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Abstract:
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Nowadays, more and more consumers are employing the online opinion platforms to share
and exchange product experiences with others. Both positive and negative electronic wordof-
mouth (eWOM) concerning countless number of products and services has become easily
accessible to the global community, thus turning this informal communication medium into a
preferred source of marketplace information. With eWOM gaining increasing popularity
among consumers, it is crucial for marketers to learn how to use and harness its power.
Having certain predictability of where consumers are more likely to post their positive or
negative product reviews and the most influential motives lying behind their choice of online
opinion platform will undoubtedly help marketers to control and even benefit from eWOM.
Given the great number of online venues (e.g. product review websites, personal blogs,
brand’s forums, social networking sites, etc.) that offer space for consumer thoughts, it is
interesting to investigate how the users choose the eWOM platform, depending on the
positive or negative nature of the feedback they want to communicate, which motivations
play a role in the decision making process and what platform characteristics are taken into
account. By integrating the traditional motives to engage in positive and negative eWOM
with some distinctive features of a marketer-controlled vs. non-marketer controlled online
opinion platforms, the current study aims to shed light into the intricacy of consumer online
communication behaviour.
Using an online sample of 134 consumers, the research findings confirmed that the nature
of the product feedback has a significant impact on the type of website the consumer
chooses as communication medium. The participants were more likely to share positive
product reviews on the independent online opinion platform, while for expressing negative
product feedback they preferred the brand’s website. ‘Helping the company’ emerged as the
dominant motivation behind the decision to engage in positive eWOM on a third-party
opinion platform, while ‘anxiety reduction’ was found to influence negative eWOM behaviour
on a company’s website. The study findings contribute to our understanding of consumers’
communication behaviour in the electronic medium and provide managers with an
advantage in effectively and successfully dealing with consumers’ eWOM. |
