Study On Regulatory Effect Of Organizational Factors In Negative IWOM On Consumers’ Willingness To Buy

With the development of Internet technology, more and more consumers tend to express their views and comments on the network, so word-of-mouth breaks through the traditional form of spreading and becomes more influential internet word-of-mouth (hereinafter referred to as "IWOM"). The network is a double-edged sword, its rapidness and convenience can not only magnify the effect of positive word-of-mouth, but also lead to the proliferation of negative word-of-mouth effect. A big number of empirical studies have confirmed that compared to positive word of mouth, negative word-of-mouth has a bigger impact on consumers’willingness to buy. However, according to the literatures, it is found that negative IWOM research is relatively less and not mature, so there is still large space for further research. Therefore, the study of the impact of negative IWOM on consumers’willingness to buy, prevention and control negative IWOM to a certain extent has certain theoretical significance to enhance the ability of the enterprise to resist potential crisis.Negative IWOM impacts the consumers’willingness to buy from many aspects, and many researchers have provided us with some findings. However, most of the scholars follow communication and persuasion model to explore the factors impacting word-of-mouth influence, i.e. the sender, recipient as well as the information itself. Based on the domestic and foreign scholars and their researches, according to different sources, we found that the factors are mainly concentrated on the product, the word-of-mouth itself, individuals and situational factors, but the impact of organizational factors is ignored, which makes the impact factors analysis has yet to be perfected.Against this background, based on the presentation of negative IWOM, purchase willingness and relative theory such as clue utilization theory, from the organizational factor perspective, this paper studies the impact of the regulatory role of each of the three dimensions (i.e. corporate image, brand equity and corporate response) on consumers’ willingness to buy. This research is mainly focused on how do the organizational factors regulate the negative IWOM and consumers’ willingness to buy, and then construct a theoretical model, analyze by the experimental method, test hypotheses, and provide marketing recommendations for the enterprise marketing practice based on research results.Using the570subjects experimental method, this paper studies the regulatory effect of the following organizational factors corporate image (good VS bad), brand equity (high VS low) and enterprise response (strongly denying, apologizing VS taking responsibility actively) have on the negative IWOM and the consumers’ willingness to buy. The result shows that:1) the better the corporate image is, the less impact of negative IWOM has on consumers’willingness to buy;2) the higher the brand equity is, the less impact of negative IWOM has on consumers’ willingness to buy;3) the impact of negative IWOM on consumers’willingness to buy varies significantly with enterprises’response:strongly denying would exacerbate the negative effects; apologizing and actively taking responsibility can weaken the negative impact; actively taking responsibility is the most effective way to alleviate the negative impact;4) corporate image and corporate response has an interaction effect on consumers’willingness to buy.Finally, the following management suggestions are made according to the research findings above:1) promoting the corporate image and strengthening the brand building, improving the immunity of negative word-of-mouth;2) respond to negative word-of-mouth actively and reducing its negative effects.