BEHAVIOR PATTERNS OF THE

MODER N OPIN ION LEADE RS IN THE LATVIAN DESIGN M ARKET

Master Thesis Expose

Author: Karina Sukute

Program: EMBS

Kassel, 04.12.2012

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ABSTRACT

This proposal sets out the grounds for the upcoming research. The aim of the research

is to find out about the Internet-based opinion leaders in the Latvian interior design industry

and to describe their behavior patterns. Many authors have talked about opinion leaders and

their importance in terms of influencing other customers. They have proposed different

methods on how to find the opinion leaders, and what characteristics are typical for them. The

latest researches have defined the differences between online and offline opinion leaders, the

methods on how to define them in the online environment. The disappointing fact is that most

of the researches have been done in either the medical, wine or fashion industries and none of

them has analyzed what the behavior patterns of the opinion leaders are – how they choose the

products; how do they gather and share information; do the behavior patterns of different

opinion leaders in the same area differ or are they similar and other characteristics.

For finding the opinion leaders, a quantitative software based research will be conducted. The

quantitative research will be done in active Latvian interior design web pages, blogs and

forums. The software will follow and analyze the activities of the communities, which will lead

to the opinion leaders. The quantitative research will be followed by qualitative personal

interviews on the Internet, using VoIP software (Skype) for gathering the information about

their behavior patterns. After the behavioral patterns of the Internet-based opinion leaders in the

Latvian interior design market will be presented in order to raise suggestions for interior design

companies in the country.

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INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND

The term ‘opinion leaders’ has been used since 40s, when Lazersfeld, Berelson &

Gaudet (1948) first conducted a research on political opinion leaders and actually established

the term ‘opinion leaders’. Their key finding was that people are not necessarily influenced by

mass media, on the contrary, it is personal communication that plays an even bigger role, given

that the information flows first from the mass media to the opinion leaders and after from them

to the less active people. This means that actually, people that are passing information to others

are the influential and opinion shapers. Rogers& Cartano (1959) are giving three general

characteristics of opinion leaders and ways of describing them. Later, King & Summers (1970)

define seven items for identifying opinion leaders where two of the questions offer three

possible answers and other five give only two possible answers. Childer (1986) revised the

opinion leadership scale including seven questions that have to be answered by giving a rate

between 1 and 5. According to Handbook of Marketing Scales by Bearden, Netemeyer, &

Haws (2011), these two scales are the most used traditional scales for identifying opinion

leaders.

Nowadays a specific group named “opinion leaders” are not only found in a context of politics

or among farmers, but also among other groups of people. Opinion leaders are the ones to

whom others are turning to with their questions and whom others are following. They are

customers that have a high influence towards other customers, thus they have higher knowledge

about specific products and product categories than regular consumers. Due to these specific

characteristic, opinion leaders can be used as a target segment.

The purpose of this paper is:

- First, to identify the Internet-based opinion leaders in the interior design area in the

Latvian market and

- Second, to find out their behavior patterns.

As to my knowledge there are no studies on opinion leaders in interior design area. Even

though all authors are stating how powerful and important opinion leaders are, none of the

studies has recognized opinion leaders in the interior design area.

In previous years, customers’ power in the market was not as high as nowadays. Things have

changed thanks to the Internet development and diffusion. First, customers have a more

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important role in markets, way more information, as well as easy access to it. Second,

companies cannot speculate anymore with customers by picking up some persons and training

them to influence consumers by providing personal feedbacks.

That is why a precise description of opinion leaders and an appropriate use of their power is

very important for companies. It has been estimated that opinion leaders are more frequent

within product categories that give pleasure, such as chocolate, wine, fashion and others (Feick

and Price, 1987). Interior design products like wallpapers, curtains, carpets and others are

involving product, because buyers will be judged by others according to their house interior.

This leads to an assumption that there are opinion leaders in the interior design market. The

next question for this research is – how to find the modern opinion leaders in interior design

area in the Latvian market?

Various studies have come up with different techniques and ways to identify them. Valente &

Pumpuang (2007) have reviewed 10 techniques – celebrities; self-selection; self-identification;

staff selected; positional approach; judge’s ratings; expert identification; snowball method;

sample sociometric; sociometric - to define opinion leaders with their advantages and

disadvantages. Lyons & Henderson (2005), as well as Song, Chi, Hino, & Tseng (2007) have

focused more on how to identify opinion leaders in the Internet networks to understand if there

are differences between online and offline opinion leaders, their characteristics and behavior. A

study by Doumit, Wright, Graham, Smith, & Grimshaw (2011) indicated that opinion leaders

are not stable and should be re-introduced every year. Merton (1957) defined two types of

opinion leaders – monomorphic and polymorphic, while Doumit, Wright, Graham, Smith, &

Grimshaw (2011) indicated that most of the opinion leaders are monomorphic, meaning that

they influence only one practice area. For the second part of the research – defining the

behavior patterns of the opinion leaders – Rogers (2003) Diffusion theory will be used. In his

theory the author is defining the main elements of spreading the information, as well as the

channels and different phases from getting the information till the adaption of the information.

Rogers (2003) is focusing on innovation diffusion, by which he means all the new information

to the customer independently on the time when the idea was introduced, if it is new to the

customer, it is still an innovation. By analyzing previously done researches and conducting a

research in the Latvian interior design market, suggestions for companies about modern opinion

leaders and potential benefits to be obtained from them, based on the opinion leaders’ behavior

patterns, will be proposed.

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Founded on the previously mentioned studies, the first hypothesis of this research is the

following -

1. The information exchange patterns of the Internet-based opinion leaders in the

Latvian interior design market are similar among them.

According to the report by Merwe & Heerden (2009) company does not have to look for

different opinion leaders for specific products. Their study shows that the same individuals are

opinion leaders in general (not domain specific). Based on their conclusion, the second

hypothesis is -

2. Internet-based opinion leaders in Latvian interior design market are asked for

opinion about other subjects that are not related to interior design.

One of the characteristics of the opinion leaders’ behavior patterns is the way they are looking

for the information themselves. According to Rogers (2003) Diffusion theory, even though

there is a lot of professional information available, people tend to trust in their well-known

partners, colleagues, and friends. Due to the fact that opinion leaders are supposed to know

more and are the ones that others are turning to for the information, the next hypotheses are

following –

3. The background of opinion leaders in Latvian interior design market is

relevant.

4. Opinion leaders learn about innovations from professionals/professional

sources.

Due to the fact that the opinion leaders found by this research are Internet-based, I assume that

their way of sharing information is also Internet-based.

5. Most of the Internet-based opinion leaders in the Latvian interior design market

are active blog writers/tweeters.

In accordance to the hypothesis and the purpose of the research, the research will be conducted

among Latvian citizens and will be Internet-based.

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PROBLEM STATEMENT

The aim of this research is to solve the problem of finding and benefitting from opinion

leaders in the design market in Latvia. Currently there is no study on this topic, although

opinion leaders nowadays are more important than ever, because of the dynamic of the

information flows. Due to the technological development and all the possibilities it brings to

everyone, in my opinion, companies should also adapt their activities to these changes.

Knowing that nowadays people are active Internet surfers and information can be easily shared

all over the world among everyone, targeting opinion leaders should be even more precise. The

unanswered questions and thus the research questions are the following–

1. Who are the Internet-based opinion leaders in the Latvian design market?

2. How do they look for information?

3. How do they share their information?

4. What catches their attention?

5. What are their behavior patterns?

1. Do the behavior patterns among the Internet-based opinion leaders differ or are they

similar?

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REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Authors, Year Journal Key findings Conclusions Xiaofei Zhang & Dahai Dong July, 2008

International Journal of Business and Management

*Measurement of opinion leaders differs in virtual communities and traditional way. *In virtual communities: 1. Find out people who are active and have followers or 2. Make an online investigation on followers and ask them who are their opinion leaders.

*Way of grading key roles and self-identification method are not right for identifying opinion leaders in virtual communities. *Disseminators and acceptors leave traces which allows to identify opinion leaders.

Hossam Sharara Lise Getoor Myra Norton 2011

Conference Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Presented a novel, dynamic framework for prioritizing the acquisition of survey information, for the purpose of leadership identification. The approach enables intelligent integration of both primary and secondary data to identify which respondents to survey, based on both the likelihood of them expanding the set of identified opinion leaders and also the utility of the information for improving future predictions.

*The passive and the active surveying methods perform significantly better than the baseline. *Active surveying method outperforms passive surveying, showing that our intelligent acquisition strategy helps to improve the quality of the learned classifier.

Thomas W. Valente and Patchareeya Pumpuang December 2007

Health Educ Behav 2007 34: 881

*10 methods of opinion leader classification. *Suggestions for recruiting and training opinion leaders for different aims. *Comprehensive and systematic review of opinion leader identification and selection techniques. *Outline the advantages and disadvantages of each of these methods.

A comprehensive literature review was performed to determine the validity of the 10 methods of how to define opinion leaders Results of the search indicated that this categorization is exhaustive.

R. van der Merwe; G. van Heerden, June 2009

South African Journal of Business Management

*Individuals who perceive themselves to be opinion leaders in a specific domain believe that they are opinion leaders in general as well. *There is a strong correlation between individuals’ perceptions of their opinion leadership status, and what others seem to think of them as opinion leaders. We can therefore generalize that opinion leadership is defined and identified similarly by different individuals indifferent The findings of this study have significant implications for advertising. *It is apparent that although the correlation between centrality and self-reported opinion leadership is not always significant, the correlation with opinion leadership as perceived by others is always significant; opinion leadership as perceived by others is strongly related to a person’s structural position in a network.

*Marketers do not have to look for opinion leaders in a specific category, all they have to do is look for leaders and people of influence within a certain community. *It has shown that general opinion leadership (non domain-specific) is indeed a good indicator of domain-specific opinion leadership. It is therefore much easier to identify opinion leaders because the added complexity provided by different domains and product categories might be less important than at first thought. *It has shown that social network analysis can be used to identify opinion leaders. It is relatively easy to identify friendship networks within a small group/community using survey research. Network data can be analyzed to identify central actors in the network.

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Authors, Year

Journal Key findings Conclusions

Nicola E. Stokburger-Sauer and Wayne D. Hoyer 2009

Journal of Consumer Behaviour

The relationship between involvement and opinion leaders (OL) is almost twice as strong as that between involvement and market mavinism tendency (MMT). Thus, opinion leaders appear to be more strongly involved in specific product categories. There is a strong positive path between an OL and loyalty.

The key finding from our analysis of four product categories was that while the concepts of OL and MMT are related, there are some important differences – OL are more loyal than MMT, they are more strongly involved in specific product categories.

Barbara Lyons, Kenneth Henderson 2005

Journal of Consumer Behavior

General support was found for all of the hypotheses lending support to the idea that the dynamics of the Internet as a marketplace are similar in many important ways to the traditional market environment.

*Opinion leaders informally influence how other consumers seek, purchase and use products. *Online opinion leaders potentially can influence a global audience of unlimited users. *Online opinion leaders share many characteristics with their traditional marketplace counterparts.

Gershon Feder, Sara Savastano 2006

World Bank Policy Research Working Paper

*The results provide no support to the hypothesis that farmers tend to learn more from those who are very similar to them.

*The effectiveness of opinion leaders in diffusing knowledge was shown to depend positively on the extent of leaders superiority compared to the socio-economic and farming skill attributes of the would-be followers. *The results indicate that if the selected opinion leaders are excessively superior to the others in the community, their effectiveness actually diminishes and they may become essentially irrelevant to the diffusion of knowledge beyond a small circle of those higher status individuals who are closely associated with them.

Derek Eccleston, Luca Griseri Harris Interactive 2008

International Journal of Market Research

Most of the influencers prefer offline influencing method, because they feel more trustworthy, see emotions, can see who and if they influence and adapt the information to them.

*Companies should first understand if their target group is active online or prefer offline interactions. *The campaigns should be created for targeting offline and online as well as Web1.0 and Web2.0 influencers across different media.

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METHODOLOGY

According to the aim of the research, first to find the Internet-based opinion leaders in

the Latvian interior design market and second to identify their behavior patterns, two kinds of

research tools – quantitative and qualitative - will be used.

For the first part of the research a quantitative software based study on the Internet will take

place. In the beginning an overall research on the interior design web pages, forums, and blogs

will be done, to identify the most active places where people exchange information on the

Internet.

After deciding on the most important online places for sharing information the participants’

activities will be analyzed with the help of software. This will lead to the opinion leaders in this

area.

Once the aim of the first part of the research will be reached, the personal interviews via Skype

with the Internet-based opinion leaders (defined by the software) in the Latvian interior design

market will be done. The aim of the personal interviews is to find out their behavior patterns –

how do they get new information; how do they share the information; what is important for

them when finding/sharing the information etc. The final phase of the research is to analyze the

information gathered from the personal interviews and to set out their behavior patterns among

them.

Methodology is not fully explained because of currently limited information about the software

that will be used. The information in English will be available by the end of November.

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OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical substantiation of opinion leaders

2.1. Opinion leaders as a specific group of people – their characteristics and activities

2.2. Traditional techniques for identifying opinion leaders (Kings & Summers Opinion

leadership scale (1970); Childers’ scale (1986))

2.3. Modern software based opinion leader classification

2.4. Spreading the information (Rogers’ Diffusion theory)

3. Finding Internet-based opinion leaders

3.1. Methodology (software based quantitative research)

3.2. Analysis of the quantitative research

4. The Internet-based opinion leaders in the interior design area in the Latvian market –

4.1. Investigation of their behaviors

4.2. Defining behavioral patterns of the opinion leaders

5. Conclusions and suggestions

6. Limitations

7. Literature review

8. Appendix

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PLAN OF WORK

The current plan of work (rough) -

03.09.2012 Master Thesis proposals 18.09.2012 Deciding on Master thesis topic 11.10.2012 Meeting with professors 30.10.2012 Expose deadline 31.12.2012 Deadline for the theoretical part of the master thesis 01.-31.01.2013 The quantitative research + data analysis 01.02.-28.02.2013 Qualitative interviews 01.03.-31.03.2013 Analysis of the interviews 01.04.-30.04.2013 Finalizing the master thesis 05.2013 Finalizing + final presentation

Each of the work packages will be divided into smaller parts in order to keep focus and to reach the aims.

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