• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.262-268
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• 2010

Virtual communities (VCs) have developed rapidly, with more and more people participating in them to exchange information and opinions. A virtual community is a group of people who may or may not meet one another face to face, and who exchange words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks. A business-to-consumer virtual community (B2CVC) is a commercial group that creates a trustworthy environment intended to motivate consumers to be more willing to buy from an online store. B2CVCs create a social atmosphere through information contribution such as recommendations, reviews, and ratings of buyers and sellers. Although the importance of B2CVCs has been recognized, few studies have been conducted to examine members' word-of-mouth behavior within these communities. This study proposes a model of involvement, statistics, trust, "stickiness," and word-of-mouth in a B2CVC and explores the relationships among these elements based on empirical data. The objectives are threefold: (i) to empirically test a B2CVC model that integrates measures of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors; (ii) to better understand the nature of these relationships, specifically through word-of-mouth as a measure of revenue generation; and (iii) to better understand the role of stickiness of B2CVC in CRM marketing. The model incorporates three key elements concerning community members: (i) their beliefs, measured in terms of their involvement assessment; (ii) their attitudes, measured in terms of their satisfaction and trust; and, (iii) their behavior, measured in terms of site stickiness and their word-of-mouth. Involvement is considered the motivation for consumers to participate in a virtual community. For B2CVC members, information searching and posting have been proposed as the main purpose for their involvement. Satisfaction has been reviewed as an important indicator of a member's overall community evaluation, and conceptualized by different levels of member interactions with their VC. The formation and expansion of a VC depends on the willingness of members to share information and services. Researchers have found that trust is a core component facilitating the anonymous interaction in VCs and e-commerce, and therefore trust-building in VCs has been a common research topic. It is clear that the success of a B2CVC depends on the stickiness of its members to enhance purchasing potential. Opinions communicated and information exchanged between members may represent a type of written word-of-mouth. Therefore, word-of-mouth is one of the primary factors driving the diffusion of B2CVCs across the Internet. Figure 1 presents the research model and hypotheses. The model was tested through the implementation of an online survey of CTrip Travel VC members. A total of 243 collected questionnaires was reduced to 204 usable questionnaires through an empirical process of data cleaning. The study's hypotheses examined the extent to which involvement, satisfaction, and trust influence B2CVC stickiness and members' word-of-mouth. Structural Equation Modeling tested the hypotheses in the analysis, and the structural model fit indices were within accepted thresholds: ${\chi}^2^$/df was 2.76, NFI was .904, IFI was .931, CFI was .930, and RMSEA was .017. Results indicated that involvement has a significant influence on satisfaction (p<0.001, ${\beta}$=0.809). The proportion of variance in satisfaction explained by members' involvement was over half (adjusted $R^2$=0.654), reflecting a strong association. The effect of involvement on trust was also statistically significant (p<0.001, ${\beta}$=0.751), with 57 percent of the variance in trust explained by involvement (adjusted $R^2$=0.563). When the construct "stickiness" was treated as a dependent variable, the proportion of variance explained by the variables of trust and satisfaction was relatively low (adjusted $R^2$=0.331). Satisfaction did have a significant influence on stickiness, with ${\beta}$=0.514. However, unexpectedly, the influence of trust was not even significant (p=0.231, t=1.197), rejecting that proposed hypothesis. The importance of stickiness in the model was more significant because of its effect on e-WOM with ${\beta}$=0.920 (p<0.001). Here, the measures of Stickiness explain over eighty of the variance in e-WOM (Adjusted $R^2$=0.846). Overall, the results of the study supported the hypothesized relationships between members' involvement in a B2CVC and their satisfaction with and trust of it. However, trust, as a traditional measure in behavioral models, has no significant influence on stickiness in the B2CVC environment. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on B2CVCs, specifically addressing gaps in the academic research by integrating measures of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in one model. The results provide additional insights to behavioral factors in a B2CVC environment, helping to sort out relationships between traditional measures and relatively new measures. For practitioners, the identification of factors, such as member involvement, that strongly influence B2CVC member satisfaction can help focus technological resources in key areas. Global e-marketers can develop marketing strategies directly targeting B2CVC members. In the global tourism business, they can target Chinese members of a B2CVC by providing special discounts for active community members or developing early adopter programs to encourage stickiness in the community. Future studies are called for, and more sophisticated modeling, to expand the measurement of B2CVC member behavior and to conduct experiments across industries, communities, and cultures.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.809-824
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• 2017

Interest in and use of social media as a communication channel are consistently evolving; in addition therefore, corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities have been often conducted on online channels such as social media due to the advantages offered by the rapid spread of information. Consumers can be persuaded differently and their cognition can be influenced depending on who delivers what message. This study examines the influence of information source characteristics on eWOM acceptance of CSR messages and attitudes toward a company. This study compares cases: when a company sends their CSR message versus when an individual (i.e., consumer's acquaintance) sends the company's CSR message. A total of 320 respondents were presented with online stimuli and responded to the questionnaire to identify this phenomenon. Vegan fashion (which refers to products made from raw materials without animal cruelty) was used as stimuli in this study because it is a representative example of CSR activities. As a result, when consumers are exposed to CSR messages online, perceived expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness of information source affect consumer's electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) acceptance and attitude toward a company. However, only trustworthiness influences eWOM acceptance in cases of a corporation information source. This study confirms the differences in eWOM acceptance and in attitudes to the company depending on to whom the messages were sent and with what content.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.312-321
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• 2011

Recently, lots of corporations take effect preannouncing activity before launching new product as communication strategy. Preannouncing information of new product is diffused in internet community which relate to the product. This study notes the effect of external vividness and internal vividness among information characteristics of new product to e-WOM(electronic word-of-mouth). The author aims to identify how to trigger intention of e-WOM on preannounced new products, and external vividness and internal vividness of determinants of e-WOM and intention of internet posting. The main findings are that external vividness and internal vividness positively influence e-WOM in internet community, and the e-WOM positively affects intention of internet posting.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.103-123
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• 2023

One of the valid perspectives in the e-commerce platform literature is the seller signaling strategy in the information asymmetry situation. In this study, a research model was constructed based on signaling theory and shopping goal theory to systematically explore the effects of a seller's signaling strategy on consumer decision-making. Specifically, the study examined whether the signaling effects (i.e., reputation, electronic word-of-mouth, price) provided by the seller differed based on consumers' shopping goals. For the empirical analysis, the Gaussian Copula method was employed, utilizing 26,246 data collected from Amazon, a leading e-commerce platform. The analysis revealed that the signals provided by the seller positively impacted sales, and this effect was moderated by consumers' shopping goals. Drawing on shopping goal theory, this study contributes to signaling theory and e-commerce literature by discovering differences in the effectiveness of a seller's signaling strategy based on the keywords input by consumers.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.91-121
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• 2008

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, has become a major business trend in these days. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily by developing the Internet technology. Most electronic commerce has being conducted between businesses to customers; therefore, the researches with respect to e-commerce are to find customer's needs, behaviors through statistical methods. However, the statistical researches, mostly based on a questionnaire, are the static researches, They can tell us the dynamic relationships between initial purchasing and repurchasing. Therefore, this study proposes dynamic research model for analyzing the cause of initial purchasing and repurchasing. This paper is based on the System-Dynamic theory, using the powerful simulation model with some restriction, The restrictions are based on the theory TAM(Technology Acceptance Model), PAM, and TPB(Theory of Planned Behavior). This article investigates not only the customer's purchasing and repurchasing behavior by passing of time but also the interactive effects to one another. This research model has six scenarios and three steps for analyzing customer behaviors. The first step is the research of purchasing situations. The second step is the research of repurchasing situations. Finally, the third step is to study the relationship between initial purchasing and repurchasing. The purpose of six scenarios is to find the customer's purchasing patterns according to the environmental changes. We set six variables in these scenarios by (1) changing the number of products; (2) changing the number of contents in on-line shopping malls; (3) having multimedia files or not in the shopping mall web sites; (4) grading on-line communities; (5) changing the qualities of products; (6) changing the customer's degree of confidence on products. First three variables are applied to study customer's purchasing behavior, and the other variables are applied to repurchasing behavior study. Through the simulation study, this paper presents some inter-relational result about customer purchasing behaviors, For example, Active community actions are not the increasing factor of purchasing but the increasing factor of word of mouth effect, Additionally. The higher products' quality, the more word of mouth effects increase. The number of products and contents on the web sites have same influence on people's buying behaviors. All simulation methods in this paper is not only display the result of each scenario but also find how to affect each other. Hence, electronic commerce firm can make more realistic marketing strategy about consumer behavior through this dynamic simulation research. Moreover, dynamic analysis method can predict the results which help the decision of marketing strategy by using the time-line graph. Consequently, this dynamic simulation analysis could be a useful research model to make firm's competitive advantage. However, this simulation model needs more further study. With respect to reality, this simulation model has some limitations. There are some missing factors which affect customer's buying behaviors in this model. The first missing factor is the customer's degree of recognition of brands. The second factor is the degree of customer satisfaction. The third factor is the power of word of mouth in the specific region. Generally, word of mouth affects significantly on a region's culture, even people's buying behaviors. The last missing factor is the user interface environment in the internet or other on-line shopping tools. In order to get more realistic result, these factors might be essential matters to make better research in the future studies.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.105-123
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• 2006

Traditional commerce has transformed into electronic commerce, then, mobile commerce again plays a critical role in diversifying different types of business. Although the fast changing of mobile commerce as an emerging channel of communication in business, not many studies address why consumers stay on mobile commerce and how they are influenced and influence other consumers. In this study, we investigate the impact of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation on customers' satisfaction and its results. We adopt the Technology Acceptance Model(TAM), value-satisfaction theories, and other motivation studies in developing theoretical framework. We then synthesize these theoretical approaches to conceptualize mobile customers' behavior. Specifically, we postulate cognitive beliefs that influence customers' satisfaction with mobile commerce, and, in turn, significantly contribute to the spread of positive word-of-mouth. The current research model and its results could provide a rigorous basis for understanding customers' behavior in wireless contexts.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.294-306
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• 2021

In the era of brand economy, companies fulfill their social responsibilities to enhance consumers' brand trust, thereby enhancing brand loyalty. On the other hand, the current Covid-19 epidemic has accelerated the pace of digital transformation of enterprises and has also made consumers pay more attention to the online reputation of enterprises. Based on the Chinese consumer market, this paper studies the corporate social responsibility, Internet word-of-mouth, brand trust, and brand loyalty of electronic product companies. To verify the impact of corporate social responsibility on brand loyalty through Internet word-of-mouth and brand trust, this paper issued a questionnaire survey to Chinese consumers. A total of 469 questionnaires were used for empirical analysis, and SPSS21.0 was used to analyze the collected data. The results are summarized as follows: (1) CSR has a positive impact on brand trust. (2) CSR has a positive impact on brand loyalty. (3) Brand trust has a positive impact on brand loyalty. (4) Brand trust and e-WOM play an intermediary role in CSR and brand loyalty.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.545-559
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• 2016

Recently consumers to access various Word-Of-Mouth information on online. And eWOM (eWOM : electronic Word-Of-Mouth) information had an important effect on consumer attitude(purchase intention). The purpose of this study is to investigate what the general characteristics of eWOM and the effects of how these factors will affect credibility, eWOM acceptance and purchase intention. In this study, the model contains information characteristics variables(consensus, newness), community characteristics(tie strength, interaction) on eWOM characteristics. This study makes contributions as follows. First, information consensus had not effect on credibility. Second, information newness and community characteristics(tie strength, interaction) had a significant on credibility. Third, credibility is the important factor on eWOM acceptance. Lastly, eWOM acceptance had a considerable influence on purchase intentions.

• Journal of Smart Tourism
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.5-15
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• 2023

With the growing trend of online global market, customers have further technological capabilities in searching for information and online shopping on the Internet. In addition, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is a significant factor that influences customer purchase intention. However, the perspective of online users on hotel websites is still in its infancy, especially in various cultural contexts. The current study examined a theoretical framework of hotel websites to understand how online users perceive the importance of hotel websites with regard to influencing purchase intention, within the content of Thai online users through an online questionnaire survey. Findings show that usability positively influences online Thai users' satisfaction. Moreover, eWOM has a significant positive influence on satisfaction, but eWOM has an indirect effect on the intention to purchase. Practical implications are further discussed.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.449-476
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• 2016

This study examines how an initially perceived product value affects consumer's purchase intention after reading online reviews with various tones. The study proposes that associations among initially perceived overall product value, degree of confirmation resulting from reading the reviews, and final purchase intention differ across review tones such that 1) when the tone is favorable, the effect of an initially perceived product value is stronger than when the tone is critical, and 2) when the tone is extreme, the effect of confirmation is stronger than when the tone is moderate. The survey was conducted with 276 online shopping mall users in Korea, and most of the hypotheses were supported. This study asserts that the effects of online reviews should be considered together with customer's level of expectation formed prior to reading online reviews, which resulted from extensive search and screening processes that the customer went through before reading online reviews.