WOM Communication:The Role Of The Personal Vs The Community Network

With the popularization of the mobile Internet,online word-of-mouth has also begun to explode.At the same time,the mobile Internet also provides a barrier-free network communication atmosphere for word of mouth.Thus,word-of-mouth has broken through the limitations of time and space,and its influence has been enhanced in depth and breadth.Both businesses and consumers are paying more and more attention to online word of mouth.This article studies the influence of word-of-mouth on consumer behavior from the perspective of relationship networks.We divide the word-of-mouth into the word-of-mouth generated by personal network and the word-of-mouth generated by community network.And then,we explore the influence of word-of-mouth generated by different networks on consumer behavior.Next,this article measures word of mouth from three dimensions: volume,valence,and dispersion,and analyzes the differences in consumer decision-making effects brought about by different word-of-mouth measurement methods.Finally,this article considers the differences in the audience's expertise level,and study its moderating impact on the effect of word-of-mouth communication.This article randomly collects data from Douban.The data includes personal-level data such as the friends information,browsing records,and rating information of users.At the same time,it also collects community-level information such as movie viewing information and movie rating information.The final data sample contains about 1010 users and the corresponding 306 movies.After screening the data,the Probit model is used to verify the research hypothesis.The final results show that the word-of-mouth(volume,valence,and dispersion)generated by the community network and the word-of-mouth valence generated by the personal network have a significant positive impact on consumers behavior.That is,for the word-of-mouth generated by the community network,the larger the score,and the more controversial,consumers are more willing to watch movies.The volume,and dispersion of word-of-mouth generated by the personal network will negatively affect consumers' buying behavior,indicating that the more friends discuss the movie,the greater the dispute,and the less likely it is for users to watch the movie.In addition,the study also found that the impact of consumers' expertise level on the effect of word-of-mouth communication has certain differences in different networks and different dimensions.Specifically,if the professional expertise level of consumers is high,their behavior will be more difficult to be influenced by the volume,and dispersion of word-of-mouth generated by the personal network.Moreover,the volume,of word-of-mouth generated by the community network will more easily affect its behavior,when the consumer is professional.This article finds that the word-of-mouth generated by the community network is the biggest driving force for consumer behavior.In addition,we also adopt the dispersion level of word-of-mouth to explore its impact on consumer behavior.According to above empirical results,this article can provides several suggestions for companies.First,in is necessary to strengthen the importance of word-of-mouth generated by the community network.Second,when design the marketing strategies for experiential products,it is not wise to disclose too much product-related information.Third,when selecting product promotion objects,it is better to select some consumers with expertise.