Exploring The Effects Of Online Information:An Empirical Study Based On Sense Of Virtual Community

With the penetration of Internet, e-commerce in China has entered a period of rapid development. A variety of e-commerce web sites have sprung up. More and more traditional consumers are accustomed to shop online. With the proliferation of online consumers and the improvement of online shopping environment, the consumers begin to shop on the virtual communities where more and more consumers regard it as a sharing place of personal shopping experience and consumption experience. And they attach importance to the comment information because of their high requirements to the service or the goods, thus electronic word of mouth information (eWOM) and Edit information (site information) of the virtual community are two kinds of information that consumers search most when they are shopping. Both of the information has a huge impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions, so a large number of researchers are attracted to study the network information utility. The writer has read a lot of literatures and found that the research of electronic word of mouth and edit information utility was relatively abundant currently, and former researches indicated that the information had a significant effect on consumers’shopping decision. Also, many researches focused on the deep analysis of edit information and eWOM information based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model, which laid a foundation for the research of consumers handling on information. But there are some limitations in the realm of electronic business.On one hand, these studies are often confined to the study of a class of information (about the electronic word of mouth information), while there is a little analysis of the effect of electronic word of information and edit information at the same time. Thus, it is unclear for us how consumers handle the information when they receive both two types of the information, and their information usefulness. On the other hand, previous studies have ignored the virtual community awareness about the problem of information recipient (Theory of sense of virtual community, SOVC).we noted that, as consumers visit certain websites or forums frequently, and interact with other Internet users, they will form the emotional fate of the forum, which is called the virtual community awareness. Previous studies suggest that virtual community awareness will significantly affect consumers’understanding and behavior in the virtual community. Therefore, we expect that the electronic word of mouth information and edit information will change the analysis and processing of information usefulness. Since previous studies have not explore this question systematically, we still don’t know what are the factors would adjust (reduce or enhance) the consumers’virtual community awareness, thereby affecting the perception of the information usefulness. This article will further fill in the gaps of this study. Especially this article will focus on how to adjust the virtual community awareness of consumers’information usefulness.Firstly, this research determined the key factors of the edit information and the electronic word of mouth information as the independent variable (including the comprehensiveness of the Internet information, the edit force of the Internet information, the popularity of the website, the independence of the website, the comprehensiveness and force of the comment information, the quantity of the comment, and the professional level of the information publisher), and combine the studies of the ELM and the SOVC. Secondly, we use the virtual community awareness as the regulated variable and information usefulness as the dependent variable to build the mode of different consumers’perception of those two kinds of information usefulness, and put forward the corresponding theoretical assumptions.We collected561sample data from four famous websites inland via the network questionnaire survey, and we analyzed the independent variable’s and the regulated variable’s effect on information usefulness.We got the following conclusions according to the analysis:(1)Main effectSome independent variables in core path and Peripheral path of the edit information and the electronic world of mouth information have a significant effect on consumers’perception of information usefulness in the mode of ELM. On one hand, the comprehensiveness and the argument strength of edit information belong to the core path of edit information, and the popularity of the website belongs to the peripheral path of the information, which all of them have a positive significant effect on consumers’ perception of website information utility. On the other hand, the argument strength of the eWOM information belongs to the core path of the information, while the comment quantity and the professional level of the information publisher belong to the peripheral path of the information, which all of them have a positive significant effect on consumers’perception of word of mouth information utility. In conclusion, there is positive correlation between all the independent variable and the information usefulness except the comprehensiveness of the eWOM information and the independence of the website.(2)Regulatory effectThe online consumers’ sense of virtual community would adjust some factors of the core path of both edit information and eWOM information, namely, a positive regulative on the argument strength of the edit information while a negative regulation on the argument strength of the world of mouth information. What’s more, the sense of virtual community can adjust another two factors of peripheral path of the information, thus affect the information usefulness; in other words, membership identity has a positive regulative on the popularity of the website while a negative regulation on comment quantity.This study has several important theoretical contributions. Firstly, the paper analyzes two types of information, namely, the edit information and eWOM information on consumer perception of information usefulness based on ELM, and confirms that the two types of information’s core and peripheral path can significantly and positively affect their perception of information usefulness. Secondly, this study combines the sense of virtual community theory (SOVC), and explores the regulatory role of the virtual community awareness of these arguments. The results of the study confirmed the theoretical model innovation of this study. Specifically, the study finds that virtual community awareness can adjust some factors’ effect to the information usefulness.In summary, this paper explained the main effects of the independent variables in the two types of information and usefulness of information based on ELM, and then used the virtual community awareness theory to reveal adjustment on information usefulness. Research findings have important reference value to the study of information usefulness and lay a solid foundation to further research.The study also has important practical significance for the virtual communities and the companies marketing online. The research will guide the virtual communities and companies based on public praise network marketing strategy to recommend consumer-related information for different consumer effectively, to make a more precise and effective marketing strategies, to establish the credibility(reputation) of their products, to make the companies grasp market trends faster and to become the market leader. Also, the conclusion is significant to the study on virtual community relationships and the building of humane virtual community. Correspondingly, it will promote the site (community) prosperity and conduce to attract more consumers to improve their business performance.