Catering Class Forums, Word Of Mouth Spread Of The Phenomenon Of Empirical Studies And Simulation Modeling,

Word-of-mouth (WOM) is full of persuasion, so it has great influence (Bristor, 1990). With the rapid development of internet, WOM can spread at a stupendous speed on the internet and its influence expands a lot.As a result, more and more experts and scholars are involved in the research of WOM and Online WOM. However, research about the medial step of WOMspread——the Re-diffusion phenomena is not sufficient yet, and related researchabout online WOM is even more exiguous. Besides, former researches are focusing on the micro-field of WOM spread: the individual and interpersonal level. Researches about the social network which is formed by the WOM diffusion from net and system viewpoint are extremely exiguous.Thereby, to be aimed at the lack of former research, we select the catering forum as the research backdrop and study the pass-along phenomena of online WOM in two ways: empirical analysis and simulated experiment.In the part of empirical analysis, our objective is to clarify the determinants ofRe-diffusion intention of Online WOM. We classify the dependent variable——theRe-diffusion intention of Online WOM into two sorts: Interpersonal Re-diffusion intention and Group Re-diffusion intention, and we also classify the samples into two parts depend on whether having the consumptive experience. On the basis of such classification, we go along relative comparative research.From the source, message, receiver's point of view and tie-strength of the sender and the receiver, we clarify various kinds of factors and establish an online WOM re-diffusion intention model.We investigate several catering forum and collects 328 samples. Then we use statistic methods to further testify proposed conceptual model. The main research findings are:(1) To the customers who have the consumptive experience, the altruistic motives and the degree of satisfaction about the consumptive experience have a significant impact on online word-of-mouth Interpersonal re-diffusion intention. And besides these two factors, receivers' self-enhancement motive also has a positive impact on online word-of-mouth Group re-diffusion intention.(2) To the customers who do not have the consumptive experience, Source credibility, perceived playfulness of online WOM, tie-strength of WOM sender and receiver and altruistic motives have a positive impact on online word-of-mouth Interpersonal re-diffusion intention. However, the altruistic and self-enhancement motives and the tie-strength of WOM sender and receiver have a positive impact on online word-of-mouth Group re-diffusion intentionIn the part of simulated experiment, we take the Theory of Complicate Adaptable System as the theoretical guide, and use the Agent Based Model as the modeling method. First, we ascertained the attributes and the rules of behavior of agent. Then we simulated the social network which is formed by the WOM re-diffusion in the platform of computer simulation. We got the main research findings by analyzing the WOM re-diffusion social network.(1) The tiny changes in the attributes of few agents in the social network can bring on a long and huge chain reaction of the whole system. And it will be represented as the great differences in the whole social network, for example, the different scope of WOM re-diffusion social network.(2) The key nodes in the WOM re-diffusion social network have a high level of altruistic and self-enhancement motives. Especially, in the sample of having the consumptive experience, the key nodes' degree of satisfaction about the former consumptive experience is much higher than the ordinary nodes.