The Effect Of Internet Word-of-Mouth On Recipients' Attitude Toward The Brand

Discussion including one review and some comments is a usual communication format on the Internet. These discussions almost refer to everything in the world. This paper chooses discussions about products and brands (Internet Word-of-mouth) as its objects and exeamines how Internet Word-of-mouth (WOM) influences recipients'A_BR under two conditions separately by a univariate between-subject experiment and 2×2 between-subject experiment. One of the conditions is when recipients have no cognition about the brand, and the other condition is when recipients have previous attitudes toward the brand (A_BR). 160 undergraduates of Journalism & Communication Department in Xiamen University participated in two experiments. The results show that, when recipients have no cognition about the brand, (1) opinion leader (review) and majority opinion (the general attitude of Messages Combination) have an effect on the A_BR; (2) the descending sequence of influence to A_BR caused by four kinds of messages is that, negative review, positive review, negative comment, then positive comment; (3) The influence of one positive review equals to that of six positive comments, or three negative comments. When recipients have Previous A_BR, their A_BR after reading Internet WOM only depends upon the Previous A_BR, not upon Internet WOM. When recipients'Previous A_BR are positive, their A_BR will be more positive after reading relevant Internet WOM, and when recipients'Previous A_BR are negative, their A_BR will be more negative after reading relevant Internet WOM.