Search results

This study developed a new interpretation of the attitude contagion theory, with the information adoption model (IAM) as the theoretical basis. A review of electronic word-of-mouth studies was conducted by using informational and individual determinants to develop an integrated empirical model that identified the antecedents and consequences of consumer attitude toward online reviews.

This study recruited 750 members of Facebook beauty fan pages in Taiwan and used the structural equation model to test research hypotheses.

Results revealed that perceived “ electronic word-of mouth (eWOM) credibility of online reviews” and “product involvement” could be used to explain the effects of attitude toward online reviews. Regarding the attitude contagion effect, the effect of “attitude toward online review” on both “attitude toward a product” and “attitude toward a brand” is stronger than that on “eWOM adoption.”

This paper provides valuable insights into the antecedents, consequences and mediating mechanisms that determine consumer attitude toward online reviews.

As consumers read multiple reviews, so consumer review consistency is important. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of consumer review consistency in influencing attitudes toward brands by examining its underlying effect on consumers’ emotions after they read consistent consumer reviews. In addition, the moderation effect of hedonic and utilitarian purchase values on positive consumer emotions and attitudes toward brands is explored.

This study used a quantitative design in which 329 participants – undergraduate and MBA students at a university in Taiwan – were asked to complete online questionnaires. To generalize the results, the questions in the questionnaire were based on any consumer reviews that the participants had recently browsed.

Consumer review consistency positively influences attitudes toward brands. Positive emotions are also developed when reading consistent consumer reviews, and this positively influences consumers’ attitudes toward brands. However, positive emotions are not derived from consistent consumer reviews in all contexts. The results show that positive emotions work well when consumers shop using hedonic value. Positive emotions create positive consumers’ attitudes toward a brand when they shop using hedonic value, but this significant effect does not occur when consumers shop using utilitarian value.

This study’s results suggest that only investigating the quality of a consumer review or other aspects of a single review might overlook the impact of consumer review consistency, as consumers read multiple reviews. Consumer review consistency plays an important role in brand effectiveness, as consumers form positive attitudes toward brands when they read consistent reviews. Positive emotions can strengthen consumers’ attitudes toward a brand. Moreover, positive emotions increase positive attitudes toward brands only when consumers shop using hedonic value. However, positive emotions do not enhance consumers’ attitudes if they shop using utilitarian value.

Rather than focusing on the quality of a single review, online shops should carefully consider consumer review consistency. Although positive reviews are better than negative reviews, it is quite difficult for every shop to maintain 100 percent positive reviews. Therefore, maintaining and offering quality products and services are rather important to acquiring more positive reviews. Online shops should consider experimental marketing strategies when managing online shops. The layout of online sites that show consistent consumer reviews can provide consumers with cues that shorten decision making, especially for products that consumers tend to shop for using hedonic value.

This research extends the previous consumer review literature. Previous research was focused mainly on the quality of consumer reviews or other aspects of a single review. This research shows that focusing a single consumer review is not sufficient, as consumers generally read more than one consumer review. In addition, the role of positive emotions as a mediator between consumer review consistency and attitudes toward a brand was investigated. Furthermore, the moderated mediation effect was applied to investigate the role of shopping value (hedonic vs utilitarian value) as a moderator of positive emotions’ mediation effect.

This paper examines the role that attitudes toward online product reviews (OPRs), perceived credibility of OPRs and perceived benefit of OPRs play as antecedents of consumers’ reliance on OPRs in purchase decisions. A conceptual model of relationships investigated posits that attitudes drive reliance and are in turn driven by perceived benefit and credibility of OPRs. The study also examines gender differences in the constructs and their inter-relationships.

Data from a structured self-administered survey of US consumers are used to estimate parameters of a structural equation model (SEM) of the relationships. Gender differences in the structural relationships are tested using multi-group SEM, while gender differences in reliance, attitudes, benefit and credibility are tested using independent-samples t-tests.

Results show a strong positive effect of attitudes toward OPRs on reliance on OPRs. In turn, perceived benefit and credibility of OPRs are strong positive drivers of attitudes toward OPRs, with benefit having a greater impact. Structural relationships among the constructs are invariant across the two gender groups. However, there is a statistically significant difference between males and females in reliance on OPRs, with males exhibiting a tendency to rely more on OPRs than females.

The study introduces two new constructs to the literature – reliance on OPRs and global attitudes toward OPRs – and provides initial conceptualizations and operationalizations. The specific results underscore the relevance and importance of further research on these constructs and their relationships with other OPR-relevant constructs. They also provide initial indications of gender differences in consumers’ perceptions of OPRs and relationships among these and reliance on OPRs that are worthy of additional research attention.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to test whether the combined effects of valence and objectivity/subjectivity of online review have an effect on consumer judgment and whether e-WOM platforms have a moderating effect.

In total, 480 respondents participated in online experiments with a four (positive+objective, positive+subjective, negative+objective, and negative+subjective online review) by two (marketer-generated vs consumer-generated brand community web sites) between subject design.

The experiment showed that: an objective negative online review was rated higher in terms of message usefulness compared to the other types of online reviews; positive reviews, whether they are objective or subjective, were rated higher in terms of attitudes toward and intention to purchase the reviewed product, and the effects of online reviews moderated by e-WOM platforms on consumer judgment were supported.

The present study, based on an established theoretical foundation, will help the research community to gain a deeper understanding of the combined effects of online review valence and attributes on consumer judgment and whether user-generated web community is better for consumers to consult product experience.

The findings of this study can provide interested firms with useful strategies and tactics to enhance users’ acceptance of online reviews in terms of who operates the web sites.

With increasing use of consumers’ online reviews, the present study proposed and tested a comprehensive research model integrating both the valence and objectivity/subjectivity of online review, which has rarely been addressed in previous research.

The purpose of the current study is to explore how valenced fit reviews affect the consumer decision-making process during online apparel shopping.

A single factor (valence of fit review) within-subject experimental design was employed to examine how the valenced fit review (negative vs positive) affects the consumer online purchase decision process. A mock website was created to simulate the online shopping environment through four steps for developing a stimulus website for the main study. The data were analyzed using repeated multivariate analysis of variance and structural equation modeling.

A total of 418 female consumers completed an online self-administrated survey. Results showed that positive fit review was more compelling than negative fit review for female consumers when they like the apparel product. Two aspects of information credibility (review and site credibility) and confidence in purchase decision evoked by both fit reviews and overall product information were significant determinants of the consumer purchase decision process in increasing consumers’ future purchase intentions through attitude to the online retailer.

The current study was an attempt to fill the gap in knowledge regarding the crucial role of fit reviews in apparel product purchase decisions in an online context. This study confirmed the type of fit reviews that would be influential on female consumers’ online purchase decision-making process for apparel products when they liked the apparel product, supporting positive confirmation bias from the information processing point of view. This study contributed to the importance of the two concepts (i.e. credibility and confidence in the purchase decision) in online information processing and purchase decision-making process.

To explore the psychological mechanism through which consumer reviews affect people’s purchasing decisions and behavior, this study aims to examine the impact of statistical evidence embedded in product reviews on consumers’ perceptions and purchasing intentions.

The effects review valence and review volume are tested using a 3 (valence: positive vs neutral vs negative) × 2 (volume: high vs low) quasi-experimental design and online questionnaires.

The study finds that review valence has a stronger impact on consumers’ perceptions than review volume does. Negative reviews induce higher risk perception and a less favorable attitude toward purchases compared to positive reviews. In addition, although both attitude toward purchase and subjective norm are good antecedents of purchase intention, the attitude statistically has a stronger impact than the subjective norm.

This study contributes to extant literature from three perspectives. The authors have reexamined the findings of econometric models and advanced their implications by explaining the related psychological changes in people’s perceptions. Second, the authors have extended the application of the theory of reasoned action and found it to be a good fit in explaining consumers’ behavior related to consumer reviews. And finally, the authors have provided a clear guideline on the magnitude of the effects of review valence and volume on consumers’ perceptions.

This study provides a good complement to econometric studies from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It bridges the gap between exploratory studies and behavioral studies in the field of consumer reviews.

Word‐of‐mouth (WOM) has been found to significantly influence consumers' decision making. Much attention has been paid to the effect of WOM characteristics such as the number of postings, the dispersion of online conversations, the reputation of the reviewers, and the review quality on product sales. Little research, however, has examined the interaction process of online reviews. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the consumers' product attitude formation process in online WOM. Three research questions will be addressed in this paper, i.e. the effect of prior responses on the following repliers' product attitude, the negativity effect and the role of main messages in shaping consumers' product attitude formation process.

The product attitude formation process of online WOM is investigated using the data of product reviews (main messages) and their corresponding responses. The paper collected 26 product reviews from various web sites and kept the first 40‐50 responses for each review, which resulted in 26 main messages and 1,173 observations (i.e. responses) in total. A hierarchical Bayesian ordinal choice model is then specified and estimated with the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to address the research questions and to capture the main message heterogeneity.

The paper finds that the impact of prior responses (e.g. the proportion of positive and negative responses) on the product attitudes of the following responses differs significantly across products. This heterogeneity can be well explained by the characteristics of the main messages at the second‐level specification. Thereby, factors that influence consumers' product attitudes in the interaction process of online WOM include prior responses and main message characteristics. Another interesting finding is that positive responses have larger impacts on product attitudes than negative ones.

This research contributes to both academic research and the firms' online WOM management. Theoretically, this research is the first attempt to examine the formation process of attitudes toward new products in online communications. This research contributes by modeling how the dynamic process of online WOM influences new product attitudes. Furthermore, inconsistent with the “negativity effect” proposed by researchers (e.g. Skowronski and Carlston), the paper finds that positive responses matter more than negative ones in online communications. In addition, the way the paper configures the data for online communications is innovative and provides a perspective to quantitatively model the communication process. Managerially, this research provides implications for firms to intervene in the online communication process and influence consumer attitude of new products.

Online consumer reviews play an important role in influencing consumers' purchasing decisions by providing a wealth of information about products and services. Framed by uncertainty reduction theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine consumer perceptions of online consumer reviews and effects on consumer attitudes and usage behaviors in relation to individual characteristics.

Data were randomly collected from 1,930 US online consumer review users using an online survey.

The researchers found that consumers perceived both benefits and costs from online consumer reviews and that both benefits and costs influenced consumer attitudes toward, and usage behaviors of, online consumer reviews. Individual characteristics – confidence in the information process and consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence – were shown to determine how online consumer reviews were perceived.

The results provide insight to retailers and marketers as to how they can use consumer reviews for their products or services to improve business performance.

This research investigates consumer intention to follow online community advice. Applying the technology acceptance model (TAM) to the context of online restaurant communities, the study empirically examines the effects of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude and trust on the intention to follow online advice.

The data were collected from 360 members of online restaurant communities on Facebook and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The findings revealed that trust, perceived usefulness and attitude are key predictors of the intention to follow online restaurant community advice.

Extant research on the influence of online reviews on consumer behavior in the restaurant industry has largely focused on the characteristics of the review, reviewers or readers. Moreover, other studies have investigated consumers' motivations to write online restaurant reviews. This study, however, takes a different approach and examines what drives consumers to follow the advice from online restaurant communities.