If you reply to me, I will buy from you: A social influence examination of reciprocity on Twitter

Abstract

Abstract

This research examines corporate communication practices on social media, focusing on potential customers’ intentions to patronize a corporate brand after contacting the brand’s Twitter account. Specifically, across two studies, participants reported their intentions to patronize one of two restaurant chains after the corporate Twitter account responded in one of three ways to their hypothetical message: direct reply, retweet, or did not respond. Based on Guadagno’s [11] model of social influence online, we predicted that people would be more likely to patronize a restaurant that responded to the tweet -- either via retweet or reply -- owing to the norm of reciprocity. Across both studies, results indicated that participants reported stronger intentions to patronize the restaurant after a Twitter interaction. Furthermore, women generally reported higher purchase intentions and sensitivity to the different restaurant response conditions than did men. Thus, as predicted, reciprocity in social media interactions between people and businesses is effective in influencing people to patronize the business. Implications for user behavior change will be discussed.