Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Industrial Marketing Management

The impact of sellers' social influence on the co-creation of innovation

with customers and brand awareness in online communities
Yichuan Wang a,⁎, Shih-Hui Hsiao b, Zhiguo Yang c, Nick Hajli d
a
Raymond J. Harbert College of Business, 405 W. Magnolia Ave., Auburn, AL 36849, USA
b
Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40526, USA
c
College of Business, Missouri State University, 901 South National Avenue, Springfield, MO 65897, USA
d
Newcastle University London, 102 Middlesex Street, London, E1 7EZ, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study integrates theoretical concepts adopted from social influence theory, co-creation practice, and brand
Received 20 March 2015 equity into a single model by examining the role of social comparison and social identity in co-creation activities
Received in revised form 10 December 2015 in an online community context, which is known to affect firms' brand awareness in the Business-to-Business
Accepted 16 December 2015
(B2B) marketplace. The model was tested using a dataset gathered via an online survey of four online communi-
Available online 29 December 2015
ties discussing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) related issues in LinkedIn. Empirical findings from our survey of 190
Keywords:
business professionals indicate that sellers' social identity and social comparison are key facilitators for develop-
Business-to-business marketing ing a series of co-innovation activities, and confirmed that co-innovation practices make potential customers
Social media more aware of company brands. The results of this study provide new insights into effective B2B social media
Social influence marketing techniques by elaborating how best to orchestrate co-innovation with online communities to boost
Online communities brand awareness.
Co-innovation © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Brand awareness

1. Introduction Using online communities via social media to accelerate innovation

Dramatic changes in customer tendencies and business environ-
ments have forced firms to seek external sources for the creation of in-
novation to complement internally generated innovations.
Collaborations with customers are rapidly becoming a crucial driver of
innovation within Business-to-Business (B2B) environments (LaPlaca,
2013). To accelerate innovation, firms are increasingly jumping on the
bandwagon of social media, focusing particularly on social media and
online communities that provide a platform for interactions with
customers (Bosch-Sijtsema & Bosch, 2015; Jussila, Kärkkäinen, &
Leino, 2012). Online community participation provides a range of
potential benefits, including supporting customer relationship manage-
ment activities (Agnihotri, Dingus, Hu, & Krush, 2016) and improving
brand sales performance (Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal, & Hughes,
2013). In practice, leading companies such as Honeywell International,
Maersk Line, and MySQL are active participants in online communities
as they have found that it enables them to stimulate the innovation
diffusion process and build brand awareness at a relatively low cost
(Katona & Sarvary, 2014; Parmentier & Mangematin, 2014; Rapp et al.,
2013).
⁎ Corresponding author at: 403 Lowder Business Building, 405 W. Magnolia Ave.,
Auburn, AL 36849, USA.
E-mail address: yzw0037@auburn.edu (Y. Wang).
is not without its challenges, however. Most business executives remain
skeptical about the power of social media, especially regarding whether
investing in social media can increase sales or discover valuable
customers. Evidence from B2B firms shows that nearly 60% of business
executives perceive social media as being unnecessary or have
expressed doubts about its effectiveness in generating sales and
supporting brand development (Jussila, Kärkkäinen, & Aramo-
Immonen, 2014). A possible explanation for this resistance is that
most firms do not provide training, strategy, encouragement, and feed-
back to guide their employees' interactions with customers via social
media (Agnihotri, Kothandaraman, Kashyap, & Singh, 2012). Hence,
precisely how these B2B markets become involved in online communi-
ties and ways to collaborate in innovations effectively through online
community activities, while at the same time maximizing brand value,
remain unclear.
Previous studies have generally argued that customers can create in-
novations and brand value in various social media contexts (e.g., Füller,
Schroll, & von Hippel, 2013; Romero & Molina, 2011). For example,
Füller et al. (2013) stress the importance of customer engagement for
bringing in new ideas and knowledge from user communities that
create an effective diffusion of user innovations and strong brands at
minimal cost to the company. While knowledge regarding ways to
encourage and support innovations created by customers in online
communities and identifying customers who will innovate successfully
have accumulated in the extent literature, there remains a dearth of

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2015.12.008
0019-8501/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70
in-depth insights into which antecedents make customers effective co-
creators in innovation. Attention is now shifting to explorations of the
role of the seller in facilitating innovation activities (Agnihotri et al.,
2012) as Web 2.0 tools such as online communities have begun to be
widely applied to B2B innovation activities.
Indeed, an online community is a pull marketing environment on
social media, where sellers are regarded as the eyes and ears of their
organization who generate digital content (e.g., selling messages) and
capture the attention of customers seeking information, products, or
brands (Agnihotri et al., 2012). The dissemination of digital content
through an expanding network of social contacts is likely to be more
effective when sellers are highly engaged; empirical evidence reported
by Rapp et al. (2013) confirm that the more deeply sellers are involved
in social media, the greater the potential for collaborations between
retailers, customers and sellers in terms of customer relationship man-
agement and marketing activities also increase. The important role of
the seller is emphasized in most studies, especially those focusing on
the influence of sellers on buyer-seller interaction relationships in on-
line communities (e.g., Rapp et al., 2013) or how sales representatives
can leverage social technologies for interacting with customers
(e.g., Moore, Hopkins, & Raymond, 2013). It is therefore slightly surpris-
ing that relatively little attention has been devoted to understanding the
factors that motivate sellers to engage in innovation activities with cus-
tomers in online communities. A better understanding of this important
aspect would enable firms to strategically manage their co-creation
relationships and innovation processes more effectively.
Against this backdrop, we build on the existing work from a seller
perspective to address the following research questions:
RQ1: What motivates sellers to devote time and effort to the co-creation
of innovation with customers in online communities?
RQ2: Can sellers boost their companies' brand awareness through
co-innovation with customers in online communities?
Our study addresses these questions by examining the impact of
sellers' social influence on the implementation of co-innovation with
customers and brand awareness in an online community setting. We
conceptualize sellers' social influence from the perspective of social
identity and social comparison theories and argue that these social in-
fluence factors motivate sellers to engage in co-innovation practices.
Three co-innovation practices identified from the existing literature,
namely opening firms' boundaries, opening products' boundaries and
identity convergence around products, are included in our research
model. More specifically, this paper examines whether sellers' social
identity and social comparison can facilitate efforts to engage with
online communities in the pursuit of co-creating innovations with cus-
tomers and promoting their brand. To meet this aim and to ensure the
generalizability of the findings, a questionnaire survey was conducted
and data were collected from professionals who actively participate in
social media marketing activities with the goals of selling products,
brand promotion, and product development on online communities.
This paper contributes to the literature on B2B innovations and so-
cial media in several ways. First, earlier studies have employed ques-
tionnaire surveys to examine the impacts of collaboration with
supplier and lead user activities on product variety (e.g., Al-Zu'bi &
Tsinopoulos, 2012), but this study responds to a recent call by Gemser
and Perks (2015) for more large-scale and survey-based studies
designed to measure and operationalize the related co-creation value
constructs. We do this by examining the impact of sellers' social identity
and social comparison on the implementation of co-innovation prac-
tices with customers in online communities. Second, our findings indi-
cate that social identity and social comparison are strong signifiers of
co-innovation in online communities. Sellers in online communities
tend to establish their unique professional identity, have a deep under-
standing of any issues regarding the products that existing buyers
57
encounter, and promote their product and brand compared to those of
their competitors in online communities. The efforts made by sellers
within online communities enable firms to share common values with
buyers, discover new product usages, and thus increase the likelihood
that buyers will support their brand. Third, our examination of the im-
pact of the three different types of co-innovation practices on brand
awareness provides actionable insights for marketing managers and
sales representatives seeking to orchestrate better online co-
innovation activities. For example, we found that brand awareness is
enhanced more effectively if sellers solicit contributions from buyers
through an innovation process rather than attempting to sense their
needs through observation.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The next two
sections review the existing literature on the role of the seller in online
communities, co-innovation and how online communities are used for
co-innovation, and then develop the research model and associated hy-
potheses guiding this research. Sections 4 and 5 describe the research
methodology and present the results of our analysis. Finally, Section 6
discusses the findings of this study and their implications for manage-
ment scholars and practitioners.
2. Literature review
2.1. The concept of co-innovation
In recent years, the innovation paradigm has shifted from closed
innovation, through collaborative innovation and open innovation, to
co-innovation (Lee, Olson, & Trimi, 2012). As a result of this shift, the
critical role, network relationship, marketing strategy, and collaborative
platform for the innovation process are also changing. In traditional in-
novation approaches, organizations strive to obtain a unique core com-
petence that can be leveraged to strengthen their competitive market
position via either internal collaboration networks (e.g., cross-
functional integration) or inter-organizational networks (e.g., strategic
alliances). However, traditional innovation paradigms suffer from a
lack of the complementary resources typically provided by external
partners in an innovation ecosystem. To accelerate innovation effective-
ly, a relatively new type of innovation campaign, co-innovation, has
emerged based on the concept that value can be facilitated by a co-
creation process that integrates resources through activities and inter-
actions with co-creators in the network (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). Follow-
ing this logic, co-innovation is defined as “a phase of the innovation
process resulting from dynamic and on-going interactions among re-
sources, actions, and a group of actors” (Russo-Spena & Mele, 2012,
p. 527). Such interactions allow all the stakeholders, including those be-
yond the boundaries of the firm, to participate in co-creating activities
within the innovation process. Participants exchange ideas, solutions,
knowledge and expertise and integrate core competences through a
collective learning process. A high level of involvement in co-creation
activities and of commitment to the product or company makes the col-
lective learning process beneficial to all participants (Lee et al., 2012;
Parmentier & Mangematin, 2014).
Co-innovation is particularly relevant for value creation with cus-
tomers (Lee et al., 2012). Here, the customer is viewed as a co-creator
(or co-producer) of innovations in areas such as idea generation and
new product development. The importance of customer involvement
in the co-innovation process has been confirmed by many researchers
and practitioners (see, for example, Lee et al., 2012; Poetz & Schreier,
2012; Sawhney, Verona, & Prandelli, 2005; Terwiesch & Ulrich, 2009).
Terwiesch and Ulrich (2009) report that around 25% of innovation op-
portunities are generated based on customer requirements and interac-
tions with customers. Exploring the value of crowdsourcing, one study
from Poetz and Schreier (2012) indicates that ideas created by profes-
sionals (e.g., marketers) score significantly lower in terms of novelty,
customer benefit and overall quality than ideas created by potential cus-
tomers. To facilitate customer involvement, some researchers have
58 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70
claimed that collaborating with customers through various forms of on-
line communication channels that transcend firm boundaries is essen-
tial for effective innovation (Ahlqvist, Bäck, Heinonen, & Halonen,
2010; Sawhney et al., 2005). These online communication channels
are built on principles of convergence of ideas, collaborative arrange-
ments, and the co-creation of experience with customers. Sawhney
et al. (2005) emphasize that web-based applications could serve as an
open and cost-effective channel that helps increase the number of cus-
tomers that a firm can engage and enables firms to tap into customer
knowledge for creating, testing, and refining new product concepts at
a lower cost. Ahlqvist et al. (2010) also mention that making use of
virtual idea laboratories and interactive open source communities can
encourage customers, suppliers, and other trading partners to create
new ideas and innovations. These online communication channels are
built on the principles of the convergence of ideas, collaborative ar-
rangements, and co-creation with customers. These studies emphasize
that various formats of online communication channels can be imple-
mented by firms to support customer involvement in innovation. In
the next section, we focus on online communities, which now represent
a widely used resource for innovation.
2.2. Online communities as sources of co-innovation
The advent of Web 2.0 applications greatly facilitated the creation of
online communities, providing virtual environments where members
can share opinions and ideas, learn more from the knowledge of their
peers and develop relationships with others through various social
technologies (Quinton & Harridge- March, 2010). Online communities
unite large numbers of people with similar interests who perceive com-
monality and identification with other group members, feel a sense of
duty to the group as a whole and to its individual members, and often
have a shared history, culture, and consciousness (Von Hippel, 2005).
Members participating in online communities can receive both func-
tional and social benefits through their sustained engagement in online
communities that may include maintaining buyer-seller relationships
(Quinton & Harridge- March, 2010) as well as significant reductions in
the cost of searching for information and decision-making (Berthon,
Ewing, Pitt, & Naudé, 2003), and product innovation (Bosch-Sijtsema
& Bosch, 2015; Chan & Lee, 2004; Romero & Molina, 2011).
These benefits are often driven by the characteristics of the online
community (Curty & Zhang, 2013). Characteristics such as the digitiza-
tion of user-generated content and the visualization of interactions can
directly influence members' social behaviors and affect how they collab-
orate, interact, and share information (Curty & Zhang, 2013), potentially
increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the innovation process by
enabling customers to develop, test, disseminate, and diffuse ideas on
virtual co-creation platforms (Romero & Molina, 2011). Several studies
have revealed that online communities can have a significant impact on
facilitating innovation with target customers (e.g., Chan & Lee, 2004;
Jussila et al., 2012, 2014; Parmentier & Mangematin, 2014). In an early
study on this topic, Chan and Lee (2004) report that although online
communities that support collaborations with customers who are inno-
vators and early adopters for product innovation (e.g., Sun. and Linux's
Open Source Software communities) can be beneficial at all stages of the
product development process, this is especially true during the design
and engineering phases. More recently, Jussila et al. (2012) describe
how B2B companies interact with their customers in online communi-
ties as part of the innovation process (which can take the form of one-
way, two-way, community, and user toolkit-supported interactions),
reporting that a third of their survey respondents perceive significant
innovation opportunities as occurring more frequently as they pass on
product marketing-related information to customers and collect
customer feedback through online communities. Using eight case stud-
ies from high-tech industries, Bosch-Sijtsema and Bosch (2015) explain
how firms collect and apply user feedback and input from social media,
suggesting that making effective use of A/B testing, crowdsourcing, and
lead user dialog in online communities can help firms gain invaluable
feedback from users that supports the whole innovation cycle.
To gain a deeper appreciation of the role of customer participation in
the online innovation process, it is important to understand customer
motivations and social behaviors in online communities. The motives
that cause customers to contribute are highly diverse. In the case of
the Open Source Software (OSS) online communities, for instance, von
Hippel and von Krogh (2003) argue that personal learning and the en-
joyment from programming are the main reasons community members
choose to participate. The OSS participants in their study are motivated
in three ways: (1) by the direct utility of their efforts, either to the indi-
vidual or to their employer; (2) through the intrinsic benefits they gain
from the work, such as learning a new skill or personal fulfillment; and
(3) by signaling their capabilities and thus gaining respect from their
peers or interest from prospective employers (Lakhani & von Hippel,
2003). Füller (2006) considers that intrinsic innovation interest and
curiosity are the most important motives for customers' willingness to
participate in producer initiated virtual new product development. He
and Wang (2015) explore a number of organizational factors, including
interesting content, knowledge exchange and reciprocity, social interac-
tions, and networking possibilities that contribute to successful social
media platforms for innovation. These studies elucidate the various mo-
tivations for participating in innovation activities in online communi-
ties; understanding these motivations will enable firms to strategically
manage co-creation activities and innovation processes. These studies
suggest that online communities hold enormous potential in B2B
markets for building a robust buyer-seller relationship and, by doing
so, support innovation activities with customers.
2.3. The role of the seller in online communities
In a B2B context, online communities typically consist of two critical
roles: seller and buyer. The seller (i.e., the selling organization) acts on
behalf of a brand, business unit or company initiative and sells its prod-
ucts in the market. Sellers spread brand and product messages across
the channel in order to increase selling and innovation opportunities
(Roser, DeFillippi, & Samson, 2013). The buyer (i.e., the buying organiza-
tion), on the other hand, purchases products for their business and ful-
fills their needs from the market (Schultz, Schwepker, & Good, 2012).
Typically, buyers read product information and users' reviews and com-
municate with sellers before making a purchase decision. In these
buyer-seller dyads, strong customer engagement occurs in online com-
munities through continuous social interactions between buyers and
sellers (Bruhn, Schnebelen, & Schäfer, 2014; Füller, 2006). Kohler's
(2015) crowdsourcing business model confirms this stance, emphasiz-
ing that the role of sellers should shift from selling products to enabling
interactions by “aggregating the crowd's contributors into a value creat-
ing whole” (p. 72). The enhancement of interactions can increase
buyers' calculative and emotional commitments and sense of involve-
ment, all of which combine to form the basis for consequent buying
behavior, loyalty, and trust (Bowden, 2009). For example, Maersk Line
creates online communities on LinkedIn (e.g., The Shipping Circle
group, formed in January 2012) where their representatives participate
as shipping experts, discussing industry challenges, future trends, and
potential collaborations with their buyers, who are invited to join the
community (Katona & Sarvary, 2014). Sellers are in a pivotal position
in terms of establishing the buyer-seller relationship in the online
communities where co-creation and co-innovation take place.
The important role of sellers in online communities has been
recognized in the sales management literature. Schultz et al. (2012) re-
port that for salespersons, generational differences directly affect their
social media usage patterns as well as their adoption of social media
sales activities in B2B sales environments. Rapp et al. (2013) examine
social media contagion effects at the supplier, retailer and customer
levels and their ultimate impact on brand sales performance. Interest-
ingly, they show that sellers' social media usage behaviors affect
 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70
retailers and consumers' social media usage based on the reputations of
the sellers' brands. In this paper, we examine seller's branding strategies
in relation to their participation in online communities. Agnihotri et al.
(2016) agree, demonstrating that salespersons' ability to respond to
customers through social media supports positive outcomes regarding
customer relationship building and satisfaction. These studies show
that sellers' actions on social media have impacts on many areas, includ-
ing both customer relationships and brand image. This paper examines
social factors as motivations for sellers to engage in online communities.
Schultz et al. (2012) and Agnihotri et al. (2016) both suggest that the
impact of salesperson social behaviors on social media activities would
be a useful topic for future research, since sellers' behavioral factors
directly influence buyer-seller relationships and performance. These
arguments support our research scope in discussing seller's social
behaviors of online communities.
3. Research model
The objective of this study is to examine the social influence factors
in online B2B activities and how they are related to seller's co-
innovation with customers. The proposed model also addresses the
spread of companies' brand awareness due to the co-innovation activi-
ties in online communities. Social influence has long been regarded as a
motivational element in work environments, but it can also be used to
explain why and how a user engages in marketing activities and a firm's
selling strategies (Zhang, Li, Burke, & Leykin, 2014). Social influence has
been identified as a reason for consumers to contribute to user generat-
ed content in terms of both quantity and quality (Homburg, Wieseke &
Kuehnl, 2010).
The scant research that has been done on B2B innovation highlights
the impact of social influence on the creation of innovation. For exam-
ple, in a supply chain network, maintaining a good social relationship
with buyers is associated with suppliers' positive attitudes and behav-
iors toward co-innovation and this, in turn, improves innovation perfor-
mance and sales for buyers and suppliers (Lin, Wang, & Yu, 2010;
Yeniyurt, Henke, & Yalcinkaya, 2014). Agnihotri et al. (2012) develop
a conceptual model to illustrate how the co-creation value between
salesperson and customer increases when salespersons perceive a
good fit between their information sharing, customer service and trust
building behaviors and their social media capabilities. This fit between
social behavior and the ability to use online communities on social
media enables sellers to provide reliable and accurate information on
a regular basis to their customers in a timely fashion, and thus create
value. Hence, it is evident that sellers' willingness to co-create innova-
tion with their customers is built on their social influence.
Fig. 1. Theoretical framework.
59
There is a serious lack of research exploring the ways in which inno-
vation co-creation practices are developed through online communities
in the B2B context (Katona & Sarvary, 2014; Roser et al., 2013). A recent
study by Roser et al. (2013) states that crowd-sourcing co-innovation
practices such as the expansion of organizational boundaries and the in-
volvement of co-creators in online communities enables companies to
continuously renew their product offer and extend their target market.
We argue that sellers' social influence can be an important driver for
successfully developing co-innovation with customers, which in turn
increases brand awareness in online communities. This is shown in
our proposed model, shown in Fig. 1, which depicts our set of hypothe-
sized relationships. In this model, we apply the theory of social compar-
ison and social identity as the theoretical basis that underpins the
sellers' social influence and engagement with online communities. Spe-
cifically, the model proposes that a seller's social identity and social
comparisons in online communities will have a positive effect on co-
innovation outcomes, which will, in turn, lead to increased brand
awareness. Next, we will discuss social identity, social comparison, co-
innovation, and brand awareness in detail to explain why these con-
structs have been selected for inclusion in the proposed model.
3.1. Social comparison
Based on Festinger's (1954) work, social comparison explains how
people have a tendency to evaluate their own opinions and abilities by
comparing them with those of others who they perceive as being
similar to themselves. When receiving social information such as status,
reputation, or popularity, people relate the information to themselves
and adjust their behavior accordingly (Mussweiler, 2001). These
previous studies mainly focused on individual usage in social life, but
social comparison theory is now beginning to be applied to the social in-
teractions among online users on social media. Researchers contend
that the process of social comparison motivates people to achieve
goals through evaluating the self in terms of other members in the
same communities. Our study applies social comparison theory to on-
line communities by focusing on the act of social comparison among
business representatives and its effect on group-level practices. For ex-
ample, sellers in online communities view competitors' profiles to com-
pare their capabilities and monitor others' progress to make sure they
are not being left behind. This comparison process normally leads to
two different results. Although on the one hand sellers are willing to im-
prove their own status based on their belief that they can achieve a bet-
ter social position, on the other sellers will also compare themselves
with dissimilar others to protect their subjective well-being (Suls,
Martin, & Wheeler, 2002). Through this evaluation process, sellers will
60 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70
construct a social reality in which they are better than others in a virtual
reality (Suls & Wheeler, 2000) and will thus improve their degree of in-
volvement and make more effort in business activities (Haferkamp &
Krämer, 2011).
3.2. Social identity
Social identity describes the identification of people, which is a crit-
ical element of the psychological basis of engagement behavior (Tsai &
Bagozzi, 2014). Forman, Ghose, and Wiesenfeld (2008) define social
identity as “individuals' definition of the self in terms of group-
defining attributes” (p. 293). In an online community setting, social
identity can be defined as “users increasingly seeking for a sense of ‘be-
longing’ to specific web interest groups and wanting to manage their
image in these online environments” (Wirtz, Schilke, & Ullrich, 2010,
p. 276). It is important to understand users' sense of belonging on online
communities, because identifying oneself as part of a group will facili-
tate one's motivation to participate in group activities. Social identity
can improve individuals' productivity through a process by which they
categorize themselves and others as being members of the same social
group. As Kietzmann, Silvestre, McCarthy, and Pitt (2012) reported, a
strong online social identity can improve users' self-conception and
encourage others with low self-esteem to set higher goals.
Prior studies have suggested three related but distinct components
that contribute to one's social identity: cognitive social identity, affec-
tive social identity, and evaluative social identity (Bergami & Bagozzi,
2000; Ellemers, Kortekaas, & Ouwerkerk, 1999; Tsai & Bagozzi, 2014).
Cognitive social identity, or what we call self-categorization, refers to a
cognitive sense regarding the extent to which individuals define them-
selves as members of a group (Johnson, Morgeson, & Hekman, 2012). It
shows how individuals belong to social groups in which they are con-
scious of their kind. From a social psychology perspective, Bergami
and Bagozzi (2000) also view such cognitive identification as a process
of depersonalization, which members will conceal their personality and
identity when they perceive themselves as a member of a group.
Affective social identity takes the depersonalization process a step fur-
ther, which considers emotional attachment and affective commitment
to a particular social group (Ellemers et al., 1999). Johnson et al. (2012)
define affective social identity as “an individual's positive feelings
(e.g., pride, excitement, joy, and love) about being one with a group”
(p. 1144). Researchers have suggested that the positive feeling to an
online community can enhance the members' desire to share personal
information and experience (Tsai & Bagozzi, 2014). Finally, evaluative
social identity, or what we call organizational-based self-esteem, refers
to “the evaluations of self-worth deriving from one's membership in the
organization” (Bergami & Bagozzi, 2000, p. 560). In online communities,
evaluative social identity facilitates users' beliefs that they can satisfy
their needs and become aware of the needs of others by engaging in
roles, thereby developing behavioral desires to maintain a robust
relationship with other community members (Tsai & Bagozzi, 2014).
3.3. Co-innovation practices
Knowing that customers represent a fundamental source of innova-
tion, firms tend to stay close to their customer base rather than relying
on individuals' inspiration, luck, and flair. The value of partnering with
customers in the innovation process has been widely acknowledged
(Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004) and, especially in B2B markets, innova-
tions are often co-created through interactions between sellers and
their customers (Noordhoff, Kyriakopoulos, Moorman, Pauwels, &
Dellaert, 2011). Researchers have begun to deconstruct the notion of
co-innovation by utilizing experimental and case study methods to
unravel the specific dimensions and characteristics of co-innovation,
and delineate the mechanisms of co- innovation activity in a range of
contexts and conditions (Russo-Spena & Mele, 2012). Hence, there is a
need for more empirical studies to measure and operationalize co-
innovation constructs (Gemser & Perks, 2015). The development of an
accepted metric for co-innovation is expected to extend this somewhat
narrow point of view to encompass the notion of co-creation.
Few researchers have examined innovation co-creation through the
lens of practice, despite new research avenues opening up that have
drawn innovation into this territory (e.g., Giannopoulou, Gryszkiewicz,
& Barlatier, 2014; Russo-Spena & Mele, 2012). Russo-Spena and Mele
(2012) suggest that innovation can be conceptualized not as the simple
result of a company's processes but rather as having been formed in
practical constellations in which actions are performed and resource
elements, such as tools, images, spaces, and competence, are used and
integrated. Hence, focusing on practice enables practitioners to identify
business best practice and understand how resources should be
integrated into a practice, how the actors engage in practices, and
what actions should be undertaken to achieve specific performance
goals (Russo-Spena & Mele, 2012).
Russo-Spena and Mele (2012) define co-innovation practices as the
activities in which actors interact, collaborate, and integrate their re-
sources to create value at the different phases of the innovation process.
Co-innovation practices can occur within online communities, where
community members co-create innovations through social interactions.
To understand online-community co-innovation practices, we can draw
on previous studies that outline the co-innovation practices in online
communities based on observations of multiple case studies (Romero
& Molina, 2011; Parmentier & Mangematin, 2014). Here we focus on
the elements of the practices involved (i.e., the actors, actions, and re-
sources) from the joint perspective of co-creation (Russo-Spena &
Mele, 2012), identifying three co-innovation practices: opening firm
boundaries, opening product boundaries, and identity convergence
that can take place in online communities.
3.3.1. Opening firm boundaries
The practice of opening firm boundaries aims to create a dual-
channel communication with customers and break down the traditional
boundaries between a firm and the community it serves. This practice is
considered to be among the first organizational attempts to communi-
cate with customers and provide them with an active role in the innova-
tion creation process (Romero & Molina, 2011). Online communities
enable firms to expand their organizational boundaries and manage
new and different relationships, since customers have become visible
beyond their local boundaries. Implementing this practice in online
communities, firms should open a connecting space without boundaries
to free actor minds for the co-creation of innovative value offers. This
can make the idea generation process more flexible and spontaneous
and thus encourage and harvest the creativity of customers to conceive
new ideas and build knowledge to support the firms' product and
marketing strategies.
The practice of opening firm boundaries stems from the notion of co-
ideation, emphasizing the utility of co-generating ideas with customers
(Russo-Spena & Mele, 2012). Co-ideation can improve the Return on In-
vestment (ROI) of customer relationship management and help the cus-
tomer achieve their desired results through co-generating product and
experience processes. The opening up of firm boundaries consists of
three sub-activities: conversing with customers, sharing tasks, and
sharing knowledge, as suggested by Parmentier and Mangematin
(2014). Through an active dialog with customers, seller organizations
can respond quickly based on their feedback to help reshape and
adapt product design and obtain fresh ideas and insights for future
product development. Sharing tasks and knowledge relies on engaging
customers in a collaborative endeavor with organizations. Organiza-
tions will capture the largest number of contributions from their
customers for the design and development of a high-value offer using
the power of networks built around a common interest or need
(Romero & Molina, 2011). The IBM innovation hub, for instance, is an
online community that acts as an idea catalyst for innovation and
facilitates interactions between intra-firm groups of employees. The
 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70
employees on the hub are responsible for transforming customer ideas
into innovation projects through their interactions with like-minded
peers and the exchange of common practice and experiences. The idea-
tion process on the hub generates about 4000 ideas each year, of which
around 10% are implemented, thus broadening the supplier's spectrum
of product categories (Giaccone, Longo, & Garraffo, 2012). The practice
of opening firm boundaries is therefore not only a way to stimulate in-
novation but also provides benefits to customers through the material-
ization of their product ideas.
3.3.2. Opening product boundaries
The practice of opening product boundaries is strictly linked to the
practice of opening firm boundaries. In this practice, firms actively
seek to involve customers in the product development and design pro-
cesses, going beyond that associated with the practice of opening firm
boundaries. Three key activities are found to help firms open up their
product boundaries: analyzing users' creativity, taking new uses into ac-
count, and organizing community events (Parmentier & Mangematin,
2014). To analyze customers' creativity and seek out new uses for prod-
ucts, firms may offer open source licenses and provide toolkits via on-
line communities for their customers. The community features of the
toolkit provide a common toolset for online communities, greatly facil-
itating interactions between company and communities. Interactions
such as the chats and discussions, text-based contributions, recommen-
dations, product evaluations, and voting tools provided by toolkits not
only enable companies to closely observe customer preferences and
evaluate product usage, but also to exchange and jointly develop actual
product prototypes.
Organizing community events connected with products can also
help firms open up their product boundaries and provide enhanced ver-
sions of products to sell in the market. Successful community events
such as competitions, demonstration tours, and training provided for
online communities can indeed enhance a company's interaction with
its customers, drawing community members' attention to the products
and companies, and encouraging them to engage in firms' product de-
velopment (Parmentier & Mangematin, 2014). At the same time, cus-
tomer ideas and contribution can be effectively evaluated through
these events to help firms accelerate innovation and product develop-
ment. Thus, openness on online communities represents an enabling
factor for unlocking creativity and innovations in customers, allowing
them to share workable ideas that can contribute to product develop-
ment and a rich knowledge base about needs and applications.
3.3.3. Identity convergence around products
The practice of identity convergence around products is designed to
develop a company friendly community by, for example, building
common values with customers and sharing the company's identifying
elements. Convergence is an important element of co-innovation plat-
forms. Lee and Olson (2010) define convergence as a new environment
where the synergistic combination of different objects or ideas for
different contexts creates additional value. Although the customers
who are members of an online community and the firm may have com-
mon interests, they are two separate entities with different business ob-
jectives and identities. As such, firms should create an environment
where the firm and the community share identifying elements and
values and build common values (Parmentier & Mangematin, 2014).
To build identity convergence, the companies' business executives
play a pivotal role in embodying specific identities in the product and
fostering a sense of common value during the interactions between
the company and online communities. The business executives involved
in the discussions on online communities contribute to the convergence
of values and shard objectives. Many companies share inside stories so
as to build their identities on online communities by posting photo-
graphs with commentaries. As one example, the management team of
Maersk Line posted a photo of a Maersk ship in San Francisco along
with the commentary: “A Maersk Line vessel passing under the Golden
61
Gate Bridge just recently. Thank you to John Sessions who was so kind to
email the photo to us!” (Katona & Sarvary, 2014, p. 148). In doing so,
Maersk Line actually benefits from sharing identifying elements with
their customers, such as attracting more than 400,000 people to join
their page in its first 11 months.
Another way to develop identity convergence on online communi-
ties is to make a part of the product available for free use. This will main-
tain the community members' interest in collaborating as they are
trying out the free products or open source materials provided by
firms. This practice can also be viewed as co-test activities, which are
used to support the improvement of prototype product before they
are marketed and test the marketability of a product (Russo-Spena &
Mele, 2012). Through this co-testing process, customers are most likely
to recognize themselves as part of a wider family, bound together by
shared values and mutual support. Thus, the practice of identity conver-
gence around products is especially applicable to co-innovation for
creating value through new products, value chain process innovation,
and new business models.
3.4. Brand awareness
Brands serve as “powerful repositories of meaning, purposively and
differentially employed in the substantiation, creation and reproduction
of concepts of self in the marketing age” (Fournier, 1998, p. 365). In the
marketing literature, brands have long been recognized as significant
assets for the diffusion of innovation and a significant source of profit
(Keller, 2008). Therefore, in this study, we attempt to examine whether
the impact of co-innovation can influence brand performance on online
communities.
Creating brand awareness is usually the first step in building a brand.
Brand awareness is defined as “the ability of the decision-makers in [an]
organizational buying center to recognize or recall a brand” (Homburg,
Klarmann & Schmitt, 2010, p. 202). Previous studies have revealed that
brand awareness is generally the most important element in promoting
brand equity in B2B markets (Davis, Golicic, & Marquardt, 2008). Most
B2B practitioners thus concentrate their branding activities on the
dissemination of brand identification (i.e. name and logo), rather than
developing more complicated brand equality activities. For many B2B
firms, the creation of brand awareness — the ability to recognize or re-
call a brand – is a key element of branding strategy (Homburg,
Klarmann, et al., 2010). In addition, one of the main goals for firms en-
gaging in online community activities is to build brand awareness
(Füller et al., 2013). Research shows that firms gain higher brand aware-
ness and exposure through continuous collaborative engagement
between the brand and key influencers and discussions of the brand
and its products in online communities.
4. Hypothesis development
4.1. The impact of social comparison on co-innovation practices
Based on the previous research in this area, we propose that social
comparison can indeed help sellers develop successful co-innovation
activities with customers in online communities. First, social compari-
son theory emphasizes that people are most likely to seek to excel com-
pared to their peers or other groups as they feel a strong urge to
compete (Turner, 1975). Competition may thus be triggered in online
communities that mainly consist of potential buyers and other compa-
nies' competitors who are working under conditions of high motivation
on selling or other organizational tasks. Given this competition, the
seeds of competitive feelings and behaviors will lead sellers to seek
additional opportunities and collaborations in innovation with their
customers.
Second, previous studies have indicated that social comparison can
be used to explain the innovation diffusion process (Abrahamson &
Rosenkopf, 1997; Festinger, 1954). When individuals experience an
62 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70
empirically ambiguous question, they tend to make a decision by rely-
ing on social cues from their peers by comparing their situation with
that of other close contacts who are adopting a similar innovation, or
by observing their decision-making process related to the innovation.
Michinov and Primois (2005) point out that social comparison behavior
improves productivity and creativity in innovation and Dugosh and
Paulus (2005) agree, noting that individuals who are exposed to more
ideas produce more innovation ideas and increase the total number of
group level ideas generated through a social/cognitive process. The
findings of both these studies indicate that the innovation process is
triggered by the type of social comparison that leads individuals to im-
itate or compare themselves socially with their co-creators.
Third, recent research has employed social comparison theory to ex-
plain individuals' co-creation behavior in online communities. For ex-
ample, crowd-sourcing online problem solver communities often
collaborate to solve complex Research and Development (R&D) prob-
lems, providing guidance on ways to improve existing solutions by pro-
viding feedback from previous solvers; establishing a prize competition
mechanism can often produce the best solution (Roser et al., 2013). In
this type of solver community, solvers who share innovative solutions
or information may co-create benefits in innovations because other
members in this community who receive solutions from multiple
solvers can compare these ideas with their own scenarios and provide
feedback that improves the solutions.
Sellers are regarded as one of the co-creators in the innovation pro-
cess. Sellers' perceptions of social comparison tend to enhance their
work motivation and effort expenditure. With a high level of social com-
parison, sellers tend to be more creative and more willing to spend extra
time and effort working with online communities to facilitate the cap-
ture of important new product ideas from customers and enhance the
identity of products. For example, LinkedIn provides a “most popular
discussion” function, where the most popular discussion is automatical-
ly at the top of the group discussion page. Sellers tend to create these
popular discussions, which raise their visibility and help them reach
more customers for new opportunities, by comparing the topic and con-
tent of discussions with others. Therefore, we believe that sellers in on-
line communities co-create innovation through the process of
comparing themselves with others. The following set of hypotheses
was therefore developed:
Hypotheses 1a–c. Sellers' social comparison in online communities can
help firms develop co-innovation practices with customers through
[(1a) opening firm boundaries, (1b) identity convergence around prod-
ucts, and (1c) opening products boundaries].
4.2. The impact of social identity on co-innovation practices
Social identity acts as a fundamental base that supports the social ac-
tivity in online communities. Members of an online community will not
contribute their ideas and knowledge if they lack a sense of belonging
and clear social identification. The converse is also true: if members per-
ceive themselves to have meaningful connections with others, they will
devote extra time to any activities, events, and occasions in an attempt
to promote this engagement (Gray, 2004). Thus, when users experience
feelings of higher social identification and recognition from their peers
in an online virtual community setting, they become more attached to
the community and are willing to contribute more effort to co-
innovation. These findings have been confirmed by a number of re-
searchers. For example, Jacobs (2013) suggests that social identity sup-
ports co-innovation practices in a number of ways, including adopting
common goals, sharing an innovation ethos, or encouraging experimen-
tation reflection. In the context of an open source community, Osterloh
and Rota (2007) show that members are enthused about sharing the
creativity in their software with others, thus gaining high reputations
in the community, establishing their identities, and improving their
career prospects. Thus, social identity can be a source of motivation for
members' intention to engage in the process of innovation with others
peers in communities.
Social media provide a wide range of functions that allow sellers to
build up their social identity within online communities. LinkedIn
groups, for example, enable sellers to display skill endorsements and
recommendations from others in members' profiles, as well as provid-
ing information about who is checking out the profiles. Groups are
able to automatically identify the top contributors according to the
members' influence regarding the content productivity, and top con-
tributors' photos are shown on the home page of every group. Such
functionalities give sellers visibility and recognition from other mem-
bers in the group. In this way, sellers with this designation are more
likely to see an increase in overall engagement within a group, and
may easily build up strong connections with buyers to accomplish spe-
cific tasks (e.g., gather product idea and test product) on a long-term
basis. We therefore argue that sellers in online communities engage in
co-innovation practices when they perceive a strong social identity,
leading to the following set of hypotheses:
Hypotheses 2a–c. Sellers' social identity in online communities can
help firms develop co-innovation practices with customers through
[(2a) opening firm boundaries, (2b) identity convergence around prod-
ucts, and (2c) opening product boundaries].
4.3. The impact of co-innovation practices on brand awareness
Online communities provide an environment where sellers can co-
create innovative knowledge and exchange new product information.
This enables sellers to reach their customers and thus gain access to a
wealth of information about how their products perform in real-world
applications. Zwass (2010) also notes that online communities provide
an intellectual space for co-creation and considers online communities
to be the primary area of co-creation development. Based on their com-
mon interests, goals and practices, members of online communities
share their knowledge as they engage in social interactions.
Early research in this area found that brand value is co-created with
customers or other stakeholders (Boyle, 2007) and there is widespread
agreement in the recent literature with regard to the utility of market-
ing and information systems that co-create value with stakeholders in
online communities, which has been shown to dramatically improve
companies' branding performance (Gyrd-Jones & Kornum, 2013). In-
creasing numbers of B2B firms are engaging in joint innovation activi-
ties to identify new opportunities related to brand development and
product innovation through their interactions with buyers. Given that
buyers have different domains of expertise, an efficient communication
channel increases the likelihood of innovation by enabling group mem-
bers to combine their different knowledge and perspectives, thereby in-
creasing their awareness of the brand. This type of portal thus facilitates
the creation of an online community that strengthens the relationship
between buyers and sellers and leads to a better product and brand de-
velopment outcome (Van Echtelt, Wynstra, Van Weele, & Duysters,
2008).
Parmentier and Mangematin (2014) demonstrate that co-
innovation practices such as communicating with other stakeholders
to identify fresh ideas for new products, forming relational ties and part-
nerships, increasing interactions with prospects, or even recognizing
new opportunities, can all lead to an improvement in brand recognition
and corporate reputation in the marketplace. Russo-Spena and Mele
(2012) further suggest that firms should encourage customers to create
new content and new functionalities for products by providing specific
rewards and build up their procedures for selecting new ideas.
Commenting and voting on the ideas put forward can be an effective
way of selecting the most innovative ideas and using them for decision
support. Customers are more likely to increase their attention to the
 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70 63

product and brand if they are fully engaged in these co-innovation prac-
tices in online communities. For example, IBM has established the Tech-
nology Adoption Program (TAP) to refine innovation projects with early
adopters and harness business benefit of online community-driven in-
novation. This program provides a guide to building working relation-
ships with customers, redefining and shape innovations and
facilitating the transition of innovation from TAP to decision makers be-
fore a product's official launch (Giaccone et al., 2012). As a result, TAP in-
creases the customers' awareness of the brand and their attitudes
toward it since customers are collaborating closely with IBM employees
to improve the products. Therefore, we contend that as co-innovation
practices in online communities increase, the brand awareness of the
B2B marketers will increase accordingly, leading to the following set
of hypotheses:
Hypotheses 3a–c. Co-innovation practices [(3a) opening firm bound-
aries, (3b) identity convergence around products, and (3c) opening
products boundaries] have a positive effect on brand awareness.
5. Research methodology
online communities allow members to establish their identities by
uploading personal pictures and information such as their name, loca-
tion, occupation, or personal/work website. To encourage participation,
LinkedIn has introduced a “Top contributor function.” Each member
earns a score of contribution level that reflect the member's influential
power in a group. The five contribution levels are “getting started”,
“finding an audience”, “making an impact”, and “building influence.”
Members can see the list of “Top Contributors” as well as their own con-
tribution level in the group page. Top contributors are group members
who have a track record of posting the most interesting discussions
and comments and have a text indicator under their headline any
time they post a discussion in the group. These functionalities are
used by the online communities to facilitate social comparison by en-
abling members to compare themselves with other members and to
support their perception of social identity by helping them recognize
themselves as part of the group.
In general, these online communities provide an appropriate context
for this study because (1) they are important B2B social media with a
large number of active sellers and buyers, and (2) social identity and so-
cial comparison components are implemented and emphasized in these
online communities.

5.1. Study setting and sampling frame 5.2. Data collection

To test the research model, data were gathered by surveying users of We identified the active sellers from four online communities
four online communities discussing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) relat- discussing SaaS related issues in LinkedIn. The inclusion criteria are:
ed issues in LinkedIn. These online communities between them had (1) sellers must act on behalf of a brand, business unit or representative
more than 87,000 registered members as of November 2014. Table 1 from a selling organization, and (2) sellers have contributed at least one
shows the demographic information for these communities, as reported discussion or comment posted on these online communities. Based on
by LinkedIn. We chose these online communities as our research con- these inclusion criteria, we randomly selected 200 sellers from each on-
text for two reasons. First, the online communities selected are open line community. In total, 800 questionnaires were sent out and two
to all professionals who are buyers and sellers from industries with sim- questions, “Are you acting on behalf of a brand, business units, or com-
ilar domain interests. These online communities have thus become an pany initiative?” and “What is your main purpose for participating in
important source of innovation and a channel for promoting brands. these online communities?” on the first page of the questionnaire,
Many sales representatives of SaaS products use these online communi- were used to confirm the seller's role. After completing two month of
ties to broaden their social networks, reach potential buyers, scout com- data collection, 198 responses were received, only eight were buyers.
petitors' strengths and weaknesses and deliver product and brand We thus achieved a 23.75% response rate, with 190 valid samples (see
information. Table 2). To identify those respondents who could provide relevant
Second, as with traditional online bulletin boards, members of on-
line communities share information about design patterns, technical ar-
chitectures, enterprise architectures, and new technological solutions Table 2
Participant demographics.
such as business cloud computing services. The discussions posted in
these online communities are visible to registered members in a real- Demographic Range Frequency Percentage
time manner and allow members to join a discussion, provide feedback, (%)
or share content. These online communities also provide a useful con- Age 20–29 3 1.6%
text to study members' social influence behavior. For example, the 30–39 57 30.0%
40–49 86 45.3%
50–59 39 20.5%
Table 1 Above 60 5 2.6%
Online communities demographics. Gender Male 143 75.3%
Female 47 24.7%
Community Demographics Education level Associate degree 3 1.6%
Bachelor's degree 144 75.8%
Number of members Seniority Industry
Master's degree 43 22.6%
Community A 3829 Senior 32% Computer software 34% Job title Owner 45 7.9%
Manager 17% IT service 32% Sales representative 23 12.1%
Director 13% Internet 5% Senior sales 42 22.1%
VP 7% Telecommunications 2% representative
Community B 66,062 Senior 28% Computer software 34% Consultant 20 10.5%
Manager 17% IT service 33% Marketing 50 26.3%
Director 14% Internet 4% manager/CMO
VP 9% Telecommunications 2% CEO/VP 40 21.1%
Community C 13,905 Senior 32% Computer software 23% Firm size (number of Small (N b 50) 83 43.7%
Manager 16% IT service 36% employees) Medium (50 b N b 250) 61 32.1%
Director 11% Internet 5% Large (N N 250) 46 24.2%
VP 6% Telecommunications 3% Social media marketing Less than 1 year 18 9.5%
Community D 4949 Senior 25% Computer software 33% experience 1–3 years 22 11.6%
Manager 16% IT service 34% 3–5 years 98 51.6%
Director 14% Internet 6% More than 5 years 52 27.3%
VP 9% Telecommunications 2% Total responses 190 100.0%
64 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70
insights, a selection filter question was then asked to check for previous
experience with social media marketing. The responses revealed that
79.9% (n = 150) of the participants had been working on marketing
activities via an online community for at least three years. Thus, the
respondents' abundant experience in this area should provide valuable
insights for our study.
5.3. Measures
We adapted the items from previous research and modified some
statements to fit our research context, as shown in Appendix A. All
items used a seven-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = “strongly dis-
agree” to 7 = “strongly agree”).
5.3.1. Social comparison
The Iowa–Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOME)
is widely used to examine individuals' behavior related to adopting
others' abilities and opinions for comparing with the self (Buunk &
Gibbons, 2006). We customized this measure to construct survey
items for social comparison.
5.3.2. Social identity
To measure individual perceptions of social identity, we adopted
items from the sociology literature (Bagozzi & Lee, 2002). Because the
perception of social identity has a multi-dimensional nature, we chose
to models it with a latent construct with three items, namely cognitive
social identity, affective social identity, and evaluative social identity
(Tsai & Bagozzi, 2014).
5.3.3. Co-innovation practices
As the application of co-innovation practices in the online communi-
ty context are as yet in their infancy, there is no validated measurement
in the existing literature. We therefore opted to utilize the scale devel-
opment procedures and recommendations put forward by Mackenzie,
Podsakoff, and Podsakoff (2011) as a guide as we carefully developed
and validated an instrument for co-innovation practices. First, we
determined the constructs and underlying items by reviewing academic
research (e.g. Lee et al., 2012; Parmentier & Mangematin, 2014;
Russo-Spena & Mele, 2012) and case studies (e.g., Giaccone et al.,
2012; Katona & Sarvary, 2014; Romero & Molina, 2011) that explore
ways to implement co-innovation through social media. We identified
potential activities for co-creating with customers in innovation from
the contexts of the B2C IT software services online community
(Parmentier & Mangematin, 2014) and from the supplier–buyer rela-
tionship in the physical business environment (Russo-Spena & Mele,
2012) because of their similar characteristics to our research context.
Co-innovation practices were therefore operationalized into three di-
mensions: open firm boundaries, open product boundaries, and identity
convergence around products.
Next, content validity was verified and achieved through a pre-test.
A small panel of three marketing managers who work for IT service in-
dustries, five researchers from a business school, and five doctoral stu-
dents majoring in business administration were recruited as our
content evaluation panel to review our instrument in terms of format,
content, understandability, terminology, and ease and speed of comple-
tion. This panel was asked to act as judges to sort items into three
predefined categories and critique each item. We also asked these judg-
es to identify specific items that should be added or deleted from the in-
strument, as well as to provide suggestions for improvement. Four items
were modified in accordance with their suggestions. We employed the
Q-sort technique to compute the inter-judge agreement level, which is
the accuracy ratio of each item. The result was used as the base to find
and modify ambiguous items and eliminate redundant items (Moore
& Benbasat, 1991). We followed two criteria for assessing initial con-
struct validity and reliability. First, a construct was sustained if it had
an overall Q-Sort ratio greater than 0.7. Second, items with the
minimum correct percentage of 70 were retained (Hinkin, Tracey, &
Enz, 1997), although at least three items (those with the highest correct
percentages) per construct should remain. Our results showed that the
Q ratio for open firm boundaries, open product boundaries, and identity
convergence around products were 0.85, 0.87, and 0.90, respectively.
The resulting 9-item questionnaire was thus deemed appropriate to
measure co-innovation practices.
5.3.4. Brand awareness
This study used brand awareness as a dependent variable and mea-
sured it using a 5-item scale covering recall, recognition, top-of-mind,
and brand dominance (Aaker, 1996). These items were modified from
Aaker (1996) and Homburg, Klarmann, et al. (2010). We asked partici-
pants to assess the average brand awareness in their marketplace.
5.4. Non-response bias and common method bias
Prior to data analysis, we examined the dataset for the non-response
and common method biases. Non-response bias is assessed by compar-
ing the early (those who responded to the first mailing) and late respon-
dents (those who responded after the reminder) in terms of annual
sales and number of employees using t-tests. The results show no statis-
tically significant difference between these two groups. We thus deter-
mined that the non-response bias problem is not present in the dataset.
Our data were collected from single respondents using the same sur-
vey instrument, exposing the observed relationships to the threat of
common method bias (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003).
To reduce common method bias, Podsakoff et al. (2003) suggests utiliz-
ing structural procedures during the design of the study and data collec-
tion processes. Following these guidelines, we protected respondent-
researcher anonymity, provided clear directions, and proximally sepa-
rated independent and dependent variables (Podsakoff et al., 2003).
We then assessed the potential effect of common method bias statisti-
cally by conducting three tests. First, Harman's one-factor test
(Podsakoff & Organ, 1986) generated eight principal constructs; the
un-rotated factor solution shows that the first construct explains only
25.7% of the variance, indicating that our data do not suffer from high
common method bias. Second, we performed a partial correlation tech-
nique using a marker variable to separate out the influence of common
method bias. Following Lindell and Whitney (2001), we used the sec-
ond smallest positive correlation among measurement items (0.01) as
a proxy for common method bias to adjust the correlations between
the principal constructs. The adjusted correlations were only slightly
lower than the unadjusted correlations and their significance levels
did not change, suggesting that common method bias did not spuriously
inflate the construct relationships (Lindell & Whitney, 2001). Finally,
following a procedure suggested by Pavlou, Liang, and Xue (2007), we
compared correlations among the constructs. The results revealed no
constructs with correlations over 0.7, whereas evidence of common
method bias ought to have brought about significantly higher correla-
tions (r N .90). Consequently, these tests suggest that common method
bias is not a major concern in this study.
6. Results
Given the research model and objectives, Structural Equation
Modeling (SEM) enjoys an advantage over other analysis techniques
such as linear regression because SEM can examine proposed causal
paths among constructs (Gefen, Rigdon, & Straub, 2011). For this
study, the data were analyzed using IBM Amos 20.
6.1. Descriptive statistics, reliability, and validity
Table 3 presents the means, standard deviations, Cronbach's alphas,
square roots of the AVEs, and construct correlations. The Cronbach's
alphas (ranging from .700 to .899) show a satisfactory degree of internal
 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70 65

Table 3
Descriptive statistics and correlations.

Variable Mean S.D. Alpha CR SC CSI ASI ESI OFB OPB ICPS BA

SC 3.65 1.10 .835 .845 .726

CSI 3.58 1.43 .829 .833 .464⁎⁎ .845
ASI 4.06 1.26 .707 .710 .043 .061 .742
ESI 4.38 1.16 .700 .756 .275⁎⁎ .194⁎⁎ .196⁎⁎ .790
OFB 3.88 1.32 .869 .874 .243⁎⁎ .348⁎⁎ .180⁎ .122 .836
OPB 3.99 1.20 .899 .904 .414⁎⁎ .460⁎⁎ .080 .017 .413⁎⁎ .871
ICPS 4.56 1.06 .755 .765 .416⁎⁎ .310⁎⁎ .012 .210⁎⁎ .225⁎⁎ .333⁎⁎ .723
BA 4.64 .97 .769 .776 .253⁎⁎ .160⁎ .064 .153⁎ .198⁎⁎ .044 .303⁎⁎ .644

Note: N = 190; CR: composite reliability; Alpha: Cronbach's alpha; S.D.: standard deviation; The bold values along the diagonal are the square roots of the AVEs.
Legend: SC: Social comparison; CSI: Cognitive social identity; ASI: Affective social identity; ESI: Evaluative social identity; OFB: Opening firm boundaries; OPB: Opening product bound-
aries; ICPS: Identity convergence around products and services; BA: brand awareness.
⁎ p b 0.05.
⁎⁎ p b 0.01.
⁎⁎⁎ p b 0.001.

consistency reliability for the measures (Bollen & Lennox, 1991).
Construct reliability was assessed using composite reliability (CR)
(Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2010, p. 687). As shown in Table 3,
the CRs range from 0.710 and 0.904 and are all greater than the com-
monly accepted cutoff value of .70 (Gefen et al., 2011), which demon-
strates adequate reliability for the measures. Discriminant validity was
first assessed by examining the factor correlations. Although there are
no firm rules, inter-construct correlations below |.7| provide evidence
of measure distinctness, and thus discriminant validity. Here, no factor
correlation is greater than .7, which demonstrates discriminant validity
(see Table 3). Another way to examine discriminant validity is to
compare the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) to the squared inter-
construct correlation. When the AVE is larger than the corresponding
squared inter-construct correlation estimates, this suggests that the in-
dicators have more in common with the construct they are associated
with than they do with other constructs, which again provides evidence
of discriminant validity. The data suggests adequate divergent validity
of the measures.
An exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation for all con-
structs was conducted to test construct validity. Factor loadings for
each construct are shown in Appendix B. The results indicate that
most items loaded on a distinct construct and their factor loadings are
greater than 0.5, showing a good convergent validity. These results con-
firm the existence of eight observed constructs with eigenvalues greater
than 1.0, signifying that a good discriminant validity was obtained in
this study.
6.2. Measurement model
We began by analyzing the measurement model to assess the mea-
surement quality of the constructs using a Confirmatory Factor Analysis
(CFA) approach. The measurement model consists of eight latent factors
and twenty-five indicators. The range of loadings for the social compar-
ison is from .500 to .835. The ranges of the loadings for the three social
identity factors are as follows: cognitive social identity, .840 to .849; af-
fective social identity, .702 to .780; and evaluative social identity .555 to
.970. The ranges of the loadings for the three co-innovation practices are
as follows: opening firm boundaries, .786 to .906; opening products
boundaries, .813 to .940; and identity convergence around products;
.655 to .833. The range of loadings for the brand awareness is from
.520 to .750.
The chi-square score of our model is statistically significant (χ2
(247) = 336.517, p b .000), indicating that the exact fit hypothesis
is rejected. We also examined other measures of goodness-of-fit;
the comparative fit index (CFI), goodness-of-fit index (GFI), adjusted
goodness-of-fit index (AGFI), and incremental fit index (IFI) are .954,
.875, .835, and .955, respectively, two of which exceed the cutoff
value of .90 and the other two are over 0.80. Zikmund (2003) con-
tends that GFI values lower than .90 do not necessarily indicate
poor model fits, and Sharma, Mukherjee, Kumar, and Dillon (2005)
suggest that datasets with a large number of indicators (more than
24) and smaller sample sizes should use more liberal cutoff values.
Hence, with 25 indicators, 8 constructs and a sample size of 190, a
GFI value = .849, slightly lower than 0.9, could reasonably be
deemed acceptable. The Root Mean Square Error of Approximation
(RMSEA) is .055. Browne and Cudeck (1993) suggest that an
RMSEA value of .05 or less indicates a good approximate fit, while
.08 or less indicates an approximate fit; values above 0.10 indicate
room for improvement. Thus, we conclude that our data adequately
fit the measurement model.
6.3. Structural model evaluation
After confirming that an adequate fit was obtained for the measure-
ment model, we assessed the fit of our structural model. The goodness-
of-fit of the structural model was found to be comparable to that of the
previously described CFA model. The hypothesized model thus appears
to fit the data well, as shown in Fig. 2. We did not conduct post-hoc
modifications because of the good fit of the data to the model. With
this evidence of acceptable fit, we proceeded to test our hypotheses.
6.4. Hypotheses testing
The nine hypotheses presented earlier were tested collectively using
IBM Amos 20. Each indicator was modeled in a reflective manner; the
six latent variables were linked as hypothesized. Model estimation
was done using the maximum likelihood technique. We chose Maxi-
mum Likelihood (ML) parameter estimation over other estimation
methods (e.g., weighted least squares, two-stage least squares) because
the data were fairly normally distributed.
7. Discussion
Based on our data analysis, all but two of our hypotheses received
significant support, as summarized in Table 4. The impact of social influ-
ence on co-innovation practices is therefore only partially supported.
Our results reveal that the perception of social comparison is positively
related to the practices of identity convergence around products and
opening product boundaries (H1b & H1c). However, the impact of social
comparison on opening firms' boundaries is not supported by our data
analysis (H1a). One possible explanation for this result is that members
in these online forums are already very familiar with this industry and
know other companies well. Hence, the comparison process may not
be significant as they are less likely to try to compare their company
to others and may be more curious about other new products than
about the companies that produce them. The other possibility is that
most of the participants in our study are professional business represen-
tatives. Hence, they may be unwilling to discuss their own company
66 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70

Fig. 2. Estimation results for the structural model.

with others because they consider their company to be superior. On the
other hand, the data analysis supports the contention that the percep-
tion of social identity has a positive impact on all three co-innovation
practices (H2a, H2b, & H2c). Thus, we argue that social influence facili-
tates co-innovation process on this online community. Based on this
part of the results, we answer our first research question by stating
that our findings show that social identity and social comparison, as fac-
tors of social influence, motivate members of online communities to
participate in co-innovation practice.
The second part of our research model focuses on the relationship
between co-innovation practices and brand awareness. Our data
analysis confirms that the practices of opening firm boundaries and
identity convergence around products both have a positive impact
on brand awareness (H3a & H3b). However, the impact of opening
product boundaries on brand awareness is not supported by our
data (H3c). This may be because the first two factors are closely re-
lated to company branding strategy but the third factor is not. The
practice of opening product boundaries focuses primarily on the
functionalities of the product itself rather than promoting the com-
pany brand. It is therefore not surprising that the first two co-
innovation practices should produce a stronger effect on brand
awareness than the third. Based on our results, we contend that co-
innovation practices can indeed help companies to increase their
brand awareness in online communities. These findings yield a num-
ber of useful insights regarding the theoretical and managerial impli-
cations of this research, which will be discussed in the remainder of
this section. Meanwhile, this answers our second research question
by providing empirical evidence that co-innovation practices sup-
port efforts by users of online communities to strengthen brand
awareness of their companies.
7.1. Theoretical implications
In general, our research extends our current understanding of online
communities by empirically examining the impact of perceived social
identity and social comparison on co-innovation practices. Based on
existing social theories, our findings shed new light on how co-
innovation in online communities can be supported, specifically in a
B2B setting. We also provide empirical evidence to support the conten-
tion that co-innovation practices in online communities increase
company brand awareness. Our theoretical contributions are presented
below.
First, this study focuses specifically on the social antecedents of co-
innovation in the context of an online community. Online co-
innovation is a relatively new phenomenon that is expected to become
more and more popular and a potentially very useful way to support
business routines. Many researchers have emphasized the value of co-
creation and the power of crowds. Combining the concept of online
communities and co-innovation, this paper provides some interesting
results in this rapidly developing area. This study began by identifying
the relevant co-innovation features for online communities devoted to
subjects related to SaaS issues. The literature review conducted for
this study indicates that the online business market has unique
characteristics that could encourage greater utilization of co-
innovation practices. Thus, developing a better theoretical understand-
ing of co-innovation practices in the context of online communities is
likely to be very promising in terms of practical relevance.
Second, our research demonstrates that co-innovation practice is
significantly influenced by members' online social identity and social
comparison. This implies that online co-innovation could be improved
by strengthening social influence between users. Online social influence

Table 4
Overview of results.

Hypothesis Relationships β t-Value p-Value Results

H1a Social comparison → opening firm boundaries. .07 .836 .403 Not supported
H1b Social comparison → identity convergence around products and services. .43 4.428 .000 Supported
H1c Social comparison → opening products/services boundaries. .29 3.688 .000 Supported
H2a Social identity → opening firm boundaries. .57 3.992 .000 Supported
H2b Social identity → identity convergence around products and services. .36 3.004 .003 Supported
H2c Social identity → opening products/services boundaries. .58 4.098 .000 Supported
H3a Opening firm boundaries → industrial brand awareness. .20 2.158 .031 Supported
H3b Identity convergence around products and services → industrial brand awareness. .38 3.580 .000 Supported
H3c Opening products/services boundaries → industrial brand awareness. −.17 −1.863 .062 Not supported
 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70
factors have attracted increasing attention from researchers in recent
years. One major focus has been to examine how social factors drive in-
dividuals' contributions in co-innovation. Our research builds on
existing social influence theory to examine the impact of social factors
on group performance in online communities, providing evidence to
suggest that social identity and comparison, as individual level factors,
facilitate online co-innovation to produce better group level outcomes.
The way individuals perceive social influence from each other produces
a higher incentive to contribute, which in turn enhances co-innovation
performance. More specifically, our results show that social identity and
comparison are positively related to identity convergence and opening
product boundaries, again showing how these social factors as motiva-
tors affect co-innovation in online communities. Meanwhile, the posi-
tive connection between social identity and opening firm boundaries
supports the contention that individual-level identity will positive
influence firm-level identity, thus advancing our current understanding
of social identity theory to a higher level concept.
Finally, our study has identified a positive relationship between co-
innovation and brand awareness in online communities. The literature
on brand equity is relatively mature in the physical environment, but
our understanding of the implementation of brand equity in online com-
munities is as yet relatively limited. Our research incorporates co-
innovation practices into the theoretical construct of online brand
equity. In particular, our findings empirically demonstrate that co-
innovation practices could significantly boost online brand awareness, a
critical dimension of brand equity. This suggests a potential direction
for further research to investigate co-innovation activities in more detail,
along with an in-depth study of their impact on brand awareness. At the
same time, this provides marketing research with another viewpoint to
understand how co-innovation can improve branding strategy. Opening
firm boundaries and identity convergence can also be applied to various
settings in the online environment to achieve marketing goals. Future
studies could develop a more nuanced picture of how best to utilize
these factors to achieve other marketing goals related to brand equity.
7.2. Managerial implications
Firms are increasingly recognizing the importance of incorporating
social media into their business operations. As a popular channel of
business opportunity development and branding strategy, online
communities are attracting professionals who are seeking to support
their business activities. The increasing adoption of such platforms re-
flects the importance of motivators supporting participant's contribu-
tion behavior and provides further support for co-innovation practices
that improve online branding strategies. Our research findings have
several dimensions of managerial implications.
The first managerial implication lies in the use of social influence
among users to improve online co-innovation performance. Our
research shows that online professional practitioners form a stable per-
ception of social identity and social comparison in online communities
discussing SaaS related issues (as indicated by reliability and validity
of the measurement construct), leading to better performance of co-
innovation practices. This finding suggests that online community ad-
ministrators could manipulate social factors to encourage favorable
practices. Practitioners could design relative functions to improve indi-
vidual perceptions of social identity and comparison. In particular, we
found that social comparison affects opening product boundaries, so on-
line communities could provide functions that allow users to reveal
their products, thus stimulating social comparisons between sellers.
Also, identity convergence is positively related to social comparison.
Functions that enable users to share their firm identity or provide
sample services may also motivate users to contribute more efforts for
comparison. Based on our results, marketers should emphasize their
identifications in online communities to facilitate opening their firm
and product boundaries, as well as strengthening their identity conver-
gence. For example, customized functions could improve personal and
67
firm identification. Further, some communities employ reputation sys-
tems, which may also strength the identification of users.
Our research findings also indicate that in an online community, co-
innovation practices could significantly boost brand awareness. Mar-
keters seeking an effective branding strategy could thus utilize this
channel to strength their brand awareness at a relatively low cost. In
particular, we found that that at the group level, when participants
share more of a common identity as a community member, the
company's brand awareness performance is more effective. Neverthe-
less, co-innovation practices that focus on specific brands/services are
generally less effective in spreading brand awareness. This counter-
intuitive finding indicates that in an online community, branding
strategy should focus on exploring territory rather than promoting
individual products.
8. Limitations, future research, and conclusions
Perceptual measures that require participants to compare them-
selves against the competition are known to suffer from several limita-
tions. Likewise, relying on individual informants, which is the case in
this study, can run the risk of underestimating the true parameters
due to self-report and/or dishonesty bias. Although these are potentially
serious limitations, the risk of bias has been minimized in this study for
the following two reasons. First, the data was collected from the profes-
sionals (i.e., sellers) in charge of social media marketing activities,
whose goals consisted of selling products, brand promotion, and
product development. As explained earlier, the study participants
were selected after reviewing their LinkedIn profiles to ensure that
their job positions and duties matched our research context prior to
the distribution of the survey. Two questions about potential partici-
pants' main purpose for joining an online community were asked as a
further confirmation. It is reasonable to expect these professionals to
know about their firms' social media marketing and branding strategies.
Second, the appropriate use of co-innovation practices and higher brand
awareness are not explicit indicators of firm performance, so partici-
pants are less likely to refuse to answer or answer dishonestly when
making a comparison with competitors.
Our research context is online communities discussing SaaS related
issues, whose participants are mainly from professional backgrounds.
Thus, our results should be treated with caution when applied to
other co-creation contexts, especially to online communities in which
members are mainly consumers. On the other hand, we deliberately se-
lected this professional context in order to observe the co-innovation
process in accordance with our model. The preliminary nature of our
research justifies the sacrifice of generalizability in exchange for the op-
portunity to observe this interesting phenomenon. Future research
could extend our approach to other online co-creation contexts in
order to generalize our research model.
Another limitation of our research is the relatively small number of
samples, which may reduce the level of confidence of our results.
However, our study does provide some very intriguing findings that
we confidently expect to stimulate future research in this area. Because
of the professional nature of the communities targeted, our participants
have provided valuable insights that allowed us to develop our research
model. Future research could focus on cross-group and large-scale
samples to build a more comprehensive picture.
Given that our results indicate that sellers' social influence signifi-
cantly affects co-innovation practice, future research could consider
other social behavior theories or the role of intrinsic and extrinsic
motivational factors in the context of online communities. For example,
social tie theories could be applied to determine how individual connec-
tions affect co-innovation performance. Social network theory may also
shed some light on how different network structures influence co-
innovation performance. As our study uses only self-reported survey
data to answer our research questions, further research could consider
expanding this to include secondary data such as the actual numbers
68 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70

of postings, replies or comments to provide a more comprehensive view
of user behavior in online communities. This may reveal additional de-
tails about the contribution performance of users as the outcomes of so-
cial influence. Finally, to generalize our research results, future studies
could utilize different sample selection strategies. A wider range of
types of online communities and larger sample sizes could produce a
more comprehensive picture of co-innovation practices in online
communities.
In conclusion, our results reveal that online social motivation factors
significantly affect co-creation practices in an online community. At the
same time, our study supports the contention that community mem-
bers' co-creation practices boost brand awareness. This paper also incor-
porates an exploratory review of our current understanding of the
impact of online communities on social media, co-creation, and brand
equity. We also suggest useful approaches for practitioners considering
adopting social media as part of their innovation practice.

Appendix A. Measures and items

Construct Measures Source

On this forum, I often…

Social • Compare myself with other members with respect to what I have accomplished on SaaS forums.
• Pay a lot of attention to how I do things compared with how others do things on SaaS forum. Buunk and Gibbons (2006)
comparison
• Compare how my connections on this forum are doing with how others are doing
• Compare how well I have done with other members
• Compare how I am doing socially (e.g., social skills, popularity) with other members
Cognitive social identity

• How would you express the degree of overlap between your personal identity and the identity you perceive on a
SaaS forum when you are engaging in group activities?
• Please indicate the degree to which your self-image overlaps with the identity of the group of friends you identified
above as you perceive it.

Affective social identity Bagozzi and Lee (2002), Bergami and

Social identity Bagozzi (2000), Tsai and Bagozzi
(2014)
• How attached are you to the SaaS forum?
• How strong would you say your feelings of belongingness are toward the SaaS forum?

Evaluative social identity

• I am a valuable member of the SaaS forum.

• I am an important member of the group.
Opening firm boundaries

• Communicate with other members to identify the need for and ideas regarding new products or services
• Call for contributions from other members to participate in the development of a new version of the product or
services
• Share product or service knowledge with other members

Opening product boundaries

Co-innovation Russo-Spena and Mele (2012),

practices • Identify new functions by observing product or service usages Parmentier and Mangematin (2014)
• Evaluate other member creations directly connected with products or services
• Organize community events integrating as many as possible of the members' contributions into products and
services

Identity convergence

• Share elements of identification (e.g., history, visual, name and internet address) with other members
• Build common values
• Allow other members to use a part of the product or service for free
• The name of this brand is well known among potential customers
• Potential customers can recognize our brand among other competitors' brands
Brand Aaker (1996), Homburg, Klarmann,
• Our company is a leading brand in the market
awareness et al. (2010)
• Our brand is often at the top of the minds of the potential customer firms when they think of our product category
• Potential customers can clearly recall some characteristics of our brand

Appendix B. Results of cross-loading

Items SC IBA OPSB OFB ICPS ESI CSI ASI

SC3 .822 .098 .150 .017 .142 −.028 .124 −.039

SC2 .801 .087 .146 .182 .099 .109 .118 −.028
SC4 .761 .047 .202 .082 .075 .167 .093 .064
SC1 .739 .193 .135 −.079 .065 −.051 .186 −.026
 Y. Wang et al. / Industrial Marketing Management 54 (2016) 56–70 69

(continued)

Items SC IBA OPSB OFB ICPS ESI CSI ASI

SC5 .534 −.038 .023 .156 .208 .358 .019 .073

BA1 .002 .828 −.004 −.014 .069 −.069 .006 .020
BA2 .127 .755 .109 .082 .054 .237 −.083 .115
BA3 .097 .732 −.055 .059 .082 −.073 .073 −.001
BA4 .032 .659 −.065 .074 .035 −.027 .021 −.010
BA5 .158 .524 .034 .108 .134 .345 .142 −.078
OPB2 .186 −.021 .883 .165 .108 .003 .152 .021
OPB1 .201 −.023 .846 .169 .051 .075 .167 −.006
OPB3 .191 −.042 .812 .238 .112 .026 .115 .046
OFB2 .005 .115 .146 .893 .084 .014 .050 .091
OFB1 .106 .045 .161 .836 −.023 .082 .158 .046
OFB3 .125 .116 .206 .815 .125 −.001 .095 .075
ICPS2 .080 .089 −.002 .180 .829 .198 −.029 −.093
ICPS3 .248 .115 .090 .031 .782 .099 .243 .022
ICPS1 .213 .222 .393 −.041 .662 −.106 .031 .078
ESI1 −.010 .017 .083 −.038 .067 .833 .055 .098
ESI2 .225 .061 −.029 .083 .073 .807 .067 .088
CSI1 .229 .084 .224 .156 .105 .054 .841 .044
CSI2 .254 .021 .208 .168 .090 .118 .817 −.008
ASI2 −.043 .011 .031 .111 .099 .045 .020 .875
ASI1 .049 .036 .020 .064 −.123 .133 .007 .854
Eigenvalues 6.417 2.626 2.195 1.840 1.420 1.342 1.128 1.027
Percentage of variance explained 25.669 10.505 8.781 7.359 5.680 5.368 4.512 4.109
Cumulative percentage 25.669 36.174 44.955 52.314 57.994 63.362 67.874 71.982

SC: Social comparison; CSI: Cognitive social identity; ASI: Affective social identity; ESI: Evaluative social identity; OFB: Opening firm boundaries; OPSB: Opening product boundaries; ICPS:
Identity convergence around products and services; BA: brand awareness.
The factor loading of exploratory factor analysis are highlighted if they exceed the 0.5 cut-off.

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Yichuan Wang is a PhD Candidate in Management Information Systems at Auburn
University. He received his B.B.A. degree from the National Chung Cheng University and
a M.S. degree from the National University of Tainan. His research interests include
healthcare information technology, social media analytics and IT-enabled innovation
and business value. His research has appeared in various journals, such as Industrial Mar-
keting Management, International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of
Information Management, International Journal of Market Research, and Informatics for
Health and Social Care, among others.
Shih-Hui Hsiao is a PhD Candidate in Decision Science and Information Systems (DS&IS)
at the University of Kentucky. His doctoral thesis focused on evaluating alternate ap-
proaches to identifying Opinion Leader (OL) in a huge Social Media network. His research
interests include social media analytics, opinion mining, social computing, and social net-
work theory.
Zhiguo Yang is an Assistant Professor at the Missouri State University College of Business.
His research areas are online community members' behavior, consumer decision model-
ing, cross-category effect analysis, information system education, and knowledge manage-
ment. His dissertation is about large scale cross category effect analysis using multivariate
probit model and artificial neural network model.
Nick Hajli is a Lecturer in Marketing and Entrepreneurship in Newcastle University Lon-
don. Nick received his PhD in Management from Birkbeck, University of London. His re-
search has appeared in the top 20 journals used in Business School Research Rankings.
He has also published on refereed journals such as Journal of Business Ethics, Expert Systems
with Applications, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, International Journal of Mar-
ket Research, and other quality journals.