Examining Gifting through Social Network Services: A Social Exchange Theory Perspective

ABSTRACT:

The increasing popularity of social network services (SNS) presents an opportunity to offer gifting services through SNS. For givers, gifting can be an important means to enhance social relationships. On the other hand, for SNS providers, members' gifting can serve as a major source of revenue. As SNS providers continue to face challenges in generating revenues, understanding how to stimulate gifting through SNS can allow them to profit from members' relationships. However, there is little understanding of what drives members' gifting through SNS, with limited prior research on online gifting. Thus motivated, we develop a research model of the antecedents of SNS gifting that builds on social exchange theory and prior gifting literature, and incorporates the unique aspects of such gifting (that we refer to as microgifting, with low-price digital voucher gifts). The theoretical model was validated through a field study, in which both subjective and objective data were collected from an SNS that has been successful in offering such gifting services. Our findings highlight the effects of perceived worth, SNS gifting experience, and the number of SNS friends on the frequency of SNS gifting. The results also show that expected benefits (i.e., reciprocity, pleasure, relationship support, convenience, and immediacy of gift sending) and costs (i.e.,impersonality) indirectly impact SNS gifting frequency through the assessment of perceived worth. The study contributes to research by adding to our understanding of this new approach of gifting through SNS, i.e., microgifting. It also lends insights on how SNS providers can offer such services to tap this source of revenue.

BIODATA:

Atreyi Kankanhalli is Professor and Deputy Head of the Dept. of Information Systems and Analytics at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She obtained her B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, and Ph.D. from NUS. She has visited at the London School of Economics and the University of California Berkeley. Prior to joining NUS, she has considerable experience in industrial R&D and has consulted for organizations including World Bank and Bosch SEA. She conducts research in online communities and digital collaboration, and IT innovation in service sectors (e.g., eGovernment, Healthcare), sponsored by government and industry grants. Her work has appeared in premium journals such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, and Journal of Management Information Systems, among others, and in leading conferences including ICIS. She has over 150 publications which have been highly cited. She regularly serves on/chairs program committees for conferences such as ICIS, ICEGOV, PACIS, and ICKM. She serves or has served (Senior and Associate Editor) on the editorial boards of Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Journal of AIS, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management among others. She was awarded the ACM-SIGMIS Best Doctoral Dissertation award. She has also received the IBM Faculty Award and Smarter Planet Industry Skills Innovation Award.