Online communities and offline sales: considerations on visiting behavior dimensions and online community types
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-01-2022-0033 |
| Published date | 17 May 2022 |
| Date | 17 May 2022 |
| Pages | 1620-1644 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems,Knowledge management,Knowledge sharing,Management science & operations,Supply chain management,Supply chain information systems,Logistics,Quality management/systems |
| Author | Yuan Sun,Yating Zhong,Qi Li |
Online communities and offline
sales: considerations on visiting
behavior dimensions and online
community types
Yuan Sun
School of Business Administration, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou,
China and
Zheshang Research Institute, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China
Yating Zhong
School of Business Administration, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou,
China, and
Qi Li
School of Business Administration, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou,
China and
Zheshang Research Institute, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China
Abstract
Purpose –As an increasingly popular tool for product exploration, online communities have an important
impact on consumers’purchasingdecisions. The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of how
visiting behaviors in online communities affect consumers’offline purchasing behavior. The moderating role of
two dimensions of consumer visiting behaviors (visiting depth and visiting breadth) also receives attention.
Moreover,the impact of consumer visiting behaviors on offline sales for different types of online communities is
also the focus of this paper.
Design/methodology/approach –To test the empirical model, the authors collected data on consumers’
visits to an online real estate platform with local housing sales data. In addition to the baseline regression
analysis of the data with the help of Stata 17.0, the study also analyzes the robustness of the resultsthrough
several methods.
Findings–The authors focus on an online community for newly-built housing and find that consumer visits to
the focal online community have a positive impact on offline sales. Visiting breadth has a negative moderating
effect on this relationship, and no statistically significant moderating effect is found for visiting depth. Further,
our empirical exploration finds that consumer visits to competitive online communities have a positive impact
on offline focal product sales, but visits to complementary online communities have no statistically significant
effect on offline sales.
Originality/value –Our findings contribute to the understanding of consumers’cross-channel purchasing
behavior and provide new insights into how visiting behaviors in online communities affect consumers’
purchasing decisions.
Keywords Online community, Consumer visiting behaviours, Offline sales, Cross-channel, Real estate
Paper type Research paper
IMDS
122,7
1620
Funding: This research was supported by the Major Project of National Social Science Fund of China
[grant number 21&ZD119], the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation [grant number
LQ21G020003], the Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Sciences Leading Talent Cultivation
Project [grant number 21QNYC14ZD], and the Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and
Social Sciences at Universities-Modern Business Research Center of Zhejiang Gongshang University
[grant number 2020SMYJ03ZC].
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0263-5577.htm
Received 21 January 2022
Revised 7 April 2022
Accepted 28 April 2022
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 122 No. 7, 2022
pp. 1620-1644
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-01-2022-0033
1. Introduction
Online community platforms commonly have large amounts of user-generated content,
including users’product reviews, product recommendations and shopping experiences. They
have thus become an important source of product information for consumers (Shi et al., 2020;
Wang et al., 2020); nearly 60% of consumers read online product reviews at least weekly and
93% of consumers say that online reviews affect their purchasing choices (Podium, 2017).
Indeed, as a channel to promote consumer interaction and provide product information, the
value of online communities has become increasingly prominent (Lim and Zhang, 2021).
Moreover, increasing numbers of consumers’purchase decision process cross different
channels. They may choose one channel (such as the Internet) to search for and compare
product information, and then use otherchannels (such as offline physical stores) to purchase
target products(Singh and Jang, 2022;Verhoef et al., 2007).Thus, consumers’decision-making
processes are becoming more complex, and cross-channel purchases are producing mixed
effects (Awet al., 2021;Lesscher et al., 2021).This kind of cross-channel buyingbehavior is not
only applicable to consumption of small consumer goods but also to the typical mode of
shoppingfor large consumer goodssuch as cars and real estate(Li et al.,2018).In the real estate
industry,online communities have becomemainstream marketing channelsfor real estate and
provide relevantand comprehensive information for consumers,sellers and renters, attracting
a large number of users. For example, FangHoldings Limited, one of the world’slargestreal
estate and homefurnishing online communities, covers 24 countriesaround the world and has
110 millionregistered users (Fang.Com, 2021).Consumers of this online communityoften view
online information through this channel before buying offline.
However, there are relatively few studies on the impact of consumer visits to online
communities on offline sales. First, existing research generally finds that online community
information has a positive effect on product sales, but mainly focuses on researching online
sales (Geng et al., 2020;Lu et al., 2020); the effect on offline purchasing behavior has not been
widely studied. Second, many studies explore the influence on consumer behavior of visiting
online content, search trails, click behavior, etc. However, such studies do not examine
consumer visiting behaviors in online communities. Third, considering the differences and
complementarities between information in various channels, the effects of visiting different
types of online communities are often different, and it is not easy to classify online
communities. Consequently, it is not known what roles the different types of online
communities play in consumers’purchasing decisions.
Products that are subject to cross-elastic demand can be divided into focal products,
competitive products and complementary products (Shocker et al., 2004). Consumers’purchase
intention toward focal products is often affected by the display of the other two types of related
products and their product information (Zhang and Bockstedt, 2020). Based on this classification
of related products, in the present study, we divide online communities into three types: focal,
competitive and complementary online communities. The key difference among these three
typesof communities isthe type of productsthat consumersfocus on. Focal onlinecommunities
are mainly composed of information related to the focal product –in the present study, newly-
built housing. Consumers enter a focal online community to obtain information about the focal
product and communicate with other individuals to better understand the product and make
purchasing decisions (Adjei et al., 2010;Leal et al., 2014). This information will directly affect
consumers’purchasing decisions for focal products. A competitive on line community discusses
competitor products of the focal product –in the present study, second-hand housing. A
complementary online community provides information about complementary products –in the
present study, home furnishings. To a certain extent, the degree of attention to competitive
products and complementary products affects the degree of attention to focal products.
Competitive productsand complementaryproducts therefore have important indirect effects on
sales of focal products (Radon et al., 2021;Shocker et al.,2004).
Online
communities
and offline
sales
1621
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