| With the ubiquity of the Internet and the popularity of Web2.0, social commerce has been quickly emerging and drastically developing as a new form of e-commerce. The popularity and growth of social commerce can be attributed to product information sharing via social media which has provided new sources for social interactions and user contributions through communities and social networks. In the face of market competition in social commerce, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication becomes increasingly essential in shaping consumers’attitudes and behaviors.The noteworthy influence of eWOM communication among practitioners has recently inspired a number of research streams, engendering important insights into the effectiveness of eWOM communication, its effects and its antecedents. But prior research has largely focused on the characteristics of eWOM information including volume, length, rating, and positive/negative statement, as well as the characteristics of eWOM sender including the identity and expertise. However, there is scant study that investigates the role of argument strength and source dynamism of eWOM. Moreover, one notable common feature of previous studies is that they emphasize the effects of eWOM on an individual cognitive perspective. Participation in social commerce may hinge on social interaction and entertainment value, affective response is also a critical factor that influences consumers’purchasing intention. In addition, compared with expertise, involvement and big five personality in preceding studies, curiosity is a stronger motivational drive for human exploratory behavior in social commerce, it can be an important moderator that explains how affective response and cognitive response affect consumers’purchasing intention. Curiosity should be considered as a major focus.In order to bridge this gap, we propose an integrated model which is grounded on Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model and Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to examine how argument quality and source credibility of eWOM affect consumers’purchasing intention, especially the impacts of argument strength and source dynamism. We take both cognitive response and affective response into consideration, and further explore the mediating effect of affective response. In additon, curiosity is introduced as a moderator variable to explore the impacting mechanism of affective response and cognitive response on consumers’ purchasing intention. A survey is used to test our proposed research model and hypotheses. We deliver a total of 700 questionnaires to college students who are active users in social commerce and 631 valid questionnaires are collected, with a response rate of 90.1%. Structure Equation Modeling and SmartPLS 2.0 are adopted to test the model, and statistical test shows that all the scales in the questionnaire suggest sufficient reliability and construct validity.Results indicate that argument valence and source dynamism have positive effects on consumers’ affective response. Argument strength, source competence, source trustworthiness, and source dynamism are positive related to consumers’ cognitive response. Both affective response and cognitive response can increase consumers’ purchasing intention significantly. The effectiveness size of affective response is greater than cognitive response. In addition, affective response partially mediates the effect of cognitive response on consumers’purchasing intention. Furthermore, affective response has a larger impact on purchasing intention when consumers’ interest-type curiosity is higher compared to when interest-type curiosity is low. Cognitive response has a larger impact on purchasing intention when consumers’ deprivation-type curiosity is higher compared to when deprivation-type curiosity is low. In summary, our findings can not only make a contribution to theoretical development, but also provide some guidance for retailers to carry out a better management strategy of eWOM in the context of social commerce. |
PDF Full Text Request