An Experimental Research On Motives Of EWOM Via Domestic Virtual Brand Community

With the rapid development of Internet, virtual brand communities become the important platform for the spread of information on brand and consume experience. To understand the consumer motives of word-of-mouth made by people using virtual brand communities and the influence of these motives on word-of-mouth intention degree, we chosed "The MI Phone Community" as the research object, selected298samples data, then study the related questions on consumer motives of word-of-mouth made by people using virtual brand communities.Through literature research, in-depth interviews and questionnaire survey,13motives of word-of-mouth made by consumer in virtual brand communities were extracted. In order to test these motives, this paper adopted the method of questionnaire survey to collect data. Through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor empirical research, three common factors were precipitated, so13motive items were grouped into three broad categories. According to the content of these test items, we named the three motives types as positive motives, negative motives and neutral motives. Among them, the positive motives include happiness sharing, influence increasing, reward motives, helping enterprise motives and helping others motives; Negative motives include negative emotion venting, psychological comforting, warning others, seeking compensation and revenging motives; Neutral motives include interactive motives, supporting community development and habitual behavior. This paper tested the effects of consumer characteristics, such as gender, age level, network role (mass communicators and opinion leaders) on consumers’ motives. Results show that, in virtual brand communities, female consumers are more likely to spread word-of-mouth due to negative motives, and male consumers are more likely to spread word-of-mouth due to positive motives; Young consumers are more likely to spread word-of-mouth due to positive motives, and older consumers are more likely to spread word-of-mouth due to neutral motives; Opinion leaders are more likely to spread word-of-mouth due to neutral motives. Finally, the regression analysis results show that, the three types of word-of-mouth motives have significant influence on consumer word-of-mouth intention.