The impact of firms' marketing communication on word of mouth (WOM) has been studied extensively in recent years, with a growing focus on electronic word of mouth (eWOM). The advent of the internet and the participatory web or Web 2.0 has dramatically changed the relationship between marketers and consumers, with consumers playing a more active role. However, there is a gap in understanding this area, including a lack of research on identifying specific groups of consumers that companies should focus on for eWOM marketing. Eye-tracking techniques have been suggested to address this issue, but these methods can be costly and rely on lab-based observations. Analyzing unstructured data from consumer-to-consumer interactions on social media is an underutilized approach in current marketing literature. The authenticity of eWOM is a highly valuable trait, but there can be a tension between commercial and communal norms, even in relatively informal settings like a blogger endorsing a product.

본 연구는 학원의 교육서비스 품질 및 학원강사의 변혁적리더십에 대한 인식을 조사하고, 이러한 요인들이 고등학생의 자기효능감 및 구전의도에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지 구조적 관계를 분석하는 것을 목적으로 하였다. 이를 통해 고등학 생을 대상으로 하는 학원의 교육서비스 품질 개선을 유도하고, 학원강사의 변혁적리더십에 대한 인식을 제고시킴으로써 궁극적으로 학원교육 및 학원경영 성과를 높이는데 기여하고자 하였다. 이를 위해 입시·검정 및 보습학원에서 수강 중인 고등학생 640명을 대상으로 설문조사를 실시하였으며, BM SPSS StatisticsDHK 25와 AMOS 21 프로그램을 활용하여 수집된 자료를 분석하였다. 본 연구의 주요 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 학원의 교육서비스 품질은 신뢰성, 확신성, 공감성, 유형성, 응답성 순이고, 변혁적리더십은 지적자극, 개별적배려, 영감적동기화, 이상적영향력 순으로 전반적으로 높은 것으로 나타났다. 고등학생의 자기효능감은 자기조절효능감, 자신감, 과제난이도 순이고, 구전의도는 주관적구전의도, 적극 적구전의도, 객관적구전의도 순으로 보통 수준 이상인 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 학원의 교육서비스 품질과 학원강사의 변혁적리더십이 고등학생의 자기효능감 및 구전의도에 미치는 영향을 분석한 결과, 교육서비스 품질은 변혁적리더십, 자기 효능감, 구전의도에, 변혁적리더십은 자기효능감과 구전의도에, 자기효능감은 구전의도에 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 셋째, 교육서비스 품질과 구전의도 관계에서 학원강사의 변혁적리더십과 고등학생의 자기효능감은 매개효과가 있는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 연구결과는 학원장이 학원의 교육서비스 품질과 학원강사의 리더십을 제고시키고, 이를 바탕으로 학생들의 자기효능감과 구전의도를 높이는 구조적 관계 속에서 경영활동을 수행해야 한다는 것을 시사한다.

This research analyzes the relationship between backpackers´online activities related to brands by identifying benefits (functional and experiential) that they seek and the impact of those benefits on the eWom generated during their travel journey.

The importance of eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) communication through online communities is increasing on a daily basis. This study analyzed how the relationship between eWOM (electronic Word-Of-Mouth) factor and eWOM communication depends on the cultural orientation of users in the online community. The research model was developed based on four cultural orientations of individual affect Social tie and usefulness. The model consists of variables such as social tie and perceived usefulness as predecessors of eWOM, four dimensions of cultural orientation (Horizontal Individualism, Horizontal Collectivism, Vertical Individualism, Vertical Collectivism), and eWOM. The model was tested empirically using the PLS (partial least squares) structure equation model. Survey was conducted for online community users in South Korea. Data was statistically validated whether fits on research model. The study results reveal that Social Tie have a positive effect on Perceived Usefulness. Social Tie and Perceived Usefulness have a positive effect on eWOM. 3 of cultural orientations (HC, VI, VC) have a positive effect on Social Tie. Only one of cultural orientations (HC) have an negative effect on Perceived Usefulness. Especially, horizontal collectivism (HC) shows strong correlation with perceived usefulness, whereas vertical collectivism (VC) shows weak correlation with perceived usefulness andvertical individualism (VI) shows strongly correlation with social tie, whereas horizontal individualism (HI) shows weak correlation with social tie. Based on the study results, customized service strategy could be formulated according to the different vertical styles and various eWOM factors.

Every day, billions of messages about news, rumours, and experiences are shared by consumers through different kinds of social network medias (Berger, 2014). These shared messages, so called word-of-mouth (WOM), have crucial influence on the success of products and services (Dubois, Bonezzi, & De Angelis, 2016). WOM is a kind of interpersonal communication about products and services between consumers. Thus, it can be significantly influenced by interpersonal relationships. We conducted three experiments to investigate the effects of interpersonal relationships on brand evaluation. In three experiments, we examined how interpersonal relationship affects consumers’ evaluation of brands when they receive a eWOM message in the setting of closed virtual group of friends. The results make several contributions. First, we provide a framework to understand how interpersonal relationships affect the effects of eWOM in a closed virtual group of friends. Second, the effects of interpersonal relationship can be moderated by different situation of agreements, which extends the researches on eWOM. Third, the results reveal the reasons why different dimension of interpersonal relationship can play different role in the relationship between eWOM and brand evaluation.

Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) are facing the dilemma: on one hand, communicating branding messages effectively to target markets all over the world requires abundant resources, while stakeholders within the destination have different (sometimes even conflicting) interests in destination branding on the other. Specifically, residents of a tourism destination have great potential in helping the place by being involved in tourism development and destination branding, due to the development of information technology. To investigate how self-congruity influences residents’ evaluation on the place, as well as their voluntary WOM behaviours, this article proposes self-congruity as a key construct affecting residents’ place satisfaction and expectation, and further influencing residents’ place related behaviours, such as word-of-mouth (WOM). An empirical study was conducted in Ljubljana, Slovenia, with 309 questionnaire collected. Via a structural equation modelling analysis, this study finds that variation of self-congruity in the impacts on place satisfaction and expectation, as well as two types of WOM behaviours, namely one-to-one WOM and one-to-many WOM. This provides evidence to support the standpoint that different WOM are motivated by different factors via different psychological mechanisms. Specifically, (1) actual self-congruity and place satisfaction (reflecting an evaluation of past of current performance of the place) only affect one-to-one WOM, suggesting that this type of WOM is mainly motivated by one’s current state; (2) ideal self-congruity was found to affect place expectation, suggesting a consistency in the expectation of one’s self image and the place; (3) one-to-many WOM has two indicators of ideal self-congruity and place expectation, implying publishing one’s opinions and thoughts is driven by expectation rather than current state. In general, the results add detailed and in-depth findings on distinguishing the motivations of different types of WOM in WOM literature.

The aims of this study are to understand the influence of celebrity endorsement on consumers’ word-of-mouth and decision behavior, that is: (i) understand the influence of the number of followers of the celebrity and the positive/negative valence of the messages conveyed by them in the intention to buy and their intention to generate eWoM; (ii) analyzing how the behavior of a celebrity (antisocial vs. pro-social) may affect the perception of its credibility, the intention of the consumers to relate to the celebrity in the social networks and the social identification with it; (iii) understand the impact of celebrity messages on brands and products present in social networks. To achieve this goal a quantitative methodology for the development of research was adopted, selecting the application of a survey as the information collection instrument. The sample is selected by convenience sampling method, collecting 241 responses, 122 females and 119 males. Findings show: (i) concerning the intention to purchase, female seem to be more influenced by the opinions and recommendations of celebrities, while male tend to be more likely to generate e-word-of-mouth into their contact network through social media. (ii) Regarding to antisocial versus prosocial type of celebrity, celebrities with a prosocial behavior seems to have a greater influence for both genders in the way they identify with celebrity and their willingness to relate to them. (iii) Female tends to feel higher purchase intention when exposed to an endorsement, where celebrity promotes a brand or product through its Instagram account.

Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) are facing the dilemma: on one hand, communicating branding messages effectively to target markets all over the world requires abundant resources, while stakeholders within the destination have different (sometimes even conflicting) interests in destination branding on the other. Specifically, residents of a tourism destination have great potential in helping the place by being involved in tourism development and destination branding, due to the development of information technology. To investigate how self-congruity influences residents’ evaluation on the place, as well as their voluntary WOM behaviours, this article proposes self-congruity as a key construct affecting residents’ place satisfaction and expectation, and further influencing residents’ place related behaviours, such as word-of-mouth (WOM). An empirical study was conducted in Ljubljana, Slovenia, with 309 questionnaire collected. Via a structural equation modelling analysis, this study finds that variation of self-congruity in the impacts on place satisfaction and expectation, as well as two types of WOM behaviours, namely one-to-one WOM and one-to-many WOM. This provides evidence to support the standpoint that different WOM are motivated by different factors via different psychological mechanisms. Specifically, (1) actual selfcongruity and place satisfaction (reflecting an evaluation of past of current performance of the place) only affect one-to-one WOM, suggesting that this type of WOM is mainly motivated by one’s current state; (2) ideal self-congruity was found to affect place expectation, suggesting a consistency in the expectation of one’s self image and the place; (3) one-to-many WOM has two indicators of ideal self-congruity and place expectation, implying publishing one’s opinions and thoughts is driven by expectation rather than current state. In general, the results add detailed and in-depth findings on distinguishing the motivations of different types of WOM in WOM literature.

Previous research has suggested that if WOM (word-of-mouth) receivers are exposed to a video message in which a person tell that he/she had great effort to earn money and purchase a desirable product, they feel benignly envious and increase WTP (willingness-to-pay) for the recommended product; if they are exposed to another message in which a person tell that he had no effort to earn money and purchase the product, they feel maliciously envious and increase WTP for a related, but different, product. However, it may not be true in the context of e-WOM (electronic word-of-mouth) through SNS (social networking sites). This research conducted three laboratory experiments in the context of e-WOM, unlike the context of face-to-face WOM. The results showed that: (1) receivers were less likely to feel maliciously envious to friends and increase WTP for the products; (2) receivers were less likely to feel maliciously envious if they are exposed to the message as a tool for marketing; and (3) receivers were less likely to avoid the recommended product even though they feel maliciously envious if they have any other measures of retaliation. With these findings, this research contributes to a progress in the field of e-WOM through SNS.

A large body of word-of-mouth (WOM) research has shown that ratings, rating volume, and text comments function as determinants to assessing quality of products (Berger, 2014; Chen & Lurie, 2013). However, little attention has been paid to the reviewers as a significant source of product evaluation (He & Bond, 2013). To be specific, there is a lack of understanding whether a product is preferred because it was recommended by an associative group or because it was not preferred by a dissociative reference group (dissimilar to self). The results from Study 1 demonstrated that participants are more influenced by similarity-attraction than by dissimilarity-repulsion. To be specific, African American participants rated product a higher, which was recommended by their associative reference group. Similar pattern was revealed in the male group. In Study 2, we found an underlying mechanism to explain the effects from Study 1. We tested the perceived difficulty of processing as a potential mediator for this phenomenon and utilized a choice/reject task. The analysis of moderated mediation (Hayes, 2013) revealed that the significant indirect effect of the number of options on purchase intention was conditional on the deleting approach but not on the choosing approach. By rejecting multiple alternatives, participants were more likely to buy the product since it is easier to make decision. In conclusion, this finding provides insights regarding the decisionmaking process resulting from social influence based on a reference-dependence approach.

For the past decade, the convenience of sharing information online has improved drastically with the development of smart devices and social media. Such changes have contributed to regarding online word-of-mouth (WOM) as one of the most important consumer information sources. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine online WOM effects (acceptance/redelivery intention) with the two-way interaction effects of fashion involvement and the market maven. The empirical study consisted of an offline survey that collected data from 341 respondents and analyzed the data by factor analysis, independent t-test, and two-way ANOVA with SPSS 20.0, producing the following results. First, the market maven effect was found to differ significantly based on the level of fashion involvement, and is also higher when fashion involvement is high. Second, fashion involvement primarily affected online WOM acceptance, while the market maven significantly affected redelivery intention. Moreover, fashion involvement and market maven had relevant two-way interaction with both of the online WOM effects. Third, market maven had measurable effects on WOM redelivery types (objective/subjective) and directions (positive/negative/ neutral), whereas fashion involvement did not have any primary effects on them. However, fashion involvement and market maven had two-way interaction effects on the positive and negative direction of WOM redelivery. Based on these findings, the study suggests the importance of investigating and understanding the complicated online WOM behaviors of consumers, specifically from both managerial and theoretical perspectives.

Recently, marketing researchers have started to explore the impact of Social Media Brand Communities in digital marketing strategies. However, in spite of this interest, scant attention has been paid to the micro-mechanisms stimulating electronic word of mouth (E-WOM) within social media brand community. In this sense, this exploratory research aims to explore how consumers‟ engagement is related with positive E-WOM.

Chinese economic develops fast and have became the second economic entity all around the world. The development of economic pushes the popularize of mobile clients. Accordingly, whenever and wherever the consumers are, they can acquire and share information about productions directly, e-word-of-mouth (eWOM) becomes one of the important part of online marketing. Customers prefer to trust opinion leaders and real users’ feedback rather than the advertisements which are made by companies. The choice preference of information source accelerate the development of social media. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association, have grown rapidly and have advocated for the burgeoning new industry. (Robert V. et al., 2010) Marketers and sociologists have recognized the importance of the phenomenon of word of mouth, for more than half a century, proposing, for example, that WOM affects the majority of all purchase decisions (Brooks 1957; Dichter 1966).They find that the “friend who recommends a tried and trusted product” rather than the “salesman who tries to get rid of merchandise” (Dichter 1966, p. 165). Marketing scholars has evolved from a transaction orientation to one based on relationships (Vargo and Lusch 2004) Consumers are regarded as active coproducers of value and meaning, whose WOM use of marketing communications can be idiosyncratic, creative, and even resistant (Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry 2003; Kozinets 2001; Muñiz and Schau 2005; Thompson and Sinha 2008) Therefore, when the behavior is on/off, impact measured as probability of purchase can differ substantially from impact measured as attitude change (Robert East 2015). This study will select significant respondents from Chinese social media users as sample. The WOM communication is send information to marketers from the market-based message interaction community ,gathering consumers with same interests. In this study, not only structural equation modeling (SEM) will be used to test research model. But also using the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and SPSS, the first method attempts to find a new configuration to verify the finding and the SPSS can be used to make reliability analysis and validity analysis. WOM of the research model will also be tested by fsQCA and SPSS to obtain the conclusion about what extent do two communication ways influence consumers’ purchase preference. We want to explore different results between opinion leaders and the real users in different communication ways. Based on the results we will give some implication to both marketing scholars and practitioners.

Social commerce is a kind of internet shopping mall in which consumers purchase the products with other consumers through mutual interactions including the development of SNS(social network service). Social commerce has expanded rapidly as a mainstream online shopping mall over the past five years driving consumers to purchase more fashion products providing the cheaper prices than open market internet shopping mall. The purpose of this study is to identify the important parameters of social commerce characteristics and consumer characteristics that affect repurchase intention and wordof-mouth intention. A 221 survey questionnaire was distributed to men in their 20’s and 30’s who live in Seoul metropolitan area. The data were analyzed utilizing Cronbach's α, factor analysis, and regression analysis using the SPSS 18.0 program. The results revealed, first, that in terms of social commerce characteristics, three variables(website reputation, interactivity, and product scarcity) influenced repurchase intention. Among them, website reputation identified as the most important factor influencing repurchase intention and word-of-mouth intention. Second, with regard to consumer characteristics, interest and a tendency toward impulse buying affected the repurchase intention, and interest and internet shopping experience have influenced the word-of-mouth intention. Among three variables interest in social commerce identified as the key factor affecting both repurchase intention and word-of-mouth intention. The results of the study provide the practical implications and suggest the business strategies to enhance social commerce in the future by identifying the key social commerce characteristics and consumer characteristics that influence male consumers’ buying behaviors.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of power blog self- presentation and on-line shopping mall reviews on the word of mouth (WOM) effect and apparel purchasing behavior. Consumers living in Seoul and Gyeonggi received questionnaires. There were 303 usable forms that could be analyzed by descriptive statistics, factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha, and regression analysis. The results were as follows: There was a significant effect of power blog self-presentation such as interactivity, media effect, and business intention on information acceptance through WOM. Power blog self-presentation, such as interactivity and business intention, affect information delivery by WOM significantly. There was a significant effect of review consideration, such as agreement, usefulness, enjoyment, and purity, on information acceptance of WOM. Reviews describing enjoyment, purity, and usefulness affect information delivery of WOM significantly. Business intention, media effect, and purity directly affect apparel-purchasing behavior, and affect the WOM effect as a mediator variable and then purchasing behavior. Whereas, interactivity, overstatement, and enjoyment affect the WOM effect as a mediator variable, and then affect overall purchasing behavior. Therefore, fashion firms consider active interaction with power blog visitors and promote the way of enjoying with fun through review of apparel on-line shopping mall when they try to implement viral marketing with WOM effect.