The effects of familiarity and similarity on compliance in social networks Online publication date: Mon, 26-Jan-2015
by Maurits Kaptein; Clifford I. Nass; Panos Markopoulos
International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising (IJIMA), Vol. 8, No. 3, 2014
Abstract: Advertisers on social network sites often use recommendations by others in a user's networks to endorse products. While these familiar others are hypothesised to be more effective in influencing users than unfamiliar others, there is a catch: familiarity does not necessarily ensure similarity to the familiar person, a potential problem because the combination of familiarity and dissimilarity has been hypothesised to lead to lowered compliance. In an experiment (N = 44), we test people's compliance to similar and dissimilar familiar others in an online environment: we show that in both cases, familiarity leads to increased compliance. The work highlights the importance of familiarity on interpersonal influence and suggests that gaining familiarity, even in situations of dissimilarity, can be an effective means to increase the impact of advertisements and marketing campaigns in social media.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising (IJIMA):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com
Our Blog 
Follow us on Twitter 
Visit us on Facebook