1.1 Research Background
Social network sites (SNSs) such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, and Bebo have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. People in Taiwan are more and more dependent on the social network sites to sustain their relationships with friend or strangers in the real life. Moreover, they can gain abundant information to meet what they need from different types of social network sites. Some sites can be classified by the degree of Self-disclosure from high to low, so there forms many kinds of virtual communities at the social network sites.
The development of Social network services has verified the theory of
"Six Degrees," which means that we can connect to everyone of the world within six people in the interpersonal context through the indirect acquaintance in the world. Individual's social border will expand continuously and overlap and form large social networks eventually.
MIC (2011) surveyed digital lifestyle of the consumers in Taiwan, with 90.4% users use Facebook, and Wretch and other social network community website, and 62.9% of them regularly use social networking community; 76.2%
of the users use Mobile01, and 33% use PTT - board community. The sites members in Taiwan prefer to use social community sites and the members of board community are less than the former. According to MIC (2011) Survey, the most popular social network site in Taiwan is Facebook (79.4%), followed
by Wretch, Yahoo blog, Plurk, map diaries and so on. The global popular sites such as Google Blogger, Twitter (Twitter) are less than 10% of utilization in Taiwan.
Now, some bloggers or sites users share their product using experiences in the social network sites, and some ideas and new products will diffuse through the network. Therefore, it will agglomerate a virtual network and form some relationships just like strong or weak links, and this study look through the observations to find out the members what roles they played, and the most important thing is to discover the information diffusion process through the network operation.
1.2 Research Motivation
Pattison (1993) pointed out social networks are defined as collections of social or interpersonal relationships between individuals in a social grouping.
The virtual world is somehow alike as the real world, and the elements composed of the virtual might be more multiple and complex than the real world.
The innovation diffusion theory is common explored in three areas, including technological forecasting and social change, study of emerging industry, and combination of theoretical research and reality (Li & Sui, 2011).
Most of the researches of diffusion focus on the product's market share and the ideas spread.
Nowadays, the social network analysis is mostly applied in investigating into micro and macro scope, and it is useful for observing the subjects'
interaction, degree, and ties to go a step further to describe the network operation.
Besides, the consumers are becoming smarter and more careful planning because of the convenience of the internet. They can surf the internet for gaining the information or social network sites for experience sharing from their friends or the community members in order to make the most rational choice. Therefore, the tools of general marketing may be less efficient after the social network sites spring up. To understand the behaviors of site users can help to explore and satisfy the needs of consumer; after all, there are a lot of potential business opportunities for gathering thousands of users.
Briefly, this research would like to analyze the way of information diffusion and limit to the virtual community of HTC through the social network sites, and compare the difference between the ways of information diffusion for the two different social network sites. Then obtain what ties exist between the members, and try to find the composition of the virtual interpersonal relations.
1.3 Research Objectives and Research Questions
Based on the research background and motivation, the research objectives are as follows:
1. To explore the context and velocity of information diffusion through the social network sites.
2. To comprehend how the information of HTC-XE spreads through the social network sites.
3. To compare the difference of characteristics of the members between the two social network sites.
In view of the proceeding research objectives, three primary research questions to be addressed in this research are as follows:
1. How does the HTC-XE product information diffuse through the virtual interpersonal relationships on the social network sites?
2. What do the function roles influence on the social network sites?
3. What are the differentials between these two SNSs when the product information diffuses, and how does the marketing of business activities influence in the future?
1.4 Research procedure
From Figure 1-1 and according to the research questions, the relevant literature was initially searched and the group observation was conducted in order to understand the information diffusion of HTC XE on the social network sites. In order to achieve a better understanding of the information diffusion context, this study conducted a five-month deep observation to find the role played by the users and how they interact via the social network sites to collect the social network sites data and to find the measurable index by the literature review. Through experts’ survey, this study confirmed the degree of information diffusion on the sites by offering function roles. After that, the social network analysis tool was used for analyzing the network pattern and features of members in specific social network sites and common statistics was adopted for exploring the relation between the network features and the relational variables. Finally, the conclusion is presented in the research.
Figure 1-1 Research procedure