The Influence Of Negative Word-of-Mouth On Consumer Brand Switching Behavior

With the rapid development of Internet as well as the gradual maturity of Electronic Commerce technology, consumers have no restriction on time and space to purchase, communicate, search and share experiences freely on the internet, whose power has changed the society communication patterns, at a time the traditional Word-of-Mouth(WOM) has developed a lot in the new circumstances, and the online WOM already becomes a hot topic in the academia and industry. During the search process for the documents, it's found that most of the researches focus on the positive WOM, while a few on the negative WOM. Besides, most researches on the negative WOM and brand switching behavior explored the behavior after spreading negative WOM; there are very limited studies about discussing brand switching behavior when consumers received negative WOM.Based on those studies past, this paper discussed the influences of the negative WOM on the consumer brand switching behavior, with the mobile phone as the study object and made a comparative analysis between the traditional WOM and the online WOM through empirical research, so as to provide the mobile phone manufactures'marketing a theoretic and practical guidance. In order to study the above questions, this paper carried on the questionnaire by interviewing and investigating mobile phone consumers online who had second-time buying experience, and analyzed 261 effective samples to carry on the data analysis, the main conclusion are as follows:(1) In the traditional WOM communication, the strength of negative WOM, the disseminator's expertise and the strength of relationship have the significant influences on the consumer brand switching behavior.(2) In the online WOM communication, the strength of negative WOM and the disseminator's expertise have the significant influences on the consumer brand switching behavior and the strength of relationship have no influence on the consumer brand switching behavior.(3) In the traditional WOM communication and the online WOM communication, switching cost will all weaken the strength of negative WOM impact on the consumer brand switching behavior.(4) Consumers with different demographic characteristics perceive differently on the strength of negative WOM, the disseminator's expertise, the strength of relationship and the consumer brand switching behavior.Finally, according to the conclusion of the research, the thesis gives some proposal to improve the marketing of mobile manufacturers, thereby, reduce the rate of customer switching, improve customer loyalty.