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  • May–June 2019
  • Article
  • Marketing Science

U-Shaped Conformity in Online Social Networks

By: Monic Sun, Michael Zhang and Feng Zhu
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Abstract

We explore how people balance their needs to belong and to be different from their friends by studying their choices of a virtual-house wall color on a leading Chinese social-networking site. The setting enables us to randomize both the popular color and the adoption rate at the individual level so that our experimental design minimizes informational social influence, homophily, and group-identity signaling to the general public. We find that there exists significant social influence within a user’s friend circles. While learning about the most popular color among a user’s friends generally increases the likelihood for the user to adopt that color, conformity first decreases and then increases with the adoption rate of that choice, which ranges from 50% to 100%. In addition, users who are minority, newer, or of lower social-economic status are more likely to conform upon learning about the popular choice. Our findings are consistent with optimal distinctiveness and middle-status conformity theories and have implications for designing normative marketing campaigns.

Keywords

Conformity; Normative Social Influence; Social Networks; Field Experiment; Social and Collaborative Networks; Behavior; Attitudes; Social Media

Citation

Sun, Monic, Michael Zhang, and Feng Zhu. "U-Shaped Conformity in Online Social Networks." Marketing Science 38, no. 3 (May–June 2019): 461–480.
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About The Author

Feng Zhu

Technology and Operations Management
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  • TSG Hoffenheim: Step-by-Step Analysis in Excel By: Feng Zhu, Karim R. Lakhani, Sascha L. Schmidt and Kerry Herman
  • TSG Hoffenheim; Step by Step Analysis in Excel By: Feng Zhu, Karim R. Lakhani, Kerry Herman and Sascha L. Schmidt
  • Competition, Contracts, and Creativity: Evidence from Novel Writing in a Platform Market By: Yanhui Wu and Feng Zhu
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