Run for the Group : The Influences of Group-Level Social Comparisons and Offline Meetups in Fitness Users’ Exercise Participation

To encourage users’ exercise participation and retention, fitness app developers add group-level social interaction functions to apps and augment the app design with more group-level gamification features. For example, app users are guided to join a group in order to share workout experiences and records with group members, and to participate in group activities and group rankings. Apps also facilitate group members in initiating and discussing offline meetups and social activities. However, little is known about the roles of the groups and group norms, and the different behavioral consequences resulting from within- and between-group social comparison. Motivated by this gap, we build a conceptual model to examine the effects of group-level rankings and activities. Through examining the environmental factors (group membership indemnity and group norms) and underlying determinants (comparison dimension references and similarities) of group members’ social comparison cognitive processes (contrast, assimilation, and reflection), we propose that both within- and between-group social comparison can significantly improve group members’ exercise participation. We further posit that offline meetup events can moderate the effects of within-group and between-group social comparison on group members’ exercise participation. We collect group-level user data from a mobile fitness app and conduct empirical analyses to test and validate the main and moderating effects. Our study contributes to the IS literature by extending social comparison theory to the group-level perspective and incorporating offline social activities. Further, we provide managerial implications to app developers regarding the formation of online community policies and the design of incentive mechanisms to stimulate and promote group norms and offline social activities