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Chapter 11
User Engagement in
Feedback Sharing through
Social Inluence
ABSTRACT
Organizations continuously strive to engage customers in the services development process. The Social
Web facilitates this process by enabling novel channels for voluntary feedback sharing through social
media and technologically advanced environments. This chapter explores how social inluence design
principles can enhance the efectiveness of socio-technical systems designed to alter human behavior
with respect to sharing feedback. Drawing upon social science theories, this chapter develops a research
framework that identiies social inluence design principles pertinent to persuasive systems that facilitate
user engagement in feedback sharing. The design principles are then implemented in an information
system and their efects on feedback sharing are explored in an experimental setting. The main indings
of this chapter contribute to research related to social inluences on user behavior and to the practice
of designing persuasive information systems.
INTRODUCTION
The rapid evolution of information and com-
munication technologies and the emergence of
the social web are continuously reshaping how
businesses engage customers. Ever-growing
connectivity not only provides new methods for
organizations to retain existing customer rela-
tionships, but also enables novel approaches to
providing rich customer engagement experiences
(Payne et al., 2008). At the same time, customers
are steadily developing an understanding of the
spectrum of opportunities provided by emerging
technologies. They acquire new habits of interac-
tion and consumption, which then determine their
expectations about how services are designed
(Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2003; Schlager et al.,
2013). Customers increasingly demand products
Agnis Stibe
University of Oulu, Finland
Harri Oinas-Kukkonen
University of Oulu, Finland
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-7262-8.ch011