A Study on Conformity Appeal Attributes and Social Contagion of Beauty-Focused One-Person Media in Sustainable E-Commerce

Abstract

In the beauty industry, the use of one-person media is making new, more active relationships that differ from those of past online services and information sharing. Therefore, in this study, we developed conformity appeal attributes in one-person media, identifying their effects on information diffusion behavior through social conformity and collaborative innovation networks, to investigate the social contagion effect of information in beauty-focused one-person media and develop a model by connecting them to the conformity threshold of individuals influenced by others. In this study, a total of 694 complete samples of experienced consumers in the beauty-focused one-person media category were selected, and research questions were verified through reliability and validity tests, path analysis, and measurement model analysis. The research results are as follows. First, conformity appeal attributes of beauty-focused one-person media in terms of information cascade, utility value efficiency, reference group influence, and subnetwork structure significantly affected social imitation conformity. However, only subnetwork structure significantly affected social connection conformity. Similarly, only reference group influence and subnetwork structure significantly affected social comparative conformity. Second, social imitation conformity, social connection conformity, and social comparative conformity in beauty-focused one-person media significantly affected cocreation. Third, cocreation in beauty-focused one-person media significantly affected information diffusion behavior. The detailed use of the conformity appeal attribute factors shown in the above results will be combined with functional changes for online and mobile services of beauty companies, and it will be a driving force to create new value for the network. Moreover, the results of this study not only enable social connection among members within the reference group of beauty-focused one-person media but are also applied as an effective phenomenon to explain the continuous maintenance, reinforcement, and expansion of these relationships, thereby enabling researchers to achieve theoretical expansion and evaluation of relevant variables.