Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) is a prevalent consumer practice that has undeniable effects on the company bottom line, yet it remains an over-labeled and under-theorized concept. Thus, marketers ...could benefit from a practical, science-based roadmap to maximize its business value. Building on the consumer motivation–opportunity–ability framework, this study conceptualizes three distinct stages in the eWOM process: eWOM creation, eWOM exposure, and eWOM evaluation. For each stage, we adopt a dual lens—from the perspective of the consumer (who sends and receives eWOM) and that of the marketer (who amplifies and manages eWOM for business results)—to synthesize key research insights and propose a research agenda based on a multi-disciplinary systematic review of 1050 academic publications on eWOM published between 1996 and 2019. We conclude with a discussion of the future of eWOM research and practice.
This study investigates how the valence, channel, and social tie strength of a word-of-mouth (WOM) conversation about a brand relate to the purchase intentions and WOM retransmission intentions of ...WOM recipients. The analysis uses a nationally representative sample of 186,775 individual conversations about 804 different brands. The authors find insights linking WOM valence, WOM channel, and social tie strength that could not be revealed if the WOM conversations were analyzed in an aggregated form. The findings contribute to research that investigates differences between offline WOM and online WOM. The authors find that the relationship of WOM valence with purchase intentions is exacerbated when the conversation occurs offline, whereas offline conversations tend to be more strongly associated with WOM retransmission intentions regardless of the conversation's valence. The results also provide insights into how interpersonal characteristics influence WOM outcomes. Specifically, the authors find that the strength of the social tie relationship tends to influence a WOM receiver's intentions to purchase a brand; however, social tie strength has a much weaker association with a consumer's WOM retransmission intentions.
•Valence (Es=.78), volume (Es=.41) are related to retailer sales elasticities.•Sales elasticities are significantly greater on third-party websites.•Sales elasticities are significantly greater ...including critics’ opinions.•Sales elasticities are greater evaluating high-involvement products.•The association of online product reviews and sales elasticities for is robust.
A growing body of research has emerged on online product reviews and their ability to elicit performance outcomes desired by retailers; yet, a common understanding of the performance implications of online product reviews has eluded us. Scholars continue to navigate an array of studies assessing different design elements of online product reviews, and various research settings and data sources. We undertake a meta-analysis of 26 empirical studies yielding 443 sales elasticities to examine how these variables relate to retail sales. Building on well-established meta-analytical methods, we address the following questions: How does review valence influence the elasticity of retailer sales? What about review volume? For which product types and usage situations do online product reviews have a greater impact on retailer sales elasticity? Which types of online reviewers and websites exert the greatest influence on retailer sales elasticity? Our study answers these important questions and provides a much needed quantitative synthesis of this burgeoning stream of research.
This article investigates an understudied aspect of online word-of-mouth (eWOM) — the effects of emotional expressions in eWOM. Two experiments investigate how consumers interpret emotional ...expressions in online user reviews and the subsequent impact on their product evaluations. The findings reveal that negative emotional expressions in a single negative review tend to decrease the reviews' informative value and make consumers' product evaluations less negative because consumers attribute the negative emotions to the reviewer's irrational dispositions. However, positive emotional expressions in a single positive review do not influence consumers' product evaluations significantly even though consumers attribute the positive emotions to the product. Next, when multiple convergent emotional expressions are present in multiple user reviews, both positive and negative emotional expressions increase informative value of the reviews and polarize consumers' product evaluations in the respective direction.
This research provides an empirical test of the “Twitter effect,” which postulates that microblogging word of mouth (MWOM) shared through Twitter and similar services affects early product adoption ...behaviors by immediately disseminating consumers’ post-purchase quality evaluations. This is a potentially crucial factor for the success of experiential media products and other products whose distribution strategy relies on a hyped release. Studying the four million MWOM messages sent via Twitter concerning 105 movies on their respective opening weekends, the authors find support for the Twitter effect and report evidence of a negativity bias. In a follow-up incident study of 600 Twitter users who decided not to see a movie based on negative MWOM, the authors shed additional light on the Twitter effect by investigating how consumers use MWOM information in their decision-making processes and describing MWOM’s defining characteristics. They use these insights to position MWOM in the word-of-mouth landscape, to identify future word-of-mouth research opportunities based on this conceptual positioning, and to develop managerial implications.
•A model was developed to examine the determinants of negative word-of-mouth intention.•Data from 206 respondents were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).•Our model was built upon the ...theory of cognitive dissonance and social support theory.•Contextual, individual and social networking are the significant factors affecting negative word-of-mouth communication.
At present, as customers often turn to social media platforms to share their service experience, this study aims to examine the determinants of their negative word-of-mouth communication using social networking sites following a service failure. Although many studies have examined the electronic word-of-mouth communication, studies on negative word-of-mouth communication using social media platforms remain sparse. Building on the cognitive dissonance theory and social support theory, this study proposes and empirically examines the role of contextual, individual and social networking factors in determining the customers’ intentions to engage in negative word-of-mouth communication using social networking sites. Self-reported retrospective survey was used to obtain responses from 206 online shoppers. The results of the structural equation modelling showed that feeling of injustice, firm attribution, firm image, face concern, reappraisal, use intensity and tie strength are key antecedents of negative word-of-mouth communication. The findings provide valuable insights for managers in developing effective Webcare interventions for negative word-of-mouth communication on social networking sites.
Word of mouth (WOM) plays an increasingly important role in shaping consumers’ behavior and preferences. In this paper, we examine whether latent personality traits of online users accentuate or ...attenuate the effectiveness of WOM in social media platforms. To answer this question, we leverage machine-learning methods in combination with econometric techniques utilizing a novel quasi-experiment. Our analysis yields two main results. First, there is a positive and statistically significant effect of the level of personality similarity between two social media users on the likelihood of a subsequent purchase from a recipient of a WOM message after exposure to the WOM message of the sender. In particular, exposure to WOM messages from similar users in terms of personality, rather than dissimilar users, increases the likelihood of a postpurchase by 47.58%. Second, there are statistically significant effects of specific pairwise combinations of personality characteristics of senders and recipients of WOM messages on the effectiveness of WOM. For instance, introverted users are responsive to WOM, in contrast to extroverted users. Besides this, agreeable, conscientious, and open social media users are more effective disseminators of WOM. In addition, WOM originating from users with low levels of emotional range affects similar users, whereas for high levels of emotional range, increased similarity usually has the opposite effect. The examined effects are also of significant economic importance, as, for instance, a WOM message from an extrovert user to an introvert peer increases the likelihood of a subsequent purchase by 71.28%. Our findings are robust to several alternative methods and specifications, such as controlling for latent user homophily and network structure roles based on deep-learning models. By extending the characteristics that have been theorized to affect the effectiveness of WOM from the observable to the latent space, tapping into users’ latent personality characteristics, and illustrating how companies can leverage the abundance of unstructured data in social media, our paper provides actionable insights regarding the future potential of social media advertising and advanced microtargeting based on big data and deep learning.
The online appendix is available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2017.0768
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Conceptualizing how customers construe online negative word‐of‐mouth (nWOM) following failure experiences remains unsettled, leaving providers with inconclusive recovery strategy programmes. This ...empirical study recognizes online nWOM as a co‐created encounter between the complainant (i.e., the initiator of the online nWOM) and the recipient (i.e., the consumer who engages with the online nWOM), examining their idiosyncrasies to discern their understanding of the experience. It introduces frustration–aggression theory to online WOM literature, recognizing that it can support a higher‐order understanding of phenomena. Through phenomenological hermeneutics, interviews and focus groups, data were collected from millennials in Albania and Kosovo that provided accounts of nuanced and distinctive online nWOM realities. The emerged insights extended extant theory to a three‐fold online nWOM typology (i.e., lenient online nWOM, moderate online nWOM and severe online nWOM) recognizing the negative impact customers have on a provider, which is controlled by frustration–aggression tags. Frustration–aggression variations across online nWOM led to the construct of three types of customers that engage in online nWOM, namely tolerable online nWOM customers, rigorous online nWOM customers and confrontational online nWOM customers. Findings culminated with satisfactory recovery strategies aligned to customer inferences regardless of the nWOM context.
Electronic word of mouth (eWOM), especially on online platforms such as Twitter, is a topic of interest for many C-suite executives. Yet little is understood about competitive spillover effects in ...eWOM, especially among mature brands in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) markets. In this article we analyze the entire corpus of tweets of two main FMCG brands (Pepsi and Coke) and use dynamic factorial analysis to classify eWOM into topic categories in an unsupervised manner. We then analyze how these topics influence sales, taking into account traditional marketing mix elements and endogeneity concerns. Our results show that looking at eWOM in an aggregate manner (positive vs. negative valence) can be misleading and mask important effects. We see strong evidence for eWOM competitor spillover, depending on eWOM content diagnosticity (high vs. low). We also show the presence of asymmetric eWOM spillover effects depending on the typicality and directionality of brand associations.
Social networking sites (SNS) offer brands the ability to spread positive electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) for the purposes of building awareness and acquiring new customers. However, the credibility ...of eWOM is threatened of late as marketers increasingly try to manipulate eWOM practices on SNS. A greater understanding of eWOM credibility is necessary to better enable marketers to leverage true consumer engagement by generating credible peer-to-peer communications. Yet, to date, there is no one framework synthesising which factors constitute eWOM credibility in the online environment. This paper revisits the word of mouth credibility literature and proposes a new credibility framework - the 4Cs of eWOM Credibility: Community, Competence, Content, and Consensus.
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