Research On The Value,Mechanism And Management Strategy Of Social Media

Internet encyclopedia, as an important social media and collective knowledge-creation platform, has become a very important channel for individual to acquire information. Consumers often choose BaiDu encyclopedia to get clear and ample information about company and product, and make buying or investment decisions. As a result, manager begains to pay attention to internet encyclopedia, and scholars are increasingly interesting in making some investigation about internet encyclopedia. But through literature review, we find that there are some research gaps.Firstly, prior research on internet encyclopedia mostly adopts the perspective of management and organizational behavior, and as to the performance metrics, these papers focus mostly on article or virtual community, such as article quality or community coorperation. Take Sina’article as an example, its viewship exceeds ten-thousand per week. The limited attention theory, in behavioral finance area, tells us that investors’ attention will influence the corporation’s stock price. But, there is no direct literature to test the relationship between viewship and stock price and abnormal returen. So this will be a research gap.Secondly, BaiDu encyclopedia as a mode of social production, it is the product of many people’s colletive cooperation. But, why people involve in the knowledge production and sharing, this is an interesting question. And prior literature investigates the driving factors from the perspective of individual motivation. But, for many individual, even if they have the motivation to participate, they still have no action. For example, some people don’t understand the edit process, or they don’t have the ability to edit. So, prior literature has its limitation on this mechanism.Thirdly, if internet endyclopedia is useful for company, in the virtual community, what solutions can be taken to maximize the individual’s knowledge sharing and creation intention? From the literature review, we find no paper discussing the measures which can be taken by corporation. And there is also a lack of paper investigating the effectiveness of corporation management strategy.Basing on these gaps, this thesis will solve these questions through three studies. Study one’s purpose is to investigate the relationship between viewship and financial metrics of company. That is, whether social media is valuable tool for company. Basing on limited attention and event study, through pool data analysis, this study demonstrates viewship will positively influence corporation’s stock price and abnormal return, and confirm the value of social media.Study two’s purpose is to investigate the mechanism of individual’s knowledge contribution behavior, that is, to answer the question "why people involve themselves into the knowledge production". Adopting questionnaire, basing on user readiness theory and effort theory, through Structural Equation Model, this study demonstrates that contributor’s intention to edit article is influenced by individual’s motivation, ability and role clarity, and this impact is mediated by individial’ effort. Furthmore, the different dimensions of readiness will interact with each other, that is, ability will moderate the relationship between motivation and effort intensity, and role clarity will moderate the relationship between motivation and goal commitment.Study three’s purpose is to investigate the effectiveness of corporate strategy, that is, what strategy will maximize and motivate individual’s contribution intention. Through literature review, this paper summarize three kinds of strategy, that is, community building, monitoring and user education. Basing on readiness theory, through questionnaire, this study demonstrates that corporation’s strategy will impact individual’s contribution intention. And the influence will be mediated by user’s readiness, that is, user’s motivation, ability and role clarity will mediated the relationship between corporation strategy and contributor’s intention.Through three studies, this paper takes corporation’s article as an example; systermaticly discusses the value of social media, the generation mechanism of social media content, and the corporation strategy which can be taken to manage the virtual community. Under the background of social media and user generated content, this paper maybe useful for corporation which will implement social meida management.