Research On The Influence Of Positive Online Word-of-Mouth To Brand Attitude For College Students

Word-of-Mouth(WOM) has always been the burning issues of Consumer Psychology and Marketing, and it is considered to be the most inexpensive marketing tool. The traditional WOM has a vital role in changing consumers'brand attitudes and purchasing decisions. With the rapid development of internet, the communicative platform of WOM has developed from the form of mouth to mouth to the present online discussion, which makes communication of WOM have a new meaning. So on the platform of internet, research of online WOM has an important effect on changing consumers'brand attitudes. The variables through which positive online WOM influence consumers'brand attitudes become the priority of this research.Thereby, on the basis of reviewing the effect of traditional WOM and existing online WOM, the author constructs the framework of researching model of the influence of positive online WOM to consumers'brand attitudes, this model bases on the characteristics of the senders, WOM information and the recipient. In this paper, we test the hypothesis through integration of theory and practice methods and combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Then, we provide some suggestions on enterprises'online WOM marketing.Firstly,researching model of the influence of positive online WOM to consumers'brand attitudesWe establish a common model of the influence of online WOM to brand attitudes based on previous academic research and theory. Then we build the researching model of the influence of positive online WOM to consumers'brand attitude in consideration of the variables researched in this thesis. We research the influence of positive online WOM to the college students'brand attitudes through three areas: the characteristics of positive online WOM recipient which include perceived risk, expertise of recipient and active searching on WOM, the characteristics of positive online WOM sender which include expertise of sender, the positive online WOM information features which include type and characteristics of WOM information, it has a variable named relationship strength between sender and recipient besides those six variables.Secondly, researching designFirst of all, we put forward the hypotheses based on the researching model. We assume that when recipient's perceived risk, expertise of recipient, active searching on WOM, type and characteristics of WOM information, expertise of sender and relationship strength as mediator variables, the seven variables have regulatory effect on changing college students'brand attitudes through positive online WOM.Second, we design the questionnaire according to the hypothesis, including the subjects of the investigation and the design of measuring scale . We take college students of Jilin University as the main investigating subjects and conduct the inquiry through paper or email.In this thesis, we learn from mature scale that has been tested by the scholars of the past to measure the variables including recipient's perceived risk, expertise of recipient, active searching on WOM, type and characteristics of WOM information, expertise of sender, relationship strength and brand attitude. So that we could reduce some workload of study as the scale of this questionnaire has a certain content validity and criterion validity.Finally, statistical analysis methods used in this thesis including reliability analysis, validity analysis, descriptive statistical analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA, multivariate analysis of variance, analysis of covariance) and the paired samples T test.Thirdly, hypothesis testing and results researching330 questionnaires were given out and 309 questionnaires were returned, the recovery rate is 92.7%. 21 invalid questionnaires were excluded and the effective rate is 87.3%.We analyze the reliability and validity of the data of questionnaire. The total questionnaire has a high reliability because its Cronbach's alpha is 0.842 which is much greater than 0.7.We test Construct validity by testing the correlation among variables through factor analysis through KMO and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity, the result shows that this questionnaire is very suitable for factor analysis because its KMO is 0.850. Rotated factor loading matrix indicated that the extracted factors and variables in this study are consistent, so this questionnaire has certain structure validity.Hypothesis testing include testing the change of consumers'brand attitudes, testing the influence of characteristics of recipient and sender , WOM information features and relationship strange to brand attitude. The results indicate : positive online WOM has obvious influence to the change of consumers'brand attitude; recipient's basic characteristics including gender, education and living cost monthly don't have a significant impact on the change of consumers'brand attitude; recipient's perceived risk has obvious influence to the change of consumers'brand attitude; When we take recipient's perceived risk, expertise of recipient, active searching on WOM, type and characteristics of WOM information, expertise of sender and relationship strength as mediator variables, the seven variables have regulatory effect on the changes of college students'brand attitudes through positive online WOM.Fourthly, advice on enterprises'online WOM marketingWe provide five pieces of advice on online WOM marketing:raising consumers'expertise, establishing virtual storefronts, providing reliable source of information,reducing consumers'perceived risk, increasing the efficiency of positive online WOM communication which will help enterprises establish a good brand image in consumers'heart through online WOM and it will have a great significance in enhancing the competitiveness of enterprises.In short, researching on the influence of positive online WOM to college students'brand attitude does not only enrich the existing research, but also provide some suggestions on enterprises'online WOM marketing.