Research On The Impact Of Electronic Word Of Mouth On Consumer Attitudes And Behaviors

With the social networks have grown,consumers increasingly turn to online shopping which is not only convenient but also economic.People can't touch the real commodities directly by online shopping.So they need search for more information of the conmmodities.Electronic Word of Mouth(EWOM)becomes the major source of information for people's purchasing decision.EWOM is posted online.They are some positive or negative statements about the products or service made by former customers.EWOM is viewed as text usually.EWOM increasingly acts as a kind of"sales assistant" of people and has an important influence on people's purchasing behaviors.But eWOM also has some problems,such as uneven quality,different source of information and conflict with each other.These problems cause the people's dilemma in making decision.According to the latest attitude theory,people's attitude towards a thing is not unidimensional,but positive attitude and negative attitude are simultaneous toward the same attitude object.People are ambivalent when their attitude contains some conflicting elements(include positive and negative)toward an object.Which factors do affect the intensity of consumer ambivalence?What is the role of different valence eWOM on the attitude and behavior of ambivalent consumers?These problems are rarely discussed in the existing theoretical research.Consumer ambivalence is a common phenomenon in daily shopping Research on these issues has three benefits.First,it will contribute to clarify the objective existence and the mechanism of consumer ambivalent attitude.Second,it will contribute to expand the theoretical research of eWOM and consumer behavior.Finally,it will contribute to adopt correct and effective marketing methods for enterprises,enhance consumer's purchasing intention and increase the sale of products.Thus,the research on these problems has great theoretical and practical significanceThis research mainly solves four key issues.First,what does arouse consumer ambivalent attitude?Which factors will have impact on the formation of consumer ambivalent attitude?This issue is completed in Chapter Three.Second,which route will ambivalent consumer adopt in forming attitude with the influence of positive eWOM?How do the quality of positive eWOM and the number of arguments affect consumer ambivalent attitude?This issue is completed in Chapter Four.Third,what impact does negative eWOM have on consumer's purchasing intention?What is the change of consumer's purchasing intention when the enterprises adopt remedial measures?What is the reason of it?This issue is completed in Chapter Five.Finally,what is the impact of consumer's emotional ambivalence on subjective ambivalence from a future temporal perspective?Does consumer ambivalence mediate the effect of conflicting eWOM on customer behaviral intention from a future temporal perspective?Does consumer ambivalence moderate the relationship between customer attitude and customer behavior intention?This issue is completed in Chapter Six.In this dissertation,some research methods are used.The first method is literature research.This dissertation reviewed domestic and foreign literature.Chapter Two is the foundation of the study.The second method is experimental research.This dissertation collected the data of consumer attitude,consumer ambivalence and purchasing intention by experiment circumstances in Chapter Three,Four,Five and Six.The data are provided for the quantitative analysis.The third method is artificial neural network.This dissertation quantitatively analyzed the influence factors of consumer ambivalence by neural network method in Chapter Three.The last one is statistical analysis technique.This dissertation adopted traditional method of statistical analysis in Chapter Four,Five and Six.It included paired-sample t test,analysis of variance,regression technology and hierarchical regression,etc.In addition,this dissertation also used the text analysis tool for word frequency statistics.The main innovation points of this dissertation are following:First,this dissertation has an innovative research perspective.This dissertation discussed the influence of electronic word of mouth from the perspective of consumer ambivalence attitude and expanded the research idea and research scope of eWOM.Second,this dissertation applied the method of BP neural network in the research of consumer ambivalence attitude.It is the new application of neural network.This dissertation built the influence factors' model of consumer ambivalence attitude based on BP neural networkThird,this dissertation applied Elaboration Likelihood Model(ELM)and anticipation theory into the research of eWOM.It is the new application of these two theories.This dissertation explored how consumers with attitudinal ambivalence cope with electronic word-of-mouth information based on the concept of central route and peripheral route in ELM theory.This dissertation also verified the mediating effect and the moderating effect of consumer ambivalence based on the anticipation theory.Through empirical analysis,several main conclusions of this dissertation are following The first conclusion:Consumer product knowledge,product involvement,price sensitivity,conflict with reference group and the different source of information all have significant effect on the generation of consumer ambivalent attitude.Consumer product knowledge,product involvement and price sensitivity are related to customer,so they are called internal influencing factors.Conflict with reference group and the different source of information are related to environments,so they are called external influencing factors.This dissertation found the different source of eWOM's information has the strongest influence on consumer ambivalence.The second conclusion:The extent of consumer ambivalence robustly moderated their processing to the external information.The argument quality and review quantity of eWOM have a positive effect on the customer attitude.Highly ambivalent consumers will take the central route in the change of attitude;that is,they are more influenced by argument quality.Less ambivalent consumers tend to adopt the peripheral route in forming their attitude;that is,they are more easily persuaded by review quantity.The third conclusion:From the perspective of ambivalence attitude,this dissertation explored the impact of negative eWOM and service recovery on purchasing intention.Highly ambivalent consumers are more influenced by high quality argument of negative eWOM.That is,lower quality argument of negative eWOM can only influence lower ambivalent consumers.The purchasing intention of higher ambivalent consumers is more easily affected by service recovery compared with lower ambivalent consumers.This dissertation also revealed the main reason for the results is that the change of attitudinal ambivalence of consumers towards products and services is different between higher ambivalent and lower ambivalent consumers.The fourth conclusion:Consumer emotions have important implications for consumer experiences and decisions.This dissertation investigated the effect of anticipatory emotions on consumer ambivalence,attitudes,and intentions(include delay intention and purchasing intention)from a future temporal perspective.Anticipatory emotions are central in prospective consumption situations compared with anticipated emotions.Furthermore anticipatory ambivalence,in contrast to anticipated mixed emotions,is the greatest contributor to consumer subjective ambivalence.In the context of the conflicting eWOM caused by the inconsistency of product attribute comments,ambivalence mediates the effect of eWOM information on customer intentions,as well as moderates the relationship between customer attitudes and customer intentions.At the end of this dissertation,the practical implications and suggestions are discussed according to the research conclusions.Aiming at the shortcomings in this research,further research direction is proposed.