The Effect of Online Social Network Characteristics on Consumer Purchasing Intention of Social Deals

Abstract This study aims to understand how the characteristics of online social network structure can impact consumer purchase intention through network involvement. We propose and analyse that a consumer's decision for purchasing from the deal-of-the-day Websites is affected by the characteristics of the online social network structure through consumers' network involvement. The results of this study are: Tie strength, network density, network centrality and homophily will increase both social networking service (SNS) users' affective involvement and cognitive involvement to the online social network, both of which will increase their purchase intention of the recommended deals by their friends in SNS.