Conceptual Framework

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立 政 治 大 學

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CHAPTER 4 METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, we will describe the conceptual model, system architecture and each module in details. In Chapter 4.1, there are two main concepts, business cooperation part and B2C2C eWOM part. In Chapter 4.2 there are two main modules, stakeholder choosing module and B2C2C eWOM improving module.

4.1 Conceptual Framework

The section aims to provide the conceptual framework underlying our mechanism. There are four important concepts in our conceptual framework, brand community, collaboration stakeholder, introvert leader engagement, fan engagement (see Figure 4.1).

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Brand Community Content and Collaboration Stakeholder Content:

As mentioned in chapter 1, nowadays, people spend a lot of time on browsing Facebook.

However, Facebook will filter out 1500 posts for each person per day through their own mechanism – the posts which are most likely to be the reader’s favorite will be chosen (Facebook, 2014). The results of this mechanism depends on each reader’s reading habits, therefore, we need to find out which kinds of post are reader’s favorite.

According to the relevant literature, the posts are divided into three types – entertainment, information and remuneration (Cvijikj et al., 2013). The reason why the scholar divided the

Content Source

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posts in these three types is because entertainment and information were considered to have a stronger effect for online engagement, and remuneration is the third frequently motivation for engagement (Muntinga et al. 2011). Such classification can include most types of posts on Facebook. Brand community content refers to the distribution of the types of posts of the reader’s favorite. Business managers can thus be informed and endeavor to make their B2C2C eWOM posts meet the mechanism of Facebook, appeared on reader’s wall.

Introvert Leader Engagement and Fan Engagement:

Besides brand community content of different posts’ types, it is important to have introvert leader engagement with the behavior measures of counts of likes, responses, and shares. The reason of utilizing the introvert leader’s behavior as monitoring measurements is introvert leaders have a greater influence than others on social media for fans. Fans following an introvert leader who has many interactions with fans but did not expose on Facebook are for them having the same interests or personality traits (Zubair Shafiq et al, 2012).

A complete introvert leader will be followed by many fans, and its fans will have some explicit interaction on its post, such as like, share or response (Zubair Shafiq et al, 2021). An IR shares the post from fan page not only can get a lot of interactions, but also can be more easily exposed on Facebook, because the nature of a group of similar people makes it easier for Facebook to determine where will be more appropriate for the post to appear.

The innovative part of the conceptual model is that we only use count of like, share and response, and these will make us easier to measure fan’s engagement. These criteria are not only easy to obtain and observe, but also overcome the difficulty to obtain other information under the Facebook privacy policy restrictions. In this framework, businesses only need to be introvert leader’s recognized, and businesses can also optimize C2C eWOM likelihood through the influence of introvert leader indirectly. Accordingly, this research proposes the following hypotheses to investigate:

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Hypothesis 1: In a brand community, different types of articles will have different degree of engagement for introvert leaders with fan page.

Cvijikj et al. (2013) pointed out that different types of articles will have different degree of engagement for fans. In our conceptual model, we are interested in whether introvert leaders’

engagement degree will also affected by different types of posts. By enhancing engagement of introvert leaders, introvert leaders will have more likelihood to having some behavior on Facebook; it might be like, share or response. If such a hypothesis holds, our first phase of the B2C2C eWOM approach will then be feasible.

Hypothesis 2: The articles from cooperation stakeholders with different types of articles will have different degree of engagement for introvert leaders with fan page.

There have no famous research on the impact of different types of articles from cooperation stakeholders on introvert leaders. However, it is also as an important factor in our conceptual model. Chiranjeev (2003) pointed out that co-branding is a good way to a business to reach in or reach out the market. For this reason, we must understand that if there will result in different level of engagement for introvert leaders with fan page, then we can make a good cooperation between enterprises. Businesses emphasis on potential value and it depends on the engagement of introvert leaders. When the more engaging of introvert leaders, the more likelihood B2C2C will be successful.

Hypothesis 3: The different kinds of behavior from introvert leaders will drive different degree of engagement for fans on the fan page.

We consider that fans may have some different degree of engagement when introvert leaders do not show the same behavior. Roderick et al. (2011) pointed out that there are several degree of engagement, emotional, cognitive and behavioral. If fans respond to introvert leaders’

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behavior, it means fans are in relatively high engagement. And because of observable behavior, business can determine the success of eWOM marketing.

On Facebook, there are several behavior types users may make: like, share, response on the post or message with friends in private message box. When introvert leader interacts with the post on fan page, Facebook mechanism might think this post will also attract introvert leader’s friends and push this post to their wall. Through this process, introvert leader will make some influence on their friends, but if introvert leader forwards the article with their own view that may attract their friends to read the article more carefully. This concept is different from the current practice: attracting users’ “like” on the article. We think we should spread the article to everyone who may be interested, and it is the goal of maximizing eWOM.