Investigation of electronic-word-of-mouth on online social networking sites written by authors with commercial interest
| Published date | 10 June 2019 |
| Pages | 462-480 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-09-2016-0254 |
| Date | 10 June 2019 |
| Author | Wee-Kheng Tan,Bo-Yuan Lee |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
Investigation of
electronic-word-of-mouth on
online social networking sites
written by authors with
commercial interest
Wee-Kheng Tan
Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and
Bo-Yuan Lee
Department of Multimedia and M-Commerce, Kainan University, Luzhu, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate the credibility assessment and adoption of electronic
word-of-mouth on online social-networking sites, social word-of-mouth (sWOM), where the author writes
product reviews on Facebook and hopes their Facebook friends will buy these products. The readers of the
sWOM message are aware of the author’s commercial intentions. sWOM messages on search goods and
experience goods are considered separately.
Design/methodology/approach –Author of sWOM messages invites their closed circle of Facebook friends
to participate in a survey. The respondents are randomly assigned to read a product review of a search good
(i.e. a laptop computer) or an experience good (i.e. a moisturizer cream (beauty product)). The partial least squares
method is used to analyze the data from 339 returns (166 for the search good and 173 for the experience good).
Findings –The sWOM readers’assessments of the messages’credibility remain free from commercial
influence. While the traditional factors of credibility and author-reader tie strength continue to influence the
adoption of sWOM message, readers’perceptions of the sWOM author’s marketing skills is also a factor. The
relationships between the constructs depend on whether the products are search or experience goods.
Originality/value –Few studies investigate the type of sWOM considered here. Commercially influenced
sWOM messages are effective since the author’s marketing skills, and other often-cited factors, affect
the credibility and adoption of sWOM. Thus, the equality-matching (friendship) relationship and the
market-pricing (sales) relationship can work hand-in-hand in the sWOM context.
Keywords Adoption, Credibility, Commercial influence,
Electronic-word-of-mouth on online social-networking sites, Experience goods, Search goods
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
A frequent starting point for many studies of word-of-mouth (WOM) takes the form of an
informal communication, about a product, service, or company, that is directed at other
consumers and that originates from sources that are perceived to be independent of
commercial influence (Litvin et al., 2008). This type of communication can be traditional
WOM (tWOM) or electronic WOM (eWOM). However, there also exist other WOM hybrids
that show varying degrees of commercial influence, such as Facebook fan pages and
sponsored recommendations (Kang et al., 2014; Lu et al., 2014).
eWOM on online social-networking sites, social word-of-mouth (sWOM) is a new form of
eWOM communication (Balaji et al., 2016). sWOM is the spread of eWOM messages within
the online social-networking community (Luarn et al., 2014). This form of communication
has created new possibilities for marketers to connect to consumers (Kang et al., 2014) and
has attracted intense attention from researchers and marketers (Eisingerich et al., 2015;
Fang, 2014; See-To and Ho, 2014; Wang and Chang, 2013).
Online Information Review
Vol. 43 No. 3, 2019
pp. 462-480
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-09-2016-0254
Received 2 September 2016
Revised 15 February 2017
23 June 2017
15 September 2017
5 January 2018
Accepted 12 October 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
462
OIR
43,3
This paper considers sWOM content that is written by individuals who are both
salespeople and consumers. By writing product reviews on their Facebook pages,
these authors (of sWOM messages) hope that their closed Facebook social circle will order
the products from them after reading the reviews, even though the readers are aware of
these authors’commercial interests in the product.
The sWOM considered in this study reflects the presence of both the equality-matching
and market-pricing relationships.Equality-matching is a typeof relationship that is prevalent
among acquaintances and colleagues; here, people track and try to balance the favors given
with the favors received. The market-pricing relationship refers to people who use a single
value or utilitymetric (usually money) to make ratio comparisons of the costsand benefits of
exchanges (Tuk et al., 2009). Thus, individuals who receive recommendations from a
salesperson (market pricing) may behavedifferently than they would if the recommendations
came from people with whom they have an equality-matching relationship (Kirmani and
Campbell, 2004). It is useful to see how consumers behave when they consider the sWOM
author to be both a friend and a salesperson at the same time, thus, resulting in the
co-existence of a friendship (equality-matching) and sales (market pricing) relationship.
Figure 1 presents the key characteristics of the sWOM considered in this study.
This study addresses the gap in the word-or-mouth literature in several ways.
It considers a type of sWOM message that is written by authors who are concurrently
salespeople, consumers and acquaintances of the readers of the sWOM message. The
readers are aware of the authors’commercial interests. As such, this investigation adds to
the limited number of studies that consider examples of WOM messages that have varying
degrees of commercial influence (Kang et al., 2014; Lu et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2010).
sWOM considered in this study
WOM
tWOM eWOM
sWOM
• sWOM is not independent of commercial influence (usually
WOM is viewed as independent of commercial influence)
• sWOM author is both a salesperson and consumer of product
(often WOM author performing the latter role is considered)
• sWOM reader is a friend and potential customer of the author,
and is aware of author’s commercial intent. Thus, the author
possesses both market pricing and equality matching relationship
with the reader (unlike WOMs in websites such as TripAdvisor
where the author is stranger and no commercial transaction
exists between author and reader)
Notes: WOM, word-of-mouth; tWOM, traditional-WOM; eWOM,
electronic-WOM; sWOM, eWOM on online social networking sites
Figure 1.
sWOM considered
in this study
463
Investigation
of electronic-
word-of-mouth
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