**1. Introduction**

As market competition intensifies and advertising costs increase, it has become increasingly difficult and expensive for companies to acquire new customers and maintain old customers. Current high-cost and low-efficiency marketing strategies have become unsustainable. In this context, on the one hand, more companies use social media to build online brand and content communities to cultivate potential customers [1–3]; on the other hand, consumers are increasingly using social media to obtain information on which to base their decisions [4].

However, the network formed by corporate-led brand communities and content communities is different from traditional social networks. The formation mechanism and role of opinion leaders in the network are also very different. The sustainable development

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**Citation:** Wu, L.; Li, J.; Qi, J.; Kong, D.; Li, X. The Role of Opinion Leaders in the Sustainable Development of Corporate-Led Consumer Advice Networks: Evidence from a Chinese Travel Content Community. *Sustainability* **2021**, *13*, 11128. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/su131911128

Academic Editors: Manuel Au-Yong-Oliveira and Maria José Sousa

Received: 23 August 2021 Accepted: 28 September 2021 Published: 8 October 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

of consumer advice networks composed of opinion leaders and consumers is a major challenge faced by enterprises.

Why do some members of a consumer advice network become influencers (i.e., opinion leaders) while others do not? How should companies cultivate or help the formation of opinion leaders, and what managemen<sup>t</sup> strategies should be used to maintain the sustainability of the network? These are the managemen<sup>t</sup> questions that this study will address.

In traditional social networks, online relationships reflect offline social relationships. At the same time, network members know each other in real life and network relationships are built to meet the needs of both social interaction and emotional support [5,6]. In such an environment, opinion leaders are formed mainly because of social resources and social status. For examples, opinion leaders in an organization are usually leaders with higher positions. This endogenous factor determines the formation of opinion leaders in social networks and embedded opinion leaders are more stable due to the slow change in social structures [7]. Compared with traditional social networks, the most important feature of consumer advice networks is that the network relationships are separated from real life and the network members are anonymous. More importantly, in consumer advice networks, relationships are not constructed primarily to meet the needs of social interaction but rather to obtain valuable information. Therefore, the relationship is essentially a flow relationship, which represents the flow of information [8]. Many such networks already exist, including online communities created by companies themselves, such as the Xiaomi content community (xiaomi.cn, accessed on 3 March 2010); content communities of travel enterprises (tips.qunar.com, accessed on 2 May 2005); and social commerce platforms, such as Xiaohongshu (xiaohongshu.com, accessed on 1 December 2013), Meilishuo (meilishuo.com, accessed on 1 November 2009), and Mushroom Street (mogu.com, accessed on 1 January 2011). In these networks, network members are usually anonymous and their real-life roles and social resources of network members cannot be brought in.

With the help of various social media platforms, opinion leaders contribute their shopping and life experiences in an anonymous way to communicate with other members. At the same time, consumers actively join such social advice networks to search for the product and service-related information [9,10]. Therefore, in consumer advice networks, opinion leaders are actually information-providers. This fully reflects the second dimension of opinion leaders, which is that, in some aspects, opinion leaders should have more expertise. As shown in Table 1, we have compared the characteristics of the two types of networks.

**Table 1.** Characteristics of the two types of networks.


Notes: the contents of Table 1 are summarized by the authors.

In traditional social networks, this advisory relationship is through face-to-face conversation or other actual methods of communication [11]. In consumer advice networks, consumers search for reviews of relevant products, as well as opinions from opinion leaders. Therefore, the creation and supply of information represent the value of opinion leaders

and are the core elements of their formation; only if opinion leaders can provide sufficient, useful information will other members follow them and become their "fans". Theoretically, this reflects the interaction between content and network relationship-establishing; the more content influencers contribute, the more followers will be attracted to establish relationships with them. With more followers, opinion influencers will be more motivated to create content in network nodes [12,13]. Therefore, in consumer advice networks, information is the core and the purpose of network members' participation is to obtain useful information. Those members who can provide rich and useful information are more able to attract others' attention and become opinion leaders in the networks [14].

Accordingly, we found that the formation and development of consumer advice networks are likely related to the network structure and influencers (i.e., opinion leaders) in the network. The theoretical goal of this study is to explore the factors influencing the establishment of network relationships among members in consumer advice networks in terms of two dimensions, namely network structure and behavioral activities of opinion leaders, so as to reveal the mechanisms of sustainable development of such networks. In the context of corporate-led consumer advice communities and social media marketing, this study obtains mechanisms for establishing network relationships between opinion leaders and members, bridging the gap in research on the role of opinion leaders in this context.

#### **2. Literature Review**

#### *2.1. Influencer Marketing*

The past decade has witnessed a major change in social media marketing characterized by a shift towards social media influencer (SMI) marketing [15,16]. The growth of SMI marketing accelerated with the outbreak of COVID-19. During lockdown, people increasingly turned to social media for entertainment and virtual social experiences. Consequently, SMI marketing has become an essential part of digital marketing strategies as a touch-point for reaching target audiences [17–19]. In the increasingly competitive social media environment, influencer marketing is evolving into long-term partnerships between brands and influencers [20,21].

While reviewing the literature on SMIs, we found that much of the prior research leaned towards investigating the relationship between SMIs and their followers from the SMIs' perspective [22,23]. In doing so, one line of research suggested that SMIs are opinion leaders who have the ability to sway their followers' tendency to accept their advice [24,25]. However, another line of research focused on the SMIs' role as taste-makers and described the way their judgment of aesthetic taste influenced their followers' purchase decisions [26,27]. When identifying the SMI phenomenon, one line of research focused solely on SMIs' personal traits, such as authenticity [28], attractiveness [29], and affinity [30]. Another line of research indicated that followers are attracted to the content of SMIs, such as entertaining [31] or informative content [32]. However, the personal traits of SMIs and their ability to curate social media content are equally important in attracting and retaining followers [33].

#### *2.2. Opinion Leaders and Their Influence*

Opinion leaders play a key role in new product adoption and in the dissemination of relevant information [34], thus it is an essential element in marketing communications [35,36]. Some studies have identified that opinion leaders have a critical influence on social media networks' development [37]. Opinion leaders in social media networks can foster members' interactions, engagement, as well as the reciprocity and transitivity of their followers, which indicates how members form an interactive, cohesive, and equally distributed community [38,39]. However, the mechanism of how opinion leaders expand their interactive networks in social media networks has not ye<sup>t</sup> been discovered [40].

Opinion leaders demonstrate their influence not only on others' opinions but also on others' attitudes and behaviors [41]. Based on the analysis of previous studies, the formation of opinion leaders and their influence are mainly related to their expertise in a field, in the involvement in a field, and in social ties [42]. Members' perceived risk and their trust in opinion leaders are also considered to play important roles in the influencing process of opinion leaders' over their followers [43]. The underlying dimensions of opinion leadership have often been assessed using questionnaires, selfreports, and some measurements of opinion leadership, include the ability to persuade your audience.

#### **3. Hypotheses and Research Model**

In the SMI marketing context, influencers (i.e., opinion leaders) help consumers make purchase decisions through social media. This is mainly reflected through opinion leaders contributing content, interacting with consumers, and answering consumers' questions through social media. Therefore, we hypothesize that the behavioral activities of opinion leaders significantly influence the establishment of network relationships between network members and opinion leaders. We first construct research hypotheses H1, H2, and H3 in terms of the behavioral activities of opinion leaders in consumer advice networks, including content contribution, social interaction, and offering help. In addition to the behavioral activities of opinion leaders, the position of opinion leaders in the network also affects the establishment of network relationships. Therefore, we propose research hypotheses H4, H5, H6, and H7 from the perspective of network structure, such as regarding preferential attachment, homophily, structural equivalence, and reciprocity.

#### *3.1. Content Contribution*

In previous studies on social networks, network nodes are considered as sources of resources or benefits (benefit), which in turn can be utilized by other nodes through the construction of relationships [44,45]. For example, if someone is well established in an organization, other members of that organization can potentially take advantage of the resources held by that person by establishing relationships with him. In the case of the consumer advice networks we studied, the benefit of network relationship-establishing concerns the ability to obtain information about products and services from others, helping consumers to eliminate information asymmetry in the purchase process. Therefore, when a consumer considers whether to establish a relationship, he/she makes a decision based on the expectation of the resources that the relationship will bring. In consumer advice networks, this expectation is mainly for information and if the consumer believes that the network relationship will bring him/her rich and valuable information, the consumer is more likely to establish a relationship [46]. In consumer advice networks, opinion leaders gain attention because they become a valuable source of information and use high-quality information to attract these "fans". This interaction between information contribution and network relationship-establishing has been verified by several empirical studies. In general, the more content users post, the more relationships they have with other nodes; in turn, more relationships stimulate the creation of network content [13,47]. Furthermore, some members actively contribute content to advice networks without being paid for it because some people experience pleasure from this content-sharing behavior; in addition, this content-sharing behavior increases their reputation and influence in the community [48].

It can be seen that the content contributed by the influencer is an important factor that attracts others' attention, thus we propose hypothesis H1.

**Hypothesis 1 (H1).** *The more content a member contributes, the more other members will establish a relationship with him/her and the more likely he/she is to become an opinion leader.*
