Abstract:

In today’s highly interconnected mobile and computer-mediated environment, where the act of posting is only a click away, consumers increasingly post their consumption experiences online, from social media to review websites and e-commerce marketplaces. Echoing this momentum, a growing number of brands and marketplaces explicitly encourage consumers to post their purchase experiences by deftly including social media buttons or using hashtag-rich digital communications that directly prompt consumers to post to trigger greater engagement and sales. Previous research has mainly focused on when and why consumers share on social media after purchases. The current research examines whether, how, and when exposure to sharing cues (e.g., social media buttons) during a purchase episode influences consumer choices. We argue that exposure to sharing cues promotes impression management motivation and decreases sense of autonomy. Based on these accounts, we examine two consequences: product interest and decision termination.

In the first research, we examine how the mere presence of sharing cues on a webpage may influence consumer behavior in unexpected ways that can variably help or hurt companies promoting their products online. Drawing upon research on the use of both social media and product consumption for self-presentation purposes, we hypothesize that the presence of social media cues increases feelings of public self-consciousness and this increased self-consciousness influences consumers’ interest. We further show that the effect of public self-consciousness on product interest is moderated by product self-presentational value. Consumers’ interest will increase for products that they would like others to see them own or use (i.e. desirable self-presentational value). However, consumers’ interest will decrease for products that they would not like others to see them own or use (i.e., undesirable self-presentational value).

Technological advances enable firms not only to record and track transactions but also to analyze consumers’ responses to their offerings even prior to making their decisions. The pervasiveness of situations in which we are observed or even merely feel observed goes beyond direct human interactions at different stages of the decision process in the social media era. In the second research, we propose that social media cues make consumers feel being observed by others and reducing feelings of independency. This threatens consumers’ sense of autonomy, which is defined as feeling that decisions are made free from external influence. We argue that sense of autonomy, the fundamental motivation of humans, is most pronounced during the process when consumers are comparing different options. Specifically, the pre-decisional or process stage captures the stage wherein consumers are still considering the choices in the consideration set, reviewing the available information, and examining the trade-offs. On the contrary, the post-decisional or outcome stage captures the stage in which consumers already know their preferences and remind them by either sharing on social media. Notably, this distinction pertains to whether consumers are still in the midst of constructing their preferences while being observed or had already finished constructing their preferences and are being observed while indicating their choice. We show that threats to sense of decision autonomy occur if consumers are observed prior to finalizing their choice (vs. during making decisions).

The current findings contribute to social sharing and give insights to how digital environment affects consumer behavior. Managerially, the findings demonstrate when brand-led efforts to prompt customers to share their purchases backfires.

Key words: sharing on social media, image management, autonomy, consumer choice