1

Consumer experience sharing in online social media:

Individual characteristics and consumption experience

Zhibin Lin, Phd, Northumbria University · Newcastle Business School, New Castle, UK

Mauro Jose de Oliveira, Phd, Centro Universitário da FEI, São Paulo, Brazil

Academy of Marketing Conference 2014, Bournemouth, UK; 07-10 July 2014

Abstract

There is limited research into consumer personality and their consumption experience as the

drivers of technology use experience sharing in online social networks. The aim of this paper

thus is to develop and test a theoretical model integrating consumer innovativeness,

subjective knowledge, and technology use experience sharing in online social media. The

model was tested using an online survey of the members of online traveler communities, who

have experience of using online flight check-in technology (N=212). The empirical results

overall support the proposed model. The findings advance our knowledge in explaining

consumer experience sharing in online soical media, and have implications for firm's e-

marketing strategies.

1. Introduction

With increasing popularity of online social media, more consumers are now using online

social media for seeking consumption advice, particularly the use of self-service technologies

such as online flight reservation and check-in services. Understanding the factors driving

users to voluntarily contribute knowledge and share information in online social media has

received growing research attention. Prior studies have focused on constructs associated with

social capital (Wasko & Faraj, 2005), social cognitive theories (Fang & Chiu, 2010), resource

exchange theory (Chan & Li, 2010), uses and gratification theory (Chen, Yang, & Tang,

2013) and organizational citizenship behaviors (Chiu, Hsu, & Wang, 2006). These studies

have enriched our understanding of experience and knowledge sharing in online media,

however there are at least two gaps in this literature. First, there is a lack of considerations of

individual attributes (Wiertz & de Ruyter, 2007). Individual attributes such as consumer

innovativeness may help researchers and marketers understand why consumers contribute

their experience and knowledge in online media. Consumer innovativeness is associated with

market mavens, those who are especially knowledgeable about consumption issues (Feick &

Price, 1987; Goldsmith, Flynn, & Goldsmith, 2003) and opinion leaders, those who are

experts within a specific product category (Engel, Kegerreis, & Blackwell, 1969; King &

Summers, 1970), both types of consumers are highly influential on other consumers through

word of mouth communication. Second, there is little research into how technology use

experience influences customer’s participation in experience sharing in online social media,

despite the extensive research on the impact of customer satisfaction and trust on positive

word of mouth in the relationship marketing literature (Briggs & Grisaffe, 2010; Brown,

Barry, Dacin, & Gunst, 2005; Garbarino & Johnson, 1999; Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, &

Gremler, 2002; Keaveney, 1995; Ladhari, 2007; Matos & Rossi, 2008; Morgan & Hunt,

1994). Yet experience sharing in the form of online product reviews and comments could be

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more influential than information presented on firm’s own websites or online advertising

(Bickart & Schindler, 2001), they are powerful in influencing potential customers’ short-term

and long-term product judgments (Bone, 1995) and subsequent purchase decision (Bansal &

Voyer, 2000). Therefore, this study attempts to fill the above two gaps in the literature by

developing a theoretical model testing the impact of consumer individual attributes and

consumption experience on voluntary experience sharing in online social media. Specifically,

the individual attributes examined in this study are two important constructs, i.e. consumer

innovativeness and subjective knowledge; the consumption experience is based on frequent

flyers’ experience of online flight check-in service which include the constructs of perceived

ease of use, perceived usefulness and trust; and the experience sharing activities refer to

frequent flyers’ participation in discussion in the online frequent flyers forums.

2. Conceptual background and hypotheses

2.1. Consumer experience sharing as knowledge contribution and word of mouth

Consumer technology experience sharing in online social media can be conceptualized as a

form of knowledge contribution (Gruen, Osmonbekov, & Czaplewski, 2006). Wasko and

Faraj (2005) claim that knowledge creation has directed toward informal knowledge sharing

activities within communities of practice, such as online discussion forums. Consumer

technology experience sharing in online social media are often in the form of product or

service reviews, which can also be seen as a form of electronic word of mouth (Gruen et al.,

2006; Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh, & Gremler, 2004; Sun, Youn, Wu, & Kuntaraporn,

2006). Hence, we review both the literatures of online knowledge contribution and word of

mouth literature to develop our hypothesis. Figure 1 shows the conceptual model for the

research.

[Figure 1 about here]

2.2. Individual attributes: innovativeness and subjective knowledge

Consumer innovativeness is a personality trait, i.e. the tendency to willingly embrace change

and try new things (Chau & Hui, 1998; Cotte & Wood, 2004; Roehrich, 2004). Prior studies

have established that consumer innovativeness is strongly associated with opinion leadership

both in offline and online environments (Flynn, Goldsmith, & Eastman, 1996; Goldsmith &

Hofacker, 1991; Sun et al., 2006). Recent research by Pagani, Hofacker, and Goldsmith

(2011) confirmed that innovativeness is positively related to both active use (posting

comments) and passive use (reading) social networking sites. Thus,

H1: Higher levels of innovativeness lead to higher levels of experience sharing in

online social media.

Consumer subjective knowledge is a central self-concept (Leary et al., 1994; Packard &

Wooten, 2013) which entails self-beliefs regarding one’s knowledge in the domain of

consumption (Carlson, Vincent, Hardesty, & Bearden, 2009; Packard & Wooten, 2013; Park,

Mothersbaugh, & Feick, 1994), hence it is an important contributor to global evaluations of

the self (Marsh, 1986; Tafarodi & Swann Jr, 1995). It is different from objective knowledge

(Brucks, 1985; Flynn & Goldsmith, 1999), which refers to the actual amount of accurate

information stored in his or her memory. Prior empirical evidence suggests that individual

expertise is positively associated with knowledge contribution in online community of

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practice (Constant, Sproull, & Kiesler, 1996; Wasko & Faraj, 2000). Thus,

H2: Higher levels of subjective knowledge lead to higher levels of experience

sharing in online social media.

Innovative consumers play a key role in the production and use of knowledge - they have

greater willingness to experiment with new ideas, to try new products earlier, to use

considerable initiative in seeking information before using the service - as a consequence,

they are more knowledgeable (Engel et al., 1969). They also tend to be more active in

disseminating of new product or service information than average people (Engel et al., 1969;

Packard & Wooten, 2013). The discussion here leads to:

H3: Subjective knowledge partially mediates the relationship between

innovativeness and experience sharing in online social media.

2.3. Online check-in experience

Consumers evaluating service performance base on their encounter with the service or the

period of time when the customer interacts directly with the firm (Bitner, 1990). In the

context of online flight check-in service, there is no inter-personal interaction, and all the

service encounters are computer-mediated. The evaluation of consumption experience is

largely based on online check-in facilities, i.e. the self-service technology (Curran & Meuter,

2005; Meuter, Ostrom, Roundtree, & Bitner, 2000). Hence we draw on the two major

constructs in the widely cited Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) in technology

adoption literature: ‘perceived ease of use’ and ‘perceived usefulness’ of online check-in

technology to examine airline traveler’s consumption experience of online check-in service,

and posits that:

H4: Higher levels of perceived ease of consumption lead to higher levels of

experience sharing in online social media.

H5: Higher levels of perceived usefulness of consumption lead to higher levels of

experience sharing in online social media.

Davis, Bagozzi, and Warshaw (1989) argue that all else being equal, the less effortful a

system is to use, the more useful it will be for the users to accomplish their task. Prior

research has confirmed that perceived ease of use is significantly linked to technology

adoption intention, both directly and indirectly via its impact on perceived usefulness

(Venkatesh & Davis, 2000). Therefore, we posit that:

H6: Perceived usefulness partially mediates the relationships between perceived

ease of use and experience sharing in online social media.

2.4. Trust

Consumption trust in context of technology-mediated services can be defined as users’

confidence in the technology’s reliability and security (Morgan & Hunt, 1994). Prior

empirical research has demonstrated that trust is associated with a tendency to offer positive

word of mouth (Briggs & Grisaffe, 2010; Garbarino & Johnson, 1999; Hennig-Thurau et al.,

2002; Keaveney, 1995; Ladhari, 2007; Matos & Rossi, 2008; Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Singh &

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Sirdeshmukh, 2000). Thus,

H7: Higher levels of consumption trust lead to higher levels of experience

sharing in online consumption communities.

3. Method

3.1. Sample and procedure

This study uses online frequent flyers forums as the research setting. An invitation to

participation in customer online check-in experience survey with a link to the web-based

questionnaire was placed in a national frequent flyer forum. Only those who have previously

used online flight check-in service were qualified to participate. As an incentive, participants

were offered a summary of the results automatically generated by the survey hosting website

when the respondent clicks the ‘submit’ button upon completion of the questionnaire. After

eliminating 24 incomplete responses or those that contain the same response option to the

majority of the question items, the survey resulted in 212 valid responses. The sample was

66% male and 34% female. The majority of the respondents (89%) were in the age bracket

between 30 and 39 years old, and the majority (91%) have a tertiary education qualification.

They were mainly white-collar workers such as company managers (40%) or professionals

(35%). This profile matches the general profile of the frequent flyer forum’s users.

3.2. Measures

Innovativeness was measured using three items adapted from Goldsmith and Hofacker

(1991). Consumer subjective knowledge was measured with three items based on Flynn and

Goldsmith (1999), and Klerck and Sweeney (2007). Three items measuring perceived ease of

use were adapted from Davis (1989), while perceived usefulness was operationalized to fit

the specific context of online flight check-in, therefore three new items were developed,

based on a review of the discussions posted in the frequent flyer forum. Online consumption

trust was based on two items measuring trust of the online check-in systems following

Schneider (1999). with two other items to measure consumption experience sharing adapted

from Sun et al. (2006). The specific items measuring the latent constructs are presented in

Table 1.

4. Results

Partial Least Square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to estimate the

conceptual model. The software used in this study is SmartPLS 2.0 (Ringle, Wende, & Will,

2005). As suggested by Hair et al. (2011), the t-statistics were computed by using 5000

bootstrap samples. The measurement model test results showed good reliability and validity

of the construct measures (see Appendix 1). Figure 2 illustrates the model estimation results

of direct effects between constructs. It indicates that the aggregate PLS path coefficients are

statistically significant. R² values range from 0.27 for subjective knowledge to 0.37 for

experience sharing and perceived useful. Blindfolding was run to obtain cross-validated

redundancy measures for each construct. The results indicate that all Q² values are larger than

zero, suggesting that the exogenous constructs have predictive relevance for the endogenous

construct under consideration (Hair et al., 2011).

[Figure 2 about here]

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The path coefficients of the direct effects and t-values are also presented in Figure 2.

Consumer innovativeness has a strong impact on experience sharing, supporting H1. Support

was also found for H2, which suggests the positive relationships between knowledge and

experience sharing. The relationship between perceived ease of use was not significant,

rejecting H4. Consistent with H5, perceived usefulness has positive relationship with

experience sharing, but the relationship is rather weak. The path coefficient from trust to

experience sharing is not significant, thus H7 was not supported.

The results of total effects in comparison with direct effects are shown in Table 4, which

indicate that innovativeness has both a significant direct effect and a total effect on

experience sharing through knowledge, thus confirms that knowledge performs a partial

mediating role between innovativeness and experience sharing (Baron & Kenny, 1986),

supporting H3. Perceived ease of use has a significant yet weak total effect on experience

sharing, and given that it has no significant direct effect on experience sharing, the effect is

fully mediated through perceived usefulness (Baron & Kenny, 1986), thus supporting a

revised H6 as a full mediation hypothesis. Although not hypothesized, we tested the possible

moderation effects of individual characteristics and found no significant results (Appendix 2)

[Table 4 about here]

5. Discussion and conclusions

The aim of this study was to address the lack of considerations in the literature of personal

attributes and the consumption experience in understanding customer’s participation in

posting comments at online consumption communities. The empirical results of the study

provide overall support for the proposed theoretical model (R-square = 37%). The

contributions of this study are threefold. First, the study provides strong evidence that

consumer innovativeness has both direct effect and indirect effect on experience sharing in

online social media through self perception of knowledge. The evidence indicates that

consumer voluntary experience sharing is driven out of intrinsic motive of self enhancement

(Packard & Wooten, 2013; Wasko & Faraj, 2005). Second, the study results also indicate that

two major constructs in the Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) ‘perceived ease of

use’ and ‘perceived usefulness’ of online check-in service predict experience sharing in

online consumption communities, with ‘perceived usefulness’ performs a full mediation role,

yet the relationships are somewhat weak. Prior studies have not yet drawn on Technology

Acceptance Model in predicting experience sharing. The weak evidence may indicate that the

performance of online check-in service has met or but not so much exceeded customer

expectations (Oliver, 1980), as both extremely good (Brown et al., 2005; Hennig-Thurau et

al., 2002) and extremely poor performance (Keaveney, 1995; Rice & Love, 1987) are

expected to trigger online word of mouth. Third, contrary to expectations, the results suggest

that higher levels of consumption trust did not lead to higher levels of experience sharing in

online consumption communities. A possible explanation may be similar to that of the weak

effects of two constructs of ‘perceived ease of use’ and ‘perceived usefulness’, i.e. frequent

flyers may take the reliability and security of the online check-in system for granted, which

did not trigger their desire to share this ‘mediocre’ experience with others.

The findings of this study provide several implications for firms to successfully integrate

online social media in their overall marketing strategies. First, innovative and knowledgeable

customers are highly valuable for the firm, and managers should try to identify innovative

consumers to encourage their use of service technology. Second, online social media can be

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both repositories of consumption knowledge and electronic word of mouth. Firms could

collaborate with online social media and direct their customers to those communities for

knowledge seeking and service support so as to significantly reduce service costs. Firms

could also set up their own online community sites and help customers create and disseminate

their knowledge. Third, as self enhancement value drives innovators and experts to share their

expertise online, managers could consider assign recognition status to expert users, such as

silver, gold, platinum, diamond members, just like those grades in frequent flyer programs.

Finally, firms should aim to customers with exciting consumption experience, as mediocre

service is unlikely to trigger customers to share their experience in online social media.

Although the results of this study provide new insights, there are several limitations

associated with this study, which introduce future research opportunities. First, the context of

this study was limited to a single consumption subject - online flight check-in; future research

could compare the research model in other consumption contexts. Second, further research on

online social media will generate fruitful findings by integrating such predictors as

consumption emotions (excitement, regret, frustration, etc.), personality attributes such as risk

aversion, and outcome variables such as online opinion seeking and subsequent consumption

decision behavior. Finally, a more rigorous sampling technique and larger size could help

improve the representativeness of the sample and generalization of the findings.

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Figures

Figure 1. Conceptual model

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*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; t-values in parentheses.

Figure 2. Results of the structural model.

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Appendix 1 Measurement model

As shown in Table 1, all the item loadings are above the recommended 0.7 and are significant

(Hair et al., 2011), the lowest value being 0.81. The composite reliability (CR) exceeds the

recommended level of 0.7 (the lowest is 0.88), and the average variance extracted (AVE)

values are above the recommended level of 0.5 (Hair et al., 2011), with a lowest value of 0.7.

Table 1: Scale items & convergent validity

Constructs/Items (5-point scales) Mean SD Loading

Innovativeness (CR= 0.88; AVE= 0.70)

IN1 I like to experiment with new ways of doing things. 3.22 0.95 0.81

IN2 I like to try new products. 3.59 0.92 0.87

IN3 I am among the first in my circle of friends to use

new technologies 3.50 0.83 0.83

Knowledge (CR= 0.93; AVE= 0.81)

CK1 I know pretty much about airline websites. 3.79 0.90 0.86

CK2 I am an expert user of online check-in service 3.68 0.90 0.92

CK3 I know pretty much about how to use online check-

in service 3.83 0.89 0.92

Perceived ease of use (CR= 0.91; AVE= 0.76)

PEOU1 Online check-in requires little effort. 4.41 0.71 0.89

PEOU2 The process of online check-in is clear. 4.32 0.77 0.90

PEOU3 Online check-in operation is simple and easy to

understand. 4.53 0.68 0.83

Perceived usefulness (CR= 0.89; AVE= 0.73)

PU1 It saves me time for not having to queue at the

airport. 4.00 0.87 0.86

PU2 It is useful for selecting the seat I prefer. 4.12 0.86 0.87

PU3 It is useful, as I can either print out boarding pass or

have it my smartphone. 4.06 0.78 0.83

Consumption trust (CR=.91; AVE= 0.84)

Trust1 In general, online check-in system is reliable. 4.54 .74 .96

Trust2 In general, online check-in system is secure. 4.58 .78 .87

Experience sharing (CR=0.93; AVE= 0.86)

ES1 I regularly participate in the discussion of online

check-in in frequent flyers forum 3.51 0.86 0.93

ES2 I share my experience of using online check-in in

online social networking media. 3.75 0.87 0.93

Notes: CR = composite reliability, AVE = Average variance extracted, SD=Standard

deviation

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To confirm the discriminant validity of the latent constructs, cross loadings were examined

(shown in Table 2) and square roots of the AVE and latent variables compared (Table 3,

Fornell & Larcker, 1981). The results show that all the item loadings on their respective

construct are greater than their loadings on other constructs, and the square roots of the AVEs

exceed the correlations between every pair of latent variables. Therefore, discriminant validity

is established.

Table 2 Cross loadings

CK IN PEOU PU Trust ES

CK1 0.87 0.45 0.35 0.3 0.14 0.4

CK2 0.91 0.47 0.38 0.41 0.13 0.41

CK3 0.92 0.49 0.38 0.42 0.18 0.44

IN1 0.39 0.81 0.28 0.28 0.13 0.37

IN2 0.53 0.88 0.27 0.27 0.09 0.43

IN3 0.37 0.82 0.33 0.31 0.14 0.49

PEOU1 0.35 0.31 0.89 0.5 0.49 0.38

PEOU2 0.34 0.29 0.90 0.51 0.45 0.36

PEOU3 0.38 0.31 0.83 0.57 0.5 0.33

PU1 0.40 0.3 0.51 0.86 0.39 0.39

PU2 0.34 0.28 0.56 0.88 0.36 0.33

PU3 0.32 0.29 0.49 0.83 0.33 0.36

Trust1 0.20 0.16 0.56 0.42 0.96 0.27

Trust2 0.09 0.09 0.42 0.34 0.87 0.15

ES1 0.41 0.52 0.35 0.41 0.18 0.93

ES2 0.45 0.44 0.41 0.37 0.27 0.93

Notes: Boldface numbers are loadings of indicators to their own construct;

other numbers are the cross loadings; CK=consumer knowledge,

IN=Innovativeness, PEOU= perceived ease of use, PU=Perceived

usefulness, ES=Experience sharing.

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Table 3: Construct correlations & square roots of AVE

CK IN PEOU PU Trust ES

CK 0.90

IN 0.52 0.84

PEOU 0.41 0.35 0.87

PU 0.42 0.34 0.61 0.85

Trust 0.17 0.14 0.55 0.42 .92

ES 0.46 0.52 0.41 0.42 0.24 0.93

Notes: Boldface numbers on the diagonal are the square root of the

average variance extracted. CK=consumer knowledge, IN=Innovativeness,

PEOU= perceived ease of use, PU=Perceived usefulness, ES=Experience

sharing.

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Table 4 Total effects

Experience sharing

Direct effect Total effect

Innovativeness 0.33(4.15)** 0.42 (8.86)**

Knowledge 0.18(2.24)* __

PEOU 0.11(1.23) 0.20(2.42)*

PU 0.15(2.03)* __

Notes: **p < 0.01; * p < 0.05; t-values in parentheses;

PEOU= perceived ease of use, PU=Perceived

usefulness.

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Appendix 2 Interaction effects

Although not hypothesized, it would be interesting to identify whether individual attributes

innovativeness and knowledge perform a moderation role in the relationships between

consumption experience constructs and experience sharing. An interaction model was run by

adding interaction terms. The values of indicators for predictor constructs were standardized

before multiplication (Aiken & West, 1991). The results are shown in Table 5, which indicate

that none of the interaction terms was significant. The R-square (40%) did not show much

increase (only 3%) over that in the main model as depicted in Figure 2 (37%).

Table 5 Interaction effects

Experience Sharing

Β T

Innovativeness(IN) 0.32 3.83***

Knowledge (CK) 0.17 2.07**

PEOU 0.10 1.19

PU 0.14 1.68*

Trust 0.04 0.50

PEOU × IN 0.13 0.92

PEOU ×CK 0.06 0.55

PU × IN 0.01 0.04

PU × CK -0.08 0.56

Trust ×IN -0.09 0.85

Trust × CK -0.13 1.23

R2 0.40

∆ R2 0.03

Notes: ***p < 0.01, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.10; PEOU=

perceived ease of use, PU=Perceived usefulness.