A Research On The Trust Of Electronic Word Mouth Based TAM

With the increasing popularization and rapid development of internet, electronic Word of Mouth(eWOM) is exerting a stronger influence on marketing. Through the powerful effect of eWOM has attracted wide attention, its unique trust issue as well as its working mechanism has not been fully studied.On the basis of traditional word of mouth and eWOM, this paper follows the two main streams of online relationship dimension and the website environment dimension, and in-depth research on influence factors of consumer trust to eWOM is conducted by merging TAM into the model. Generally speaking,the major contribution of this paper includes:Firstly,the basic concepts and theories of traditional as well as eWOM is combed, and latest research about eWOM both at home and abroad are summarized. Considering the transmission platform of eWOM, research summary is also focused on virtual community and e-commerce. With the introduction of TAM, a systematic overview is done with the net of thought of eWOM and related researches.Secondly , the model of eWOM trust from both perspective : of relationship dimension as domain and website dimension as supplement are put forward based on social network theory and TAM. The innovation of this model is that it merged TAM to eWOM model as the first time. Moreover, trust is broken down to relationship trust and institutional trust, and introduced into research model as mediator based on trust theory, which helps with a more clear and precise understanding on the working path of eWOM trust model. Last but not least,a complete structured eWOM trust model is constructed.Thirdly,the formal principle and procedure of empirical research is illustrated and consumer of digital products are selected as research sample. Structural Equation Model is used to analyze data collected by the empirical research, and modification and optimization are made to the evaluation model according to research results. The results proved the rationality of the research and the validity of explaining eWOM trust model based on relationship and website dimension.Fourthly,qualitative research about the contents and nature of eWOM is conducted with three e-commerce websites and three virtual community websites selected according to popularity,on the basis of which moderator was put forward and validated with types of website, and contributed to the research hypothesis and working mechanism of eWOM research.Finally,theoretical improvement and practical contributions of this research is discussed on the basis of previous study results,and limitations of the research is suggested and future research direction is expected.