| In recent years,online shopping has become part of people's daily consumption.The virtuality and uncertainty of online shopping have increased the importance of online word of mouth(WOM)in consumers' purchase decisions.WOM dispersion,as one of the measurement elements of WOM,reflects the extent of reviewers' opinion divergence regarding the product,and determines consumers' purchase intention and behavior.Due to the strong compatibility of the Internet platform and the diversity of participants,consumers are more likely than ever to encounter a mixture of positive and negative opinions about the same product.As a consequence,mixed opinions are ubiquitous,and dispersion in WOM is often bimodal.Therefore,for enterprises in the Internet era,the key to take advantage of the information media of WOM,and to manage the marketing WOM scientifically is to make clear the influence of WOM dispersion on consumer decision makingAlthough the practice of online word-of-mouth has been carried out continuously,the academic answers are inadequate regarding how WOM dispersion affects consumers'purchasing intention and actual purchasing behavior.Generally speaking,the following aspects in the existing research need to be supplemented:(1)in contrast of the theoretical conceptual refinement and clearly characteristics analysis of ratings volume and central tendency,academic work has rarely been done to discuss explicit definition of e-WOM dispersion and endogenous issues of dispersion characteristics based on Chinese user comment data.(2)Researchers have drawn on the attribution theory to build an attribution choice model for WOM dispersion,but has not yet discuss the contextual antecedent for the model.The observation of reality situation and literature review indicates that the absence of investigation on such contextual antecedent is probably the reason to the insufficient understanding of reviewers' tendency of WOM dispersion attribution.(3)Extensive research related to WOM dispersion and product evaluations has suggested that the important influence of product and reviewers' characteristics.Yet little attention has been paid to the role of physical characteristics of the display of WOM distributions in mitigating the negative influence of WOM dispersion.(4)The majority of prior research has examined the role of WOM dispersion in consumer purchase behavior from a static perspective,primarily using situational priming task or participants' descriptions to obtain data about stated preference.Nevertheless,the significant difference between purchase intention and behavior indicate the necessity to quantify the relationship between WOM dispersion and actual purchase behavior based on product sales.Meanwhile,existing models do not involve the dynamic feature of the influence of dispersion over time,which is likely to generate biased conclusions regarding the dispersion-purchase behavior relationshipBased on the above actual needs and theoretical deficiencies,this paper uses behavioral-oriented research paradigm to explore the influence of WOM dispersion from the perspective of consumer purchasing intention and consumer purchasing behavior:(1)discover the specialty of WOM dispersion from the angle of endogeneity;(2)the influence of the attribution choice of WOM dispersion on purchase intention:the moderating role of endowment effect;(3)how to promote reviewer-related attribution choice:moderating role of moderately complex presentation of mixed opinions in activating the analytic system;(4)the dynamic influence of WOM dispersion on consumer purchase behavior:a study of product sales.For problem 1,this paper introduces coefficient of variation to discuss the disparity in dispersion degree across samples,and constructes a panel data model to analyze dispersion characteristic of the same product category based on product attributes and release time With an analysis of 603367 reviews across 685 books collected from Amazon China,the empirical results show that(1)the coefficient of variation of dispersion is significantly different even among the same product category,presenting a J-shaped abnormal distribution This means that endogenous factors have significant influence,that(2)hedonic attribute has a higher coefficient of variation of WOM dispersion than utilitarian attribute,and that(3)the relationship between product release time is positively related to coefficient of variation of WOM dispersion.To solve problem 2,this paper investigates the contextual antecedents of the existing attribution choice model for WOM dispersion.The empirical findings of three studies using 332 participants show that:(1)consumers exhibiting strong endowment for a product/service are more tolerant of the high dispersion option,and that(2)when consumers exhibit strong endowment for a given product,the emotional attachment elicited along with feelings of'pre-factual ownership' will mitigate the negative influence of WOM dispersion on purchase intention by promoting reviewer-related attribution,rather than product-related attributionExisting attribute-based approach suggests that the negative effect of word-of-mouth dispersion could be significantly mitigated when the mixed opinions were attributed to the variance in reviewer characteristics.Therefore,to solve problem 3,based on psychological theories of metacognition and dual processing,this research addresses the influence of the presentation type of mixed opinions on promoting reviewer-related attribution choices.The empirical findings of two eye-tracking experiments using 329 participants are as follows.(1)A deliberate and analytic system of reason is likely to be used and is therefore critical for promoting reviewer attribution choices judgements.(2)Among three presentation types of mixed opinions derived from major online platforms in China,mixed opinions presented in moderately complex form,which combines average ratings and reviewers' impressions of the product,can effectively promote reviewer-related attribution choices,and therefore mitigates the negative influence of WOM dispersion.(3)However,too-complicated presentation type may impose excessive cognitive load on consumers and fail to activate analytic system necessary to promote reviewer-related attribution choicesFor problem 4,this paper discusses the patterns of how e-WOM dispersion influences product sales,as well as the moderating roles of product quality signal and reviewer characteristics,across product-lifecycle phase.A panel data model was developed using 13264989 online reviews of 91 movies obtained through data crawling.The conclusion is as follows.(1)Instead of an invariable impact,e-WOM dispersion exerts an influence on product sales that changes across product-lifecycle phase.In the case of movie,dispersion is significantly negatively associated with the box office gross in the initial period of its show time(the first and second weeks),but is positively associated with the box office gross in the in middle-to late-period(the third and fourth weeks).(2)The moderating effects of product quality signal and third-party critic review exhibit significant changes over the four weeks after the product release.(3)The positive moderating effects of product quality signal and third-party critic review on the dispersion-product sales relationship are enhanced,when the combined moderating effect of both variables(i.e.,the internal and external sources of information)is taken into accountThis paper has certain theoretical contributions and practical implications.The empirical results enrich the literatures of WOM dispersion,and provide a more comprehensive explanation for the emergence of the conflicting conclusions about the effect of WOM dispersion.By giving a new perspective on the mixed results of effect of WOM dispersion,this paper provides a new perspective for the follow-up study of WOM dispersion.Meanwhile,the research conclusions have certain practical significance for enterprises to effectively carry out online word-of-mouth marketing management and marketing strategies. |
PDF Full Text Request