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The purpose of this study is to examine the factors influencing online word-of-mouth communication engagement behavior of college students on social networks such as Facebook.

A survey instrument designed to measure the constructs assumed to have an influence on word-of-mouth communication on social networks was administered to college students who are actively using Facebook. Structural equation model was used to test the hypothesized relationships.

Results of the study show that social capital and trust were two important factors that positively influenced opinion-giving and opinion-seeking behaviors, which, in turn, influenced the word-of-mouth behavior on Facebook. Although these results were not significantly different from the findings reported in the literature, the results emphasize that the impact of social capital and trust on word of mouth increased through the opinion-seeking/giving path.

Although the college students are ideal users for Facebook, the use of college students could limit the generalizability of the results to other populations. Furthermore, the authors have only investigated a few constructs that are assumed to contribute to the online word-of-mouth communication behavior. Other studies should include a more comprehensive list of construct and test their impact.

The study contributes to the literature on word-of-mouth communication in online social networking sites. Organizations could benefit from this knowledge by understanding that social networking sites should be considered as a key component of the integrated marketing communication strategy, and specific targeting efforts could be directed for those users with high levels of opinion-seeking/giving.

Although online social networking has been popular, not many empirical studies have been conducted on consumers’ engagement in the word-of-mouth communication in social networking sites, such as Facebook. This study attempts to fulfill the gap.

The purpose of this paper is, first, to analyze the direct effects of the relationship chain “causal attributions and recovery efforts → satisfaction with service recovery → conventional and online word-of-mouth intentions” and, second, to study the moderating role of age in the relationship between satisfaction and subsequent word-of-mouth. Consumer assessment and behavior associated with service recovery is a topic of considerable interest for both academics and practitioners.

From an empirical perspective, this paper uses a sample of 336 individuals who experienced service failure at a retail store to estimate a structural equation model. Additionally, a multigroup analysis allows testing the existence of a moderating effect of age on the hypothesized relations.

Results allow to confirm the direct effects of causal attributions and recovery efforts on satisfaction with service recovery, and the impact of the latter, in turn, on conventional and online word-of-mouth intentions. Furthermore, the multigroup analysis reveals that age moderates the relationship between satisfaction and online word-of-mouth.

In service recovery situations, retailers should concentrate their efforts at providing evidence of the failure as temporary and inevitable as well as offering material or economic compensation.

This paper contributes to the identification of the most relevant variables influencing customer satisfaction with service recovery in a retail context. In addition to this, these results provide support to the importance of age on online word-of-mouth behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how information and communication technology (ICT) adoption in hotels contributes to satisfaction and loyalty from the consumer perspective, considering the online dimension of recommendations.

A quantitative research based on a structured questionnaire and using a personal survey method was developed. Surveys were conducted on 386 guests from Spanish hotels. Causal methodology by testing structural equation model was applied.

Significant relationships are obtained in the sequence “ICT use perception – satisfaction with ICT – overall satisfaction with the hotel – dimensions of loyalty” and the mediating effect of positive electronic word-of-mouth intention between ICT satisfaction and general intention to recommend the hotel is confirmed.

Future research can replicate these relationships in other tourist services and employ multidimensional scales to measure word-of-mouth behaviour.

The novelty of this work is that it studies the relationships between ICT, satisfaction and loyalty in hotel services, paying particular attention to positive word-of-mouth behaviour, both conventional and online.

El propósito de este trabajo es investigar la contribución que tiene la adopción de las TIC en los hoteles en la satisfacción y la lealtad, desde la perspectiva del consumidor y considerando la dimensión online de las recomendaciones.

Se desarrolló una investigación cuantitativa basada en un cuestionario estructurado y empleando el método de la encuesta personal. Se realizaron 386 encuestas a huéspedes de hoteles españoles. Se aplicó la metodología causal testando un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales.

Se obtienen relaciones significativas en la secuencia “percepción de los clientes del uso de las TIC – nivel de satisfacción con las TIC – nivel de satisfacción general con el hotel – dimensiones de la lealtad” y se confirma el efecto mediador que tiene la intención del boca-oreja online entre la satisfacción con las TIC y la intención general de recomendar el hotel.

En futuras investigaciones se pueden replicar estas relaciones en otros servicios turísticos y emplear escalas multidimensionales para medir la conducta de boca-oreja.

La novedad de este trabajo radica en el estudio de las relaciones entre las TIC, satisfacción y lealtad en los servicios hoteleros poniendo especial atención en la conducta de boca-oreja positivo, tanto convencional como online.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of corporate image and relationship marketing on trust, the impact of trust on consumer purchase intention, and the moderating effects of word‐of‐mouth between the influence of trust on consumer purchase intention.

Consumers of an online travel agency in Taiwan aged over 18 were taken as the research sample. Primary data were collected through convenience sampling. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The main findings are: corporate image has a significantly positive influence on trust, and commodity image has the most significant influence on trust, followed by functional image and institution image; structural and financial relationship marketing has significantly positive influence on trust, and structural relationship marketing has greater influence on trust compared with financial relationship marketing; trust has a significantly positive influence on consumer purchase intention; and positive word‐of‐mouth has a moderating effect between the influences of trust on consumer purchase intention.

Limitations of this study include: the data obtained in this study only reflected the correlations and cause and effect among the variables studied during a specific period of time; this paper only focused on tour agencies; consumers who used only the most popular online tour agencies were selected. Therefore, the samples might involve some bias. The implications of this study include: different types of corporate image will have different levels of influence on consumer trust. There is a need to support the previous study that relationship marketing has a significantly positive influence on consumer trust. The moderating effects of positive word‐of‐mouth between the influences of trust on consumer purchase intention must be examined. The influence of trust on purchase intention must be considered.

The study findings reveal the need and importance for a company to improve corporate image continuously. The study indicates the need to emphasize the use of critical relationship marketing and to realize the nature and importance of the moderating effect of word‐of‐mouth.

The value of this study is combined theory and practical and finding four management implications and three practical implications.

This study examined the relationship between perceived personalization and positive electronic word of mouth, as well as the mediating impact of online advertising engagement and the moderating effect of online users' modes on that relationship. The theory of presence serves as the foundation for the relationships among variables.

A quasi-experimental research design was used to carry out the investigation. The analysis was performed on 865 valid responses from the treatment and control groups.

Results showed no mediation for the control group and partial mediation for the treatment group. The treatment group's moderated mediation relationships were found as significant, but the control group's relationships were insignificant. The findings also supported the hypothesis that there is a significant association between perceived personalization and online advertising engagement for playful online users and a weak relationship for serious online users. On the mediation link of online advertising engagement between perceived personalization and positive electronic word of mouth, the conditional indirect influence of “online users' modes” has been specifically studied.

This study is the first to examine online advertising through the lens of the theory of presence and offers a moderated-mediation model of Online Users' Modes and Online Advertising Engagement, which is a valuable addition to the marketing body of knowledge.

This study aims to examine the effect of using word-of-mouth and online housing website strategies for student housing selection and building services satisfaction during COVID-19.

The study adopted mixed-methods research approach. An online survey of 975 public and private university students experience on room selection prior to school re-opening in Ghana was used. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and multiple regression model (MRM) were used to estimate the satisfaction of using online websites and word-of-mouth strategies (renting housing based on personal recommendation) on student room pricing and building services availability. Telephone interviews were further used to support the results of EFA and MRM.

The study reveals that most students were satisfied with the word-of-mouth strategy than online review marketing strategy for room selection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondly, online student housing review marketing strategy provided higher rent which did not reflect the services available. Furthermore, students were more interested in the nature of rooms, lavatories and kitchen in their choice of room than availability of internet, study area, television (TV) room and gym center.

The study suggest that student housing managers require to market their facilities as-it-is than to use one room as an advertising justification for all rooms which does not usually provide a true reflection of the existing situation of room. Again, housing which rely on online marketing strategies need to provide compensation for students who feel they have been misled by their advertisement.

The provision of compensation to students and availability of COVID-19 protection measures determine student room selection. Asides, the introduction of online marketing strategies in student housing in sub-Saharan student housing market is new, and, consequently, this study on it is a novelty.

Regulatory focus theory has been studied in an in-store retailing context. Although an in-store retailing differs from an e-tailing in terms of the factors such as absence of products, physical human interactions and store atmospherics, the application of regulatory factors in an e-tailing context is limited. This study aims to examine the moderating role of regulatory focus orientations in consumer e-tailing activities.

A laboratory experiment with 297 participants was conducted to test the theoretical propositions. Statistical techniques such as t-test were used to analyse the data.

Results show that a consumer online purchase intentions, product review and spreading positive word of mouth vary from promotion-focused individuals to prevention-focused individuals. Results also show that there is no difference in spreading negative word of mouth between promotion-focused and prevention-focused individuals after encountering an unpleasant shopping experience. Finally, results show both the regulatory focus-oriented shoppers are encouraged by sales promotions.

Arguably, this is the first study to examine how consumers’ regulatory orientations moderate their e-tailing activities. The results of this study have implications for both academicians and managers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine information cascades in the context of users’ e-book reading behavior and differentiate it from alternative factors that lead to herd behavior, such as network externalities and word-of-mouth effects.

This paper constructed panel data using information concerning 226 e-books in 30 consecutive days from Sina.com’s reading channel (Book.Sina.com.cn) from October 2, 2013, to October 31, 2013 of the same year in China. A multinomial logit market-share model was employed.

E-books’ ranking has a significant impact on their market share, as predicted by informational cascades theory. Higher ranking e-books’ clicks will see a greater increase as a result of an increase in clicks ranking. Due to the information cascades effect, review volume had no impact on the market share of popular e-books. Total votes had a powerful impact on the market share of e-books, showing that once information cascade occurred, it could be enhanced by the increase in total votes. The total clicks of e-books had a significant impact on their market share, suggesting that online reading behavior would be influenced by network externalities.

As important information, the ranking or popularity of e-books should be carefully considered by online reading web sites, publishers, and authors. It is not enough for the authors and publishers of e-books to simply pay attention to the content. They should design their marketing strategies to allow network externalities and informational cascades to work for them, not against them. Online reading web sites should also focus on eliminating certain behavior, such as “brush clicks” and “brush votes,” in order to prevent an undesirable information cascade due to false information.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to examine information cascades in the context of users’ e-book reading behavior. Moreover, this study can help other researchers by utilizing a large sample of daily data from one of the earliest online reading platforms in China.

The word-of-mouth comments considered as the evaluation of a purchase experience have been widely discussed in the literature. Nevertheless, the study of online reviews pre-purchase stage remains limited. The purpose of this study is to analyze the variables that support word-of-mouth adoption in the choice of the hotel, from the receiver perspective.

The information was collected by face-to-face survey to 393 guests from 32 hotels in two Spanish cities. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypotheses.

The results confirm the significant and indirect effects of the motivations for conducting reviews on online word-of-mouth adoption. Specifically, the significant relationship chain of convenience and risk reduction motivations, intention to consult online comments, volume of comments exert a significant influence on acceptance the suggestions in online reviews and recommendations about the hotels.

The study of these variables advances the literature on online word-of-mouth by analyzing in-depth the antecedents of the purchase decision using technologies. From the practical point of view, the results help hotels managers to improve the way to share information by facilitating access to the accommodation experiences of other consumers.

The novelty of this research is mainly found in the study of how consumers modify their behavior using online word-of-mouth reviews. From the receiver perspective, consumer motivations, word-of-mouth volume and intention to consult serve as antecedents of purchase decision.