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A Research On The WOM Effect Based On SOR Model

Posted on:2011-04-03Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:S Q LaiFull Text:PDF
GTID:1119360308982642Subject:Business management
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
1. Research ObjectiveInformation is very important for consumer's decision-making. Consumers can get information from two channels:external information and internal information. The internal information is experience and knowledge, and the external information mainly includes enterprise's advertisements and the consumer's word of mouth. Because of the intense competition, the enterprises continue innovating their technology and speeding the pace of producing the new product. Therefore, it is not met the need for consumer's decision-making that consumers only rely on internal information, and consumers must depend on external information. In external information, advertisement is a kind of information propagation mode, which is paid by enterprises for promoting product sales. In order to highlight product and brand in fierce market competition environment, many enterprises spend much money in advertisements. Because of this commercial goal, advertisements often have certain exaggeration. Now, consumers get more rationality and no longer blindly trust advertisement, and more and more rely on word of mouth gained from friends or other consumers when they are shopping.Now, consumers often inquire the information of commodity to their relative or he friend and exchange the shopping experience mutually when they make a decision. So, word of mouth can have tremendous influence on consumer decision-making. And with the development of internet t, consumer's traditional WOM starts to develop on the internet. Consumers (word of mouth sender) may conveniently write their feeling online after shopping, and the potential consumers (word of mouth receivers) may also understand the situation of the products through inquiring other consumer's word of mouth on line before shopping. EWOM has become another key factor to influence consumer's decision-making. According to Nielsen's investigation which launches in 47 countries, the world consumers still mostly trust WOM got from consumer's commentary, and WOM is the most powerful marketing tool although the advertisement platform and the advertisement resources are getting more and more.Word of mouth is the most ancient information propagation mode, and its spread cope and speed are greatly improved dependent on characteristics of the internet. EWOM effect is enhanced compared to the traditional word of mouth which is spread by face-to-face. In our country, the internet has been quickly developed in recent years. By the end of June 2009, the number of internet users has achieved 338,000,000 in china. Chinese people more and more inquiry product information and exchange consumer experience through internet. An investigation showed that 81.2% BBS/blog user has inquired the related EWOM before purchasing product in past one year, and EWOM still affected the nearly 90% consumers even if under the non-purchase situation, and the consumers often read the EWOM when they pay attention to a brand, or when they are attracted by promotion, or when they pay attention to a specific product or industry, or when a significant negative event happened.With the influence of word of mouth to the consumer becoming bigger as well as the development of EWOM, marketing started to utilize it. WOM Marketing, Blog Marketing, Viral Marketing and so on have arisen. Word of mouth marketing will become a trend of marketing in the future. But because the research history of word of mouth is only 50 years and the EWOM is few years, many theories about WOM have not thoroughly completed. This paper researched the mechanism of WOM effect through the analysis and the empirical study, which has some academic value to supplement the flaw of WOM research in the past. The paper also developed some strategies of WOM marketing based on the conclusion, and these strategies will help enterprise to use the word of mouth in marketing.2. Research ContentWOM influence can be divided into the microscopic effect and the macroscopic effect according to influence's area. WOM microscopic effect is mainly the influence of WOM on the consumer's brand manner, the purchase decision-making and so on; The WOM macroscopic effect is the influence of WOM on the entire market or sale of enterprise. In the research of WOM microscopic effect, a conformity model is lacking in mechanism research. Many researches focus on the empirical study of WOM effect factors, these researches often choose several factors and discuss these factors how to affect consumer's behavior. But why these factors can influence consumer's behavior is seldom discussed. Particularly, present researches few discussed how WOM influence consumer's internal psychological. In fact, the influence of WOM on consumer's behavior must first affect the consumer internal psychological, and then affect the external consumer's behavior. Therefore, this paper takes the WOM effect mechanism as a breakthrough point, and researches the WOM effect mechanism based on the consumer behavior's SOR model, and takes consumer internal psychological factors as intermediary variable to build the WOM mechanism model.In research process, the paper first explained the reason why WOM can have tremendous influence on consumer's behavior from the theories of sociology, psychology, economic and so on, then built the WOM mechanism model. Using the multi-disciplinary theories, the paper logically deduced that psychological factors of WOM effect were consumer's trust and consumer's emotion. So, WOM effect mechanism has two action ways:the cogitative way and the emotional way. To further confirmed the existences of two ways as well as the factors which can affect consumer's trust and consumer's emotion, the paper used the multi-factor experiment method to study the factors which can influence the intention of buy product and WOM re-diffusion in cogitative way and emotional way. This article also discussed the enterprise how to effectively promote sale and build brand by using WOM. Based on the conclusion of the paper, WOM marketing diffusing strategy and WOM marketing efficiency strategy were proposed from two prospects:the reason of WOM and the consequence of WOM.On the paper's research construction, the construction is divided the seven chapters, the first chapter is introduction, the 2nd chapter is literature review, the 3rd chapter is the construction of WOM effect mechanism model, the fourth chapter is the research on WOM micro effect of cogitative way, the fifth chapter is the research on WOM micro effect of emotional way, the sixth chapter is the research on WOM macroscopic effect, and the seventh chapter is the conclusion and the suggestion. About the content of the paper, the paper can be divided two parts: microscopic influence of WOM and macroscopic influence of WOM. The microscopic influence is mainly the WOM effect on the consumer's attitude to a brand or consumer's decision-making or purchase behavior and so on. The macroscopic influence is the WOM effect on the market after WOM communication, which mainly influence product sales, brand reputation, new product diffusion and so on.3. Conlusion(1) The Cogitative Way of WOM Effect.The WOM attitude, profession of the sender, the relations between the WOM sender and the receiver all have remarkable influence upon consumer's confidence and the intention of re-diffuse and purchase. The power of WOM effect is bigger when consumers more trust WOM. Credibility plays role of mediator in the cogitative way of WOM effect. The power of WOM effect can be expressed by the formula:WE=n×Wn×P×R+n×Wp×P×R.(2)The Emotional Way of WOM EffectThe research result showed that emotional WOM have a more influence upon consumer's behavior compared to non-emotional WOM, and the consumer's emotion plays the role of mediator between WOM emotion and WOM effect. The research also suggested that involvement plays the role of moderator in the emotional way of WOM effect. When consumer purchases lower involvement commodity, the emotional WOM effect is bigger.(3) The Macroscopic Effect of WOM.This paper empirically studied how the EWOM influence the tourist's tourism destination choice and used the multiple regressions to study the relations between three dimensions:volume, quality, attitude of EWOM and the reception population. The research conclusion is the volume of the online reviews,the tourism Blog and pictures on the Blog have the significant relationship with the actual quantity of reception population, but comments grades and the volume of travels consultation have insignificant with the quantity of tourist reception population.4. Majar innovations(1) Taken the consumer behavior's SOR model as the foundation, the paper built the WOM effect mechanism model. This model emphasized WOM how to influence consumer's psychology, and proposed that WOM effect was run through the cogitative way and the emotional way.(2) The research discovered that the cogitative way is WOM receivers appraise the credibility of WOM and credibility plays the role of mediator. The emotion way is WOM communicator's emotion can influence the WOM effect through the emotional contagion. Consumer's emotion plays the role of mediator, and involvement plays the role of moderator in the emotional way. In this viewpoint, we break through the supposition of present research which takes person as "the rational person" in WOM effect research.(3) The paper researched our country's EWOM influence by using Chinese website's commentary and sale data of enterprise, and analyzed how Chinese consumer's EWOM influence the sale of enterprise. The conclusion is that the quantity, quality and attitude of EWOM can affect the enterprise sales.It is also the first time to make the empirical study on the EWOM macroscopic effect with Chinese data.(4) To explore the research of WOM re-diffusion. The present researches ignore WOM re-diffusion, in fact, WOM re-diffusion is the foundation of WOM macroscopic effect. The paper discoveried the trust of WOM and the emotion of WOM can influence WOM re-diffusion intention.(5) To propose the EWOM marketing strategy.From prospects of WOM reason and WOM consequence, the paper proposed that the WOM marketing strategy included the Promoting WOM Diffuson Strategy and the Make WOM Efficiency strategy.These strategies can lead the enterprise's WOM marketing.
Keywords/Search Tags:word of mouth, electronic word of moth, consumer behavior, WOM Microscopic Effect, WOM Macroscopic Effect
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