The Effect Of Electronic Word-of-Mouth On Customer Purchase Intentions

Electronic Word-of-Mouth(e-WOM) communication has been one of the most exciting research in marketing. There is an emerging attention on the effectiveness of e-WOM communication. When the information about a product or service is not enough, e-WOM is one of the most powerful sources of information to help them make a decision before purchasing things. On the internet, Consumers not only can express their comments and opinions about the products or services they purchased, but also can easily share information about the products and services with others. Before purchasing a product Online, Searching product information and other user’s comments has become an important part of the consumer buying decision process. But its anonymous nature makes it difficult for consumers to judge the facticity of posted reviews and make purchase decisions. So this study aims to explore various factors in the e-WOM’s influence on purchasing decisions.Firstly, this paper summarizes the factors in the e-WOM’s influence on purchasing decisions and describe them from four aspects of Harold Lasswell’s propagation mode. The theoretical model is built by reviewer’s expertise, reviewer’s motivation, receiver’s expertise, receiver’s internet involvement, review’s quality, review’s quantity, e-WOM channel and Purchase Intentions. Furthermore this paper compares and studies the influence of e-WOM on purchase intention of consumers in China and South Korea.This research uses SPSS to examine its reliability and validity, and AMOS to conduct EFA and multiple sets of structural model analysis which is to test adjustment of e-WOM channel. The empirical results show that all variables have a significant impact on Purchase Intentions. Also, under different types of e-WOM channel, the path coefficients has a significant difference. specifically, reviewer’s motivation, receiver’s expertise, receiver’s internet involvement and review’s quality in social media have greater effects on the purchase intentions in comparison with those in the online shopping mall. Meanwhile, review’s quantity in online shopping mall affects more on purchase intentions. And, reviewer’s expertise in social media has no significant impact on Purchase Intentions.Finally, through the analysis of the factors of e-Wom influencing Custmer’s purchase intentions, this paper provides reference to the e-WOM marketing strategy.