Influence The Direction And Intention Of IWOM Source Credibility Later On Consumers

With the emergence and rapid development of the Internet, online shopping and online forums are spreading rapidly. Word-of-mouth can be spread quickly through various kind of online platforms. Consumers are likely to seek out information via internet, that is "electronic word-of-mouth"(eWOM). As more consumers are relying on eWOM to evaluating products and brands, eWOM has been playing a persuasive role in influencing consumers purchase decision. As the eWOM is spreading out widely, more potential consumers will be influenced.It is one of the motivations to research the message direction of eWOM on purchase intention. Meanwhile, different from tradition WOM, own to its anonymity, eWOM has uncertain source credibility, so this study also research the effects of different source credibility of eWOM on purchase intention. Besides, as the product involvement can influence their dependence on the information about product or brand, so this study also research the moderating role of product involvement playing in the relationships among message direction, source credibility and purchase intention.Based on the above discussion, this study divides the eWOM into positive and negative word of mouth, while we introduce the source credibility. The study is based on the theory of elaboration likelihood model (ELM). The aim of this study is to research the effects of eWOM message direction (positive vs. negative) and source credibility (high vs. low) on purchase intention, and the moderating effects of product involvement. The study is the consumers who have ever used to collecting data to make a purchase decision. Based on pre-test, we elect two product categories (notebook and headphone), and some eWOM information, finally,257questionnaires are put into statistics analysis to examine the hypotheses of this study.The results of this study shows:Negative eWOM produce greater impact on consumers’ purchase intention than positive eWOM; eWOM of high source credibility produce greater impact on consumers’ purchase intention than eWOM of low source credibility; The higher the product involvement is, the impact on consumers’ purchase intention is greater; Message direction and source credibility have interaction on consumers’ purchase intention. And the product involvement can moderate the relationship between both message direction and source credibility to consumers’ purchase intention.