Does popularity in social networks influence purchasing and lifestyle decisions? The meaning of online friendship

Nowadays, millions of people use social network sites (SNSs) to communicate with each other, but little is known about the real effects that online popularity (i.e., the number of friends on a SNS) has on users’ behaviors. This paper explores the social influence of SNSs and demonstrates that the number of online friends on an SNS does not influence its users’ purchasing and lifestyle choices. This study also reveals that so-called low-popular users (i.e., users with few friends on a SNS) are influenced by the intensity of their perceived friendships (i.e., how strong they perceive their relations with their online friends). On the contrary, high-popular users (i.e., users with many friends on a SNS) are influenced by their online friends’ perceived coolness (i.e., how “cool” they consider their online friends), and, in particular, their influence on purchasing decisions increases with the value of the products that they intend to buy. Results shed light on a new meaning of the term “friendship” on a SNS, which is substantially different from what is common in offline contexts: this new construct, which we call “Friendoolness”, can be intended as a mix of friendship and coolness (i.e., social attractiveness, likeability and desirability) and it is mainly based on taking actions to demonstrate that a person has a large number of “cool” friends.