Management Science and Information Systems' Seminar（2016-04）

Topic:Popularity or Proximity: Characterizing the Nature of Social Influence in an Online Music Community

Speaker:Sanjeev Dewan, University of California, Irvine

Time:Tuesday, May 31, 10:00-11:30

Abstract:

We study social influence in an online music community. In this community users can listen to and “favorite” (or like) songs, and follow the favoriting behavior of their social network friends — and the community as a whole. From an individual user’s perspective, two types of peer consumption information are salient for each song: total number of favorites by the community as a whole, and favoriting by their social network friends. Correspondingly, we study two types of social influence: popularity influence, driven by the total number of favorites from the community as a whole, and proximity influence, due to the favoriting behavior of immediate social network friends. Our quasi-experimental research design applies a variety of empirical methods to highly granular music consumption data from an online music community. Our analysis finds robust evidence of both popularity and proximity influence. Further, popularity influence is more important for narrow-appeal music as compared to broad-appeal music. Finally, the two types of influence are substitutes for one another, and proximity influence, when available, dominates the effect of popularity influence. We discuss implications for design and marketing strategies for online communities, such as the one studied in this paper.

Introduction:

Sanjeev Dewan is professor of information systems at the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. His current research interests are in the areas of the impact of online social media, electronic commerce, and the business value of IT investments. He is currently serving as a senior editor at Information Systems Research and associate editor at Management Science. Prior to joining UC Irvine in Fall 2001, he served on the faculties of the business schools at the University of Washington, Seattle, and George Mason University. He received his Ph.D. in Business Administration in 1991 from the Simon School at the University of Rochester, in the area of Information Systems. Previously, he received the B.Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India.

//faculty.sites.uci.edu/sdewan/

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