Who Do We Listen to More - Opinion Leaders or Friends - The Social Function of Conformity Behavior in Social Commerce

Aug 24, 2026

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Online social information such as product ratings and purchase signals is widely available on social commerce platforms and shapes user purchase decisions. Grounded in prior online conformity research, this study compares how online social information generated by opinion leaders versus friends differentially affects conformity behavior. Large-scale data from a social commerce site shows purchase decisions respond to both sources, but friends’ information produces a stronger influence. Gender moderates this effect: female users conform more to friends than to opinion leaders, while male users do not.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Research questions

Study approach and data source

Contribution and significance

Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences | 2017 Who do We Listen to More: Opinion Leaders or Friends? The Social Function of Conformity Behavior in Social Commerce Yanli Jia Department of Marketing, School of Management, Xiamen University [yanli.xmu@gmail.com](yanli.xmu@gmail.com) Ivy L. B. Liu Department of Information Systems and Logistics, Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University of Technology [liboliu@swin.edu.au](liboliu@swin.edu.au) Abstract Online social information (e.g. , product ratingsand product purchase) is widely available on the social commerce sites and is believed to affect user purchase decisions . Drawing from the prior research on online conformity, we examine any differential impact of the online social information generated by opinion leader versus friends . By analyzing a largescale data collected from a social commerce site, we found that user purchase decisions are influenced by the online social information both by opinion leaders and by friends. However, the information by friends has greater effect in comparison to that by opinion leaders . In addition, our results indicated that female users demonstrate greater tendency to conform to friends than opinion leaders, but not for male users . This study contributes to the existing literature by explaining how different types of social information influence users’purchase decision and identifying the moderating role of gender on it. The results offer important and interesting insights to research and practice . Keywords: conformity behavior, gender, herding, opinion leader, social commerce, user purchase decision. 1. Introduction Central to the study of online social networks has been the influence of others. That is, an individual will observe the referrals or actions of those behind him or her, and follow the referrals or behavior of the preceding individuals without regard to his or her own information. The common belief behind the conformity behavior is that people reshape their beliefs on the quality of different alternatives by observing others’ decisions on these alternatives, thinking that “they must know better than I do in a given area.” In this paper, we attempt to revisit the popular belief that people like to conform to others. In particular, we focus on two types of “others”– online friends and opinion leaders, and compare people’s different conformity behaviors toward them. Asch [2], in his seminal paper, has documented how individuals often succumb to peer pressure (mostly from friends) when making judgments. More recently, Feng, et al. [14] find that online friends exert conformity pressure, motivating consumers to generate similar product ratings. In the domain of movie industry, Lee, et al. [24] report the similar conformity phenomenon; that is, relative to prior ratings by strangers, friends’ ratings always induce herding. However, online friends are not the only group that people would like to follow. Opinion leaders could influence people’s decision via multiple ways, such as online “tips” and product endorsements. Opinion leaders refer to a group who are normally interconnected and have a higher status, education, and social standing and thus exert a disproportionate amount of influence on social networks [26, 29] . Oneof the best examples of opinion leaders is the socalled Internet celebrities, who create original contents, including articles, photo and videos, to build a dedicated audience on social networking platforms. In the business world, their influence on audience can surely be put to commercial use. A Chinese Internet celebrity in fashion areas – Zhang Dayi, for instance, has approximately 4 million followings on Sina Weibo (i.e., a Chinese version of Twitter), and one of her product endorsements sends sales soaring – 5,000 garments in two seconds, URI: [http://hdl.handle.net/10125/41256](http://hdl.handle.net/10125/41256) [ISBN: 978-0-9

FAQs

How does social commerce information from opinion leaders and friends affect purchase decisions?

Both opinion leaders and friends influence users’ purchase decisions through the online social information they generate on social commerce platforms.

Which source has the stronger impact on conformity behavior?

Information from friends has a greater effect than information from opinion leaders.

How does gender moderate the impact of online social information?

Female users show a greater tendency to conform to friends than to opinion leaders, whereas this moderation effect is not observed for male users.

Aug 24, 2026

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