Research On The Negative Internet Word-of-Mouth's Influence On Consumer Behavior Intention

When the information communication is not convenient, word of mouth is the main way to get information to consumers. Nowadays, word of mouth is also one of the most influential channels of communication, and consumers always think word of mouth a more credible force than marketer-oriented communication (personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, public relations etc.). With the Internet media, traditional word of mouth represent a new form-Internet Word of Mouth(IWOM). IWOM get rid of the limit of the traditional word of mouth "interpersonal circle", which scope of dissemination is more extensive, affecting more weak links consumers, and having the physical form of word of mouth.The quantity of IWOM information is large on various internet platforms and grows rapidly, affecting the impression and evaluation of consumers to enterprises and products. IWOM is no longer just a one-way dissemination, but generally exhibit exchange of experience, add a comment, reply, discussion and other forms between immense netizen. The spread of IWOM affects all aspects of enterprise's market behavior, analyzing market feedback, evaluating advertising effectiveness, research the user experience, and develop sales opportunities, etc. With the environment of widely used Internet, whether or not the enterprises carry out internet marketing, it is difficult to avoid the issue of negative internet word of mouth. IWOM is not just involved in the enterprises which carry out internet marketing and only affecting consumer internet behavior, but the interaction of online and offline. Various reasons lead consumers to browse the IWOM and take offline buying behavior.Marketing practitioners and scholars increasingly pay attention to IWOM communication, since 2000, domestic and foreign scholars'research on the Internet word of mouth marketing gradually increased, but the corresponding research is still relatively small. Grasping the law of internet word of mouth communication and guiding a internet word of mouth content distribution which in favor of the enterprise is the key to success of internet word of mouth marketing. Previous studies are more related to three aspects:motivation for the spread of Internet word of mouth and its Influence factors, the impact of Internet word of mouth on consumer psychology and behavior, the impact of Internet word of mouth on enterprises performance. As traditional word of mouth, Internet word of mouth has positive and negative word of mouth. Many previous studies (Arndt,1967; Mizerski,1982; Richins,1983; Bone, 1995; Lau and Ng,2001) have proven that negative word of mouth has a greater impact on consumers than positive word of mouth. However, researches about how the negative word of mouth influence consumer are few. Research on which behavior intentions consumers will show before Negative internet word of mouth and how the types and characteristics of Negative internet word of mouth and consumer individual differences influence consumer behavior intentions, have a guiding value to internet Word of mouth marketing theory and practice.Based on the content and purpose of research, taking a combination of research methods of theoretical research and empirical research, this study take to explore the influence of negative internet word of mouth on consumer behavior intention. Theoretical research is to retrospect and summarize the relative theories of word of mouth, internet word of mouth, negative internet word of mouth and consumer behavior, based on the prescription studies, to provide a prerequisite for empirical research. Empirical research include two ways:grounded theory method and obtaining data through survey to verify the theoretical model.Study on negative internet word of mouth communication involves the science knowledge of management, marketing, communication and psychology, this study use Communication Process Theory, Technology Acceptance Model, Elaboration Likelihood Model, Theory of Planned Behavior, Attribution Theory, Cognitive Dissonance Theory for reference, to explore the influence mechanism of negative internet word of mouth from the negative IWOM recipient point of view. The idea of this study can be summarized as follows:start from understanding the phenomenon of negative internet word of mouth and review of literature to find the subject of study and research methods; Combined with word of mouth communication theory and grounded theory empirical research, to propose research model and propositions; to collect data by the way of questionnaire; Empirical analysis, and based on results of the analysis to form conclusions of the study and recommendations. In literature review, the research of traditional word of mouth and internet word of mouth communication have been combed. There is more research of traditional word of mouth, which is referenced to research of IWOM communication, simultaneously we will also have to take into account the IWOM communication differences induced by different network environment. Traditional word of mouth are mostly small-scale communication, but IWOM are beyond the boundaries of traditional personal networks, which Manifested mainly in the form of one-to-many or many-to-many. At present, the time of Internet word of mouth research is not long, and the research specifically for the negative internet word of mouth has just begun, the corresponding literature documents is less. By the method of grounded theory this study analyze which behavior intentions the negative internet word of mouth will lead and what are the influence factors. The results of grounded theory study show that purchase intention and re-spread intention have the highest proportion, so the analysis for the two behavior intentions is representative to the research of negative internet word of mouth communication mechanism. Disseminator characteristics, word of mouth information characteristics, recipient characteristics all are factors to two behavior intentions. Trust and perceived risk are intermediary variables as negative internet word of mouth influence consumer behavior intentions. This study construct a theoretical model based on literature review and grounded theory research.This study collect data through offline and online two ways, offline way is mainly paper-based questionnaire, online way are questionnaires through Email and posting an e-answer form. This study use Spssl5.0 and Amos7.0 software to analyze survey data, to verify the influence relationships between the variables and the influence differences between behavior intentions. The consumer understanding to negative internet word of mouth information is related to the level of internet involvement, and this study analyzes the mediate effect of internet involvement to word of mouth visual cues and word of mouth quantity influencing perceived risk and trust. The generation of negative internet word of mouth might be subjective personal reasons, or objective enterprise reasons. Using Attribution Theory for reference, this study analyze the mediate effect of consumer attribution difference to behavior intentions. The empirical results of this study indicate that in front of negative internet word of mouth, consumers're-spread intention is greater than purchase intention. The characteristics of negative internet word of mouth disseminators and recipients, and word of mouth information characteristics have a significant effect on behavior intention. And partially confirm the mediate effect of internet involvement and attribution. The innovation of this study summed up as follow:(1) Based on literature review and Grounded Theory research, this study construct a theoretical model of negative internet word of mouth influencing consumer behavior intention, including three aspects of IWOM disseminators, IWOM recipients and IWOM information characteristics. (2) The difference to previous research is that this study divided consumer behavior intention into purchase intention and re-spread intention in front of negative internet word of mouth, and to carry a comparative analysis through empirical study. (3) According to communication process theory, disseminators, recipients and communication content all have an effect on communication impact. This study adds variables of negative internet word of mouth information characteristics into theoretical model:word of mouth visual cues and word of mouth quantity. Empirical result indicates word of mouth visual cues and word of mouth quantity have a significant effect on consumer behavior intention, through intermediary variables of perceived risk and trust. And internet involvement has a mediate effect on word of mouth visual cues and word of mouth quantity influencing perceived risk and trust. (4) This study confirms that consumer attribution has a mediate effect on disseminators and recipients characteristics of negative internet word of mouth influencing behavior intention.The conclusions of this study have theoretical contribution in IWOM research, and also have practical meanings for enterprises'practice in e-marketing and word of mouth marketing, as well as vendors and network operators'business in internet environment.