When are influentials equally influenceable? The strength of strong ties in new product adoption

We study the relationship between opinion leadership and susceptibility to social influence in new product adoption and how this relationship varies with tie strength in social networks. Data analysis based on a sociometric survey indicates that opinion leaders are less sensitive to informational influence than non-leaders. Furthermore, individuals with moderate levels of leadership are more susceptible to normative influence than individuals with high or low levels of leadership. We also find evidence of the moderating effect of tie strength. While opinion leaders are less susceptible to informational influence from weak-tie peers, they are equally sensitive to informational influence from strong-tie peers as non-leaders. More interestingly, the inverse-U relationship between self-reported leadership and normative influence holds for strong ties, whereas this pattern between sociometric leadership and normative influence holds for weak ties. These findings have implications for better understanding how social influence operates over social networks in new product adoption.