Virtual social contagion in online support communities

Firm-sponsored online support communities are ideal places for consumers to solve problems related to product failure after their purchases. Community participants post questions and answers and, inevitably, are influenced by other participants' thoughts, emotions, and intentions. This study seeks to identify the patterns of social contagion and their development processes in online support communities and their impact on consumer post-purchase outcomes. Research on online support communities has emphasized the importance of either cognition or emotion when explaining contagious behaviors but has not explored both elements simultaneously. In this research, data was collected from two online technology support forums managed by two large IT companies. Netnography was employed for data collection and analysis. The data analysis leads to the development of a virtual social contagion typology (i.e., mechanical, smart, mob, and passion contagion) and its associated process models. The contribution of this research is to identify the simultaneous roles of cognitive and emotional activities in the development of social contagion. It also shows that contagion in online support communities is dynamic over time, and significantly affected by emotion.