The Impact Of Interpersonal Intimacy On Word-of-Mouth Communication:A Cross-cultural Comparison

The rapid development of the Internet provides a convenient channel for word-of-mouth communication.People can share the feelings of using goods anytime and anywhere.Studies have shown that positive word-of-mouth marketing can accelerate the acceptance of new products and brands in new people,and significantly reduce the cost of brand promotion in the existing market.Adverse word-of-mouth marketing will hinder customers’ acceptance of the brand and erode its reputation.In order to make products produce positive word-of-mouth behavior,some marketers try to use traditional methods based on relevant theories in order to obtain greater profits.However,these efforts may be ineffective to a large extent,because culture will have an impact on marketing,but few studies have explored the impact of cultural values on word-of-mouth valence.This paper attempts to explore the influence of individualism and collectivism on word-of-mouth communication,and explore the transmission mechanism between intimacy and word-of-mouth valence.In this study,we hold the point that communicating with close people increases the possibility of sharing negative information than with distant people.Specifically speaking,talking to a distant partner often stimulates the motivation of self-improvement,while talking to a close partner often stimulates the motivation of protecting others.Importantly,sharing positive information usually due to consumers’ motivation to improve themselves,while sharing negative information usually due to consumers’ motivation to protect others.Therefore,we think that high intimacy increases the negative of word-of-mouth sharing,while low intimacy increases the positive of word-of-mouth sharing.In addition,culture also play a regulatory role in this process.Specifically,collectivism can enhance the influence of high intimacy on negative evaluation,and individualism can enhance the influence of low intimacy on positive evaluation.This is because collectivists are more willing to think for others and protect others,while individualists have obvious characteristics of self enhancement.In this paper,we use experimental research to proof those hypothesis.The questionnaire was used in the experiment.In the process of research,this paper divides the subjects into two groups,one is the Chinese who have collectivism tendency on the social level,and the other is the Americans who have individualism tendency on the social level.Each group has 150 people.In the same group,the respondents will also be divided into two groups according to the degree of intimacy,one group is high degree of intimacy,the other group is low degree of intimacy.In the experiment,after reading an article about social media marketing,the respondents would write down the information they shared with people with high or low intimacy according to their understanding and feelings.Then,the respondents will evaluate the intimacy of the information sharer,the positive and negative of the information,the sharing motivation,and the cultural tendency.The main qualitative research method used in the study is to ask the respondents to write down and share information in combination with the given materials.Quantitative research is to use 7 subscales to investigate the tendency of the respondents to share information.After the data reliability and validity test,the experimental results show that R square of high intimacy and negative feedback is 0.64,and that of low intimacy and positive feedback is 0.876,indicating that intimacy does have an impact on the potency of word-of-mouth.In addition,the paper also shows that the motivation to protect others and self enhance have significant effects on word-of-mouth valence.Finally,the paper also tests the two moderating variables of individualism and collectivism.The test results show that individualism variable has a significant moderating effect,while collectivism variable has no significant moderating effect.We suspect that this may be because collectivists are less likely to evaluate things than individualists.In addition,for the sake of group stability,collectivists will reduce the possibility of sharing negative news,which is also a potential explanation.Combined with experimental results,this paper summarizes the contribution to theory,and discusses shortcomings and future research direction.