Firm-sponsored online support communities are ideal places for consumers to solve problems related to product failure after their purchases. Community participants post questions and answers and, inevitably, are influenced by other participants' thoughts, emotions, and intentions. This study seeks to identify the patterns of social contagion and their development processes in online support communities and their impact on consumer post-purchase outcomes. Research on online support communities has emphasized the importance of either cognition or emotion when explaining contagious behaviors but has not explored both elements simultaneously. In this research, data was collected from two online technology support forums managed by two large IT companies. Netnography was employed for data collection and analysis. The data analysis leads to the development of a virtual social contagion typology (i.e., mechanical, smart, mob, and passion contagion) and its associated process models. The contribution of this research is to identify the simultaneous roles of cognitive and emotional activities in the development of social contagion. It also shows that contagion in online support communities is dynamic over time, and significantly affected by emotion.

中文翻译：

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在线支持社区中的虚拟社交传染


公司赞助的在线支持社区是消费者在购买后解决与产品故障相关的问题的理想场所。社区参与者发布问题和答案，并且不可避免地会受到其他参与者的想法、情感和意图的影响。本研究旨在确定在线支持社区中社会传染的模式及其发展过程，以及它们对消费者售后结果的影响。对在线支持社区的研究强调了在解释传染性行为时认知或情绪的重要性，但并未同时探讨这两个要素。在这项研究中，数据是从两家大型 IT 公司管理的两个在线技术支持论坛收集的。Netnography 用于数据收集和分析。数据分析导致虚拟社会传染类型学（即机械、智能、暴民和激情传染）及其相关过程模型的开发。这项研究的贡献在于确定认知和情感活动在社会传染发展中的同时作用。它还表明，在线支持社区的传染性是随着时间的推移而动态的，并受到情绪的显著影响。