| With the development of both the internet and E-commerce, product related virtual communities gradually became the most important online marketing platform for start up companies, millions of consumers discuss and re-spread WOM they found trustworthy. Yet there is very few studies on the influential factors of Word of Mouth re-spreading related subjects, the purpose of this study is to explore the trust based influential factors of WOM re-spreading in virtual communities.Based on the previous studies, this paper built up a WOM re-spread influential model based on trust within the virtual community. There are three main modules in this model:causal factors of trust, including perceived expertise and the strength of online relationship. Trust, which could be further divided into cognitive trust and emotional trust. The willingness of WOM re-spread. Meanwhile, the sense of virtual community serves as a mediator of WOM re-spread.According to the result of empirical study, this paper has reached to the following conclusions:(1) Within virtual community, cognitive trust is mainly influenced by perceived expertise, while emotional trust is affected by both perceived expertise and the strength of online relationship.(2) Cognitive trust only has inter-mediation effect on the path from the perceived expertise to the willingness of WOM re-spread, and emotional trust will exert inter-mediation influence on both the path from perceived expertise and from perceived expertise to the willingness of WOM re-spread to the willingness of WOM re-spread.(3) The sense of virtual community serves as a positive mediator of the influence of both cognitive trust and emotional trust to the willingness of WOM re-spread.Taking the outcome of the study, this paper provides some marketing advice for start up companies who want to plan and implement WOM marketing strategy in virtual communities, and also discussed the drawbacks of this study and further possibilities of the relevant studies in the future. |
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