Whose recommendations do you follow? An investigation of tie strength, shopping stage, and deal scarcity

This paper examines the effects of recommendations from different social ties on online consumers' purchase intentions and how such effects change as consumers proceed in the shopping process and are exposed to scarcity-related promotional information. Results from a laboratory experiment indicate that when the degree of deal scarcity is low, recommendations from weak ties are more persuasive than those from strong ties for consumers at the initial shopping stage, whereas the opposite occurs for consumers at the later shopping stage. At both shopping stages, the differences in the effects of social recommendations disappear when the deals are highly scarce.