Word Of Mouth Spread The Will Of Network Environment Factors Research

Small world theory argue that most complicated network is much smaller than we imagine, while anyone can be connected through friends's friends and the number of friends between two strangers is 5 to 7 (Milgram, 1967). The spread of word-of-mouth is a kind of complicated interpersonal network, which can influence more receivers through interpersonal information exchange. Information can be duplicated, pasted and quoted more easily on the Internet, which makes word-of-mouth spread much more quickly. Although the power of online word-of-mouth has already been recognized by many practicers, research about word-of-mouth spreading and pass-along effect is not sufficient yet.Based on relavant literature review, this paper focuses on the pass along of online word-of-mouth. From the source, message and receiver's point of view, we explore and establish a word-of-mouth pass along intention model.This study investigates several online product discussion boards and collects 183 samples. Then we use statistic methods to further testify proposed conceptual model. The main research findings are:(1) Receivers' word-of-mouth pass along intention is affected by source, message and reciever's characteristics.(2) Source credibility has a positive impact on recievers' pass along intention. While among the three dimensions of source credibility, trustworthiness plays the most significant role, due to the importance of source trustworthiness in China.(3) Perceived playfulness of online word-of-mouth positively impacts recievers' online word-of-mouth pass along intention.(4) From the receivers' standpoint, we find altruistic and self-enhancement motives have a significant impact on word-of-mouth pass along intention. While extroversion has no significant impact on recievers' word-of mouth pass along intention.(5) Product involvement plays a moderating role of the relationship between source credibility and pass along intention; also, Internet involvement moderate the relationship between perceived online word-of-mouth playfulness and pass along intention.