Purpose

Previous studies on social influence and virtual product adoption have mainly taken users’ purchase behavior as a dichotomous variable (i.e. purchasing or not). Given the prevalence of competing versions (basic vs upgraded) of a virtual product in online communities, this paper investigated the differences in the effect of social influence on users’ adoption of basic and upgraded choices of a virtual product. It also examined how the effect varies with users’ social status and user-level network density.

Design/methodology/approach

A natural experiment was conducted in an online game community. Two competing versions (basic vs upgraded) of a virtual product were provided for in-game purchase while a random set of users selected from 897,765 players received the notification of their friends’ adoption information. A competing-risk model was used to test the hypotheses.

Findings

Social influence exerts a stronger positive effect on users’ adoption of the upgraded virtual product than of the basic virtual product. Middle-status users have the greatest (least) susceptibility to social influence in adopting the upgraded (basic) virtual product than low- and high-status users. User’s network density enhances the effect of social influence on adoption of both virtual products, even more for the upgraded one.

Originality/value

This research contributes to the social influence and product adoption literature by disentangling the different effects of social influence on basic and upgraded versions of a virtual product. It also identifies the boundary conditions that social influence works for each version of the virtual product.

中文翻译：

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社会影响与产品升级选择：来自网络游戏虚拟产品采用的证据

目的

以往关于社会影响力和虚拟产品采用的研究主要将用户的购买行为作为二分变量（即购买与不购买）。鉴于在线社区中虚拟产品的竞争版本（基本版与升级版）的盛行，本文研究了社会影响力对用户采用虚拟产品的基本版和升级版选择的影响差异。它还研究了效果如何随用户的社会地位和用户级别的网络密度而变化。

设计/方法论/途径

在一个网络游戏社区进行了一项自然实验。虚拟产品的两个竞争版本（基本版和升级版）可供游戏内购买，同时从 897,765 名玩家中随机选出的一组用户收到了其朋友采用信息的通知。使用竞争风险模型来检验假设。

发现

与基础虚拟产​​品相比，社会影响力对用户采用升级虚拟产品的积极影响更大。与低地位和高地位用户相比，中地位用户在采用升级（基础）虚拟产品时对社会影响的敏感度最大（最小）。用户的网络密度增强了社会影响力对两种虚拟产品采用的影响，对于升级后的虚拟产品更是如此。

原创性/价值

这项研究通过阐明社会影响力对虚拟产品的基本版本和升级版本的不同影响，为社会影响力和产品采用文献做出了贡献。它还确定了社会影响力对虚拟产品的每个版本起作用的边界条件。