relationship social, need to have corresponding function, and, this function should be advantageous to the user's high frequency use, also be advantageous to the privacy information protection;

Secondly, on the basis of the former, some functions related to business behavior should be appropriately reflected, such as drawing or mapping, information sharing, comments, online questions and answers.

For a web platform, if you want to make a strong relationship, you have to develop functions that promote strong relationships, understand the rules of information exchange between strong relationships, and implement the flow design associated with them, which are different from weak relational networks. The value of a strong relational network platform is not in its ability to intervene or manipulate strong relationships, but in the social stickiness formed by strong relationships within it, as well as the enormous additional value generated by this social stickiness, typically such as FB.

But for enterprises, strong relationship network, the reality is the most uncontrollable. This is because companies can hardly intervene in strong relationships to exert influence.

For a considerable number of enterprises, strong relationship network, is a big piece of fat, but they are almost exclaiming. For example, QQ, there are a lot of strong relationship, but for enterprises, this is still unable to identify and manipulate, also said, strong relations are mostly closed circle, direct external forces, especially based on market relations, the external forces can not intervene. But in the strong relationship network (such as FB, QQ) Advertising (ads on the circle), or quite effective.

The influence of the weak relation network mainly comes from the following two aspects:

1. Authority and the influence of the Insiders

The influence of the Authority and the expert (Opinion leader or person) in social network or social electric quotient is relatively big. Although, from a relational perspective, people are mostly weak with authority or expertise, but on the other hand, the information they publish (EGC, distinguished from UGC) is often considered scarce, professional, or beyond ordinary judgment, which leads to increased consumer confidence in them.

A social network or social electronic business site, is the need for authority and professional, a certain number of authority or the presence of experts, is a platform to measure the quality of a website is an important indicator. Authority and the expert, undoubtedly is the Network Center node, it has the huge support function to the entire network structure. On the other hand, it is also the key node of information dissemination, and the dissemination of information is undoubtedly an important prerequisite for the aforementioned influence.

But for the enterprise, in authority and the expert level, compared with the strong relation network, it already started to have the certain intervention ability and the maneuverability. This is because authority and the influence of the insiders are open, and their influence comes from the value of information rather than from social relationships. Before the blog, we have repeatedly mentioned that market relations can hardly intervene in social relations, but valuable information, there is no such congenital obstacle. Therefore, it is not uncommon for enterprises to intervene and manipulate authority or experts to carry out influence. The only thing to note here is that such intervention and manipulation still need to be implicit, and that if a business is exposed to authoritative or expert interest, consumers will still believe that this is a market-related fraud, and that even the authority and the insiders will have a much lower impact.

2. The influence of ordinary users

A single ordinary user, or a few ordinary users, is actually unable to influence the purchase decision of consumers. Social network is a UGC network, although a large number of content from users, but these content is fragmented, disorderly, and because the weak relationship itself is very low trust, so, can not produce significant influence. So, does the average user have no influence? Not so.

The impact of ordinary users, actually from the classification of information aggregation and data mining (information processing two times). That is, when a large number of consumers to provide information is classified, statistical and analysis, many of the factors related to the purchase decision will show a correlation, although the statistical relevance does not represent cause and effect, but consumers are not experts, this statistical correlation is sufficient to have a huge impact. In a social network or social-electronic web site, this basic data statistics are ubiquitous, such as in the public comments, praise, the number of differences in the statistics, micro-blog Corporate sentiment statistics (positive negative keyword elements, etc.). Most network platforms, through this statistic, will converge on the platform's own influence. At present, there is still a lot of influence data waiting to be dug up.

For enterprises, in the general user level, especially in the domestic enterprises, their involvement in this level and manipulation has been quite frequent. There are actually a lot of grey industries doing this. Public comments on, there are countless enterprises themselves posing as users of the comments, Taobao has a brush reputation, micro Bo has a large army brush fans, and even the latest reports, Apple Store has also been in the public hawking brush download volume. The impact of what would have been the most equitable data from ordinary users now has almost no credibility whatsoever.

To sum up, the influence of social networks or social power providers on consumer buying decisions comes from strong relationships, from authority and professionalism in weak relationships, and from the data precipitation of ordinary users in weak relationships. In the different information and relationship structure of the Web site, the three platforms and enterprises on the platform, the actual significance of different, but also have different degrees of intervention and maneuverability, and the difference between this may be just a social network marketing enterprises must know in advance.

This article link: http://www.socialbeta.cn/articles/how-social-network-influence-consumer.html
Author: @ 曹宇 Charlie