Tuesday, April 26, 2016 | 3:00pm-4:30pm | Room 331, HSBC Business School Building

Abstract

Online sponsorships are commonly applied in search engines to promote the links of sponsors (e.g., links to their products and websites). However, users usually avoid sponsored search results (SSR). Such SSR avoidance reduces the click-through rate of SSR and negatively influences the effectiveness of the business model of sponsored search. This study aims to theorize and test the effects of online social influence cues on reducing the SSR avoidance of users in the e-commerce context. We focus on the particular context where the SSR matches the users’ search queries. In this context, SSR avoidance was driven (mediated) by various implicit theories of consumers regarding sponsored products (e.g., concerns on popularity or quality issue) or sponsor (e.g., concerns on credibility issue). A matching effects of social influence cues on reducing SSR avoidance is proposed. That is, a social influence cue can effectively reduce SSR avoidance when the cue (e.g., positive ratings of prior consumers on the quality of sponsored products) matches the implicit theory (e.g., a concern on product quality instead of a concern on the lack of product popularity) that is active at the time of judgment. In addition, a spill-over effect of a credibility rating cue was also posited to reduce SSR avoidance when the cue does not exactly match the implicit theory. A series of laboratory experiments was conducted, the results of which supported the posited hypotheses.