| Internet has replaced word of mouth (WOM) with electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Reviews or comments posted on the Internet by consumers and experts are based on had more influence on consumer behavior than other marketing strategy or advertising campaign. Owing to the explosive growth of the Internet and e-commerce over the last few decades, the concept of eWOM has received considerable attention for e-marketing. Online discussions and comments may pave the way for disseminating information on the adoption of new technologies, decision making, and choice of products. Through social networking sites, eWOM information is an important factor that influence on consumer buying behavior. New era of influenced marketing turned into internet technology and social networking sites increased every day which effect on consumers to take right decision before product purchasing. Electronic word of mouth need to be focused on proper providing platforms, focus on social sites, and customer relations that can helpful for the companies.This study proposed electronic word of mouth conceptual framework of willingness to buy food products, literature review reveals some streams that affect in eWOM involvements, motives of consumer engagement, and their effects on the process of decision making. In the context of China as one major developing country, this paper studies the effect of online analyses of purchasing decision that online reviews have impact on consumer purchasing decision take attention the repute of reviewers'and website's as a consistent source of information. Likewise, few studies have been evaluated the interaction between eWOM, there is no specific studies have been focused on food products. So for, this study was proposed to evaluate the consumer information adoption behavior as presented by Sussman and Siegal (2003) of food products through eWOM. Since then, several studies on marketing and consumer research have been conducted with the primary focus on the reasons behind eWOM communication and the influence of eWOM on e-marketing. However, many more studies are required to investigate the reasoning behind the posted reviews and the purpose for seeking eWOM. Many studies have been examined the customer's perceived risk because it plays a useful role in buying decision-making process. This study also focused on expertness, trustworthiness, objectivity and homophily as eWOM source credibility, customer's perceived risk and consumers'expectations regarding online shopping forums.Theoretical framework for eWOM communication of this study was to examine the factors though mediators involved in eWOM for the purchase of food products, and plans to test the hypotheses of relationship among dependent & independent variables, settled in non-contrived and examined from the customers of different regions of the People's Republic of China to online viewing the degree and patterns of information adoption. Unit of analysis was individuals who used the internet, collected the data cross sectional to analyze the results. We used the questionnaire method for data collection for the measurement of instrument and sample design was non-probability purposive of sample 1480 respondents. Cronbach's alpha was used to check the reliability through SPSS, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to measure the validity through AMOS software, structural equation modeling (SEM) was also used to check the model fitness.The results summarized the impact of eWOM source credibility, perceived risk on purchaser's information adoption through argument quality, and information usefulness. Expressed the impact of eWOM involvements such as reviews, reviewers and websites on consumer's willingness to buy through online advice seeking, source credibility and perceived risk. Frequency distribution tests were employed to analyze the demographic features of the data. Additionally, the results demonstrated the degree of agreeableness/disagreeableness with respect to respondents and various variables. Descriptive analysis was directed to identify respondents' demographic information and their search behavior for food products.There were positive influence of reading number of reviews because of product popularity, consistency, regency, usefulness rating of reviewers, and website's reliability before decision making process. Likewise, eWOM involvement had significant effect on online advice seeking or leadership, source credibility and perceived risk. The hypotheses advice seeking and social interaction have positive impact on argument quality, while self enhancement and economic incentives have slightly negative impact on argument quality. The hypotheses advice seeking and self enhancement positively affected by argument quality, while social interaction and economic incentives negatively affected by argument quality. Argument quality and source credibility have positive impact on information usefulness as well as information usefulness also has positive impact on information adoption for food products purchasing.The dimensions such as expertness, trustworthiness and objectivity are positively affected by perceived risk and results found significant, while homophily has negatively correlated with perceived risk which was disapproved. The hypothesis perceived risk has a positive influence on argument quality and information usefulness because results indicate positive significant level. Argument quality refers to communication persuasion, divided into weak and strong informational message as introduced Elaborated Likelihood Model (ELM). Hypotheses argument quality and information usefulness have also positive affect on information adoption.The hypothesis advice seeking has a positive impact on eWOM source credibility is accepted. Brand involvement hypothesis has a significant impact on eWOM source credibility, product involvement has a negative impact on eWOM source credibility. The hypotheses for other involvement and economic incentives also have a significant role in product decision making. Economic incentives has an adverse effect on online purchasing because of many factors, particularly the income differences of customers. eWOM source credibility hypothesis has a positive impact on argument quality and perceived risk, and the result shows that people find argument quality and perceived risk when they read eWOM information. Both argument quality and perceived risk affect information usefulness positively and motivate the acceptance of these hypotheses. Finally, the information usefulness hypothesis is also positive for information acceptance, which suggests acceptance of the information usefulness hypothesis acceptance during online food product purchasing.Recent reviews via eWOM are potentially more convincing in shaping consumers' purchasing behavior when they are very serious about making a purchase. Managers must engage in eWOM information appearing on their official websites, which can minimize risks and negative perspectives concerning product reliability for reviewers. Consequently, more studies are required to improve the relevance, quality, and credibility of product information as they are evaluation parameters of customers' purchasing behavior. E-marketers would have to consider the credibility and trustworthiness of their product reviews. Further study can be focused to explore other factors such as trust inclination, persuasion, effectiveness and cultural difference concerning the adoption of information and reduce the involvements to customers' perceived risk. |
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