The Effects Of Online Reviews And Forwarding Toward Micro-blog's Marketing Information On Consumer's Attitude

Micro-blog, a kind of new network medium, already became the emerging battlefield of online marketing. Unlike traditional online shopping websites, the user interaction of micro-blog marketing consists of both online consumers'reviews and online consumers'forwarding which enable users to share information to their own friendship network. These make micro-blog become a more interactive, free information sharing platform, hence is more conducive to both product marketing and customer relationship marketing."Micro-blog's marketing information (MMI)"discussed in the study refers to all seller-created information about advertising and promotion of products or services on mirco-blog. The main purpose for the study is to understand how consumers'attitude is influenced by online reviews and forwardings of MMI. Based on the uncertainty reduction theory and elaboration likelihood model, 12 research hypotheses were proposed and then examined through a questionnaire survey participated by 165 Sina enterprise micro-blogging followers.The study produces 7 major findings: (1) consumers tend to focus on MMI with reviews/forwardings rather than non-reivew/forwarding MMI; (2) a more favorable attitude is formed when a higher quality review is processed; (3) a large quantity of reviews or forwardings has a positive impact on consumers'attitude, but comparing to the quantity of reviews, consumers do not focus more on quantity of forwardings; (4) consumers apparently focus more on MMI forwarded by friends; (5) high-demand consumers are affected by quantity rather than quality of reviews, low-demand consumers are affected mainly by friend's forwarding and review/forwarding quantity; (6) high quality reviews are more likely to persuade those older, better-educated or experienced consumers; (7) The effects of online reviews and forwardings toward MMI are more significant on those frequent micro-blog users'attitude. These findings have implications for enterprises in terms of how to manage and control the user interaction of MMI, which will be helpful for the development of the new micro-blog marketing.