Social network characteristics of online shopping interpersonal relationship in real and virtual communities

Both real and virtual communities are important channels for consumers to release, disseminate or access to reputation information, and shopping interpersonal relationship appears among community members who communicate with each other through word of mouth. This paper selects 200 true communities and 400 virtual communities, and takes two million real trading data of 100,000 Taobao users in these communities as a basis. We build a network with direction and weight for characterizing online shopping interpersonal of communities from the perspective of social network. Through social network analysis, we further study structure characteristics of community online shopping interpersonal influence from four dimensions, namely network containing degrees, network density, centrality, and cohesive subgroup. This paper attempt to explore law of interpersonal communication, dissemination and effect within communities, and provide a theoretical basis and practical guidance for word of mouth marketing within communities.