The Effectiveness of Electronic Word of Mouth on Consumers’
Perceptions of Adopting Products/Services
A Literature Review
Ali Reza Montazemi and Hamed Qahri Saremi
DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Hamilton, L8S 4M4, Ontario, Canada
Keywords: Electronic Word of Mouth, eWOM, Self-service Technology, SST, Review, Grounded Theory, Perception,
Adoption Process, Social Communication Framework.
Abstract: The objective of this paper is to identify factors that influence the effectiveness of electronic word of mouth
(eWOM) message on the consumers’ perception of adopting products/services offered through self-service
technology and brick-and-mortar channels. We draw on “social communication framework” and “Grounded
Theory Literature Review Method” to systematically review the factors investigated in the extant eWOM
literature to synthesize the effectiveness of eWOM message on consumers' perception of adopting
products/services. This enabled us to identify several gaps in the body of knowledge in the eWOM literature
that provide direction for future research to ameliorate the gaps.
1 INTRODUCTION
Consumers increasingly use online media channels
(e.g., online discussion forums, consumer review
sites, weblogs, social network sites) to share and use
electronic word of mouth (eWOM) about
products/services (Cheung and Thadani, 2012).
eWOM is considered a powerful marketing force.
For example, Facebook is selling user endorsement
of products/services and Google is planning to do
the same in the near future (Miller and Goel, 2013).
The effectiveness of eWOM on consumers’
perceptions of adopting products/services has been
studied extensively in recent years (Cheung and
Thadani, 2012; Wu and Gaytan, 2013). However,
the scope of the published studies in this area is
fragmented (Cheung and Thadani, 2012), making it
difficult to draw systematic conclusions about the
effectiveness of eWOM. As will be shown in this
paper, researchers have identified 173 constructs
within three contexts (i.e., self-service technology
(SST), brick-and-mortar, and unknown) and three
stages of the adoption process (i.e., pre-usage, initial
use, and repeated use) to investigate the
effectiveness of eWOM on the consumers'
perception of adopting products/services.
Adoption of products/services by consumers
involves a process that occurs over time and consists
of three stages, with actions and decisions occurring
at each stage (Rogers, 2003). Pre-usage stage of
adoption process begins with awareness that leads to
mental evaluation of the products/services, which in
turn may lead to consumers’ initial use of the
products/services (Looney et al., 2008). Initial use
consists of trial that may lead to consumers’ repeated
use of the products/services (Looney et al., 2008).
This paper presents a systematic review of the
extant eWOM literature to synthesize the factors that
shape the effectiveness of eWOM on the consumers'
perception of adopting products/services, across
three stages of adoption process. Our findings
identify critical knowledge gaps in need of future
investigation. To save space, we use eWOM to
represent “eWOM message” and adoption process to
represent three stages of “pre-usage, initial-use, and
repeated-use”.
This paper is organized as follows. First, we
present a theoretical framework for synthesizing the
extant literature on eWOM. Next, based on the five
steps of "Grounded Theory Literature Review
Method", (Wolfswinkel et al., 2013), we define our
methodology for analyses of the extant eWOM
literature. Section 4 provides a comprehensive
summary of our findings and a classification of the
factors that shape the effectiveness of eWOM on the
consumers' perception of adopting products/services
324
Montazemi A. and Qahri Saremi H..
The Effectiveness of Electronic Word of Mouth on Consumers’ Perceptions of Adopting Products/Services - A Literature Review.
DOI: 10.5220/0004850603240331
In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST-2014), pages 324-331
ISBN: 978-989-758-023-9
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
offered through both SSTs and brick-and-mortar
channels. We conclude by discussing the
implications of our findings for further theoretical
and empirical investigations.
Figure 1: Our Conceptual Framework.
2 THEORETICAL FOUNDATION
eWOM is considered as a prominent form of social
influence that affects the consumers’ perceptions of
products/services adoption process (Bock et al.,
2012). Social influence is the extent to which
members of a social network influence one another's
perceptions. This influence is exerted through
messages (signals) that help to form perception of
the value of a product/service, at each stage of the
adoption process (Montazemi and Qahri Saremi,
2013). eWOM, as a form of social influence, is
consumer-generated product/service evaluations
posted on the company or a third party websites
(Mudambi and Schuff, 2010). The rise of online
media channels during the last two decades has
offered fertile ground for eWOM to become an
important means of influencing consumers’
perception of pertinent product/services offered
through self-service technologies (SSTs) and/or
brick-and-mortar companies (Van Hoye and
Lievens, 2007).
We draw on social communication framework
(Hovland, 1948) as the theoretical underpinning to
guide our literature analysis. Social communication
is defined as “the process by which an individual
(the communicator) transmits stimuli to modify the
behavior of other individuals (receivers)” (Hovland,
1948, p. 371). The eWOM, as a form of online social
communication media, comprises five major
dimensions that are depicted in Figure 1: (1) the
eWOM communicator (source) who transmits the
eWOM, (2) the eWOM as a form of social
communication content (stimulus) transmitted by the
source, (3) the consumer who receives and responds
to the eWOM (receiver), (4) the responses made to
the eWOM by the receiver, and (5) the focal
products/services in the eWOM. We systematically
analyze eWOM literature to identify the factors
representing each of the five dimensions of eWOM,
presented next.
3 METHODOLOGY
We adopted the “Grounded Theory Literature
Review Method” (Wolfswinkel et al., 2013), to
review the extant eWOM literature. This method
enabled us to perform a thorough and theoretically
relevant analysis of the eWOM literature. The
“Grounded Theory Literature Review Method” is
implemented in five steps, depicted in Figure 2. Step
1 (called “Define”) consists of: defining the
inclusion/exclusion criteria, determining the
pertinent databases of the published studies for
search, and determining the appropriate search
terms. In step 2 (called “Search”), the actual search
for the published studies is performed using the
keywords and the pertinent databases determined in
the step 1. In step 3 (called “Select”), we refine the
retrieved studies from step 2 using the
inclusion/exclusion criteria that were determined in
Figure 2: Grounded Theory Literature Review Method (Adapted from Wolfswinkel et al., 2013).
TheEffectivenessofElectronicWordofMouthonConsumers'PerceptionsofAdoptingProducts/Services-ALiterature
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325
step 1. Next, in step 4 (called “Analyze”), we
synthesize the refined sample of pertinent studies
using Grounded Theory techniques. In step 5 (called
"Present"), we present the findings and insights
gleaned from the synthesis of the pertinent studies in
step 4. Detailed description of the five steps in
support of our syntheses of extant literature on
eWOM is presented next.
3.1 Steps 1 – 3: Define, Search,
and Select
To identify journal and conference papers that
investigated the effectiveness of eWOM on the
consumers' perception of products/services adoption
process, we searched a number of electronic
databases such as AIS, ACM, ScienceDirect,
Palgrave Macmillan, Sage, EBSCOhost, JSTOR,
Scholar’s Portal, and Google Scholar.
We used search terms of "word-of-mouth",
"electronic word-of-mouth", "WOM", "eWOM",
"online reviews", and "online recommendations". To
ensure that no major articles is ignored, we also
searched the leading scholarly IS journals (i.e., MIS
Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of
Management Information Systems, European
Journal of Information Systems, Information
Systems Journal, Journal of Strategic Information
Systems, Journal of Association for Information
Systems, and Information & Management), and four
major scholarly Marketing journals (Journal of
Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal
of Consumer Research, and Journal of the Academy
of Marketing Science). The search initially yielded
181 studies. The nature of empirical environment for
these 181 studies can be categorized in terms of
three contexts: SST, brick-and-mortar, and
unknown. SST represents studies that were
conducted within the context of products/services in
an online environment (i.e., click-and-mortar and/or
pure play). Brick-and-mortar studies assessed the
effectiveness of eWOM on consumers’ perception of
adopting products/services in a traditional offline
environment. Finally, the “unknown” context
represents those investigations that did not report the
nature of the environment for their study.
Not all the 181 studies were appropriate for
inclusion in our analysis. Recognizing this,
Wolfswinkel et al., (2013) recommend that
researchers mark out the scope of their review by
establishing criteria for inclusion. To that end, we
included only peer-reviewed studies in which (1)
eWOM was the main focus of investigation in the
paper, and (2) the research was empirical. Applying
these two criteria to 181 papers resulted in 47
eWOM studies that we used in our analysis and can
be obtained from:
http://profs.degroote.mcmaster.ca/ads/montazem/pap
ers/WEBSIT_paper_suppliment.pdf
3.2 Step 4: Analyze
To analyze the selected 47 eWOM studies,
constructs used in those studies were initially
identified and coded. Next, we synthesized them into
factors based on their conceptual similarity and map
them on the five dimensions of eWOM, using three
Grounded Theory techniques: (1) open coding, (2)
axial coding, and (3) selective coding, which are
explained next.
We used open coding technique, through which
constructs, their stage (i.e., pre-usage, initial use, and
repeated use), and context (i.e., SST, brick-and-
mortar, and unknown) of each study were coded. We
coded constructs based on their instrument measures
used in the eWOM study, rather than on the author’s
label because the labels that authors applied to their
constructs can vary (Montazemi et al., 2012,
Montazemi and Qahri Saremi, 2013). The outcome
was 173 constructs used in the 47 eWOM studies.
Next, we applied axial coding technique, to
synthesize these 173 constructs based on their
conceptual similarities that resulted in 30 factors.
Selective coding technique was used to map these 30
factors on the five dimensions of eWOM, depicted
in Figure 3. Next, we present our findings.
4 RESULTS (STEP 5: PRESENT)
Due to the space limitation, definitions and
references for each factor are not reported in the
Tables 1 to 5 that appear in this section. These
details can be obtained from:
http://profs.degroote.mcmaster.ca/ads/montazem/pap
ers/WEBSIT_paper_suppliment.pdf.
4.1 Factors Representing the Response
to eWOM
We identified twelve factors that represent the
“response” dimension of effectiveness of eWOM,
depicted in Table 1.
Six of these factors (i.e., adoption of eWOM,
purchase/use intention, perceived helpfulness of
eWOM, attitude towards the product/service, trust in
the vendor, and perceived credibility of eWOM)
have been studied across the three stages of the
WEBIST2014-InternationalConferenceonWebInformationSystemsandTechnologies
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Figure 3: The 30 Factors representing Five Dimensions of eWOM in the proposed Conceptual Framework.
adoption process, in the SST context. However,
there are gaps in the body of knowledge in the
eWOM literature for the SST context in regard to the
remaining 6 factors. For instance, effectiveness of
eWOM on consumers' trust in vendor, which is an
important factor in forming consumers’ perception
of SST adoption (Bock et al., 2012), differ
significantly across stages of adoption process.
Products/Services
Pre-Usage
Stage
Products/Services
Initial Use
Stage
Products/Services
Repeated Use
Stage
Three Stages of
Products/Services
Adoption Process
Source of the eWOM
– Source Credibility
– Source Type
– Source Knowledge
– Source Homophily
– Source Motivation
– Social Tie
eWOM
– eWOM Valence
– eWOM Quality
– eWOM Volume
– eWOM Sidedness
– eWOM Orientation
– eWOM Consistency
Factors representing
Five Dimensions of eWOM
Receiver of the eWOM
– Receiver’s Involvement
– Receiver’s Pre-existing Knowledge
– Receiver’s Need for Change
– Receiver’s Need for Cognition
– Receiver’s Demographics
Focal Products/Services in the eWOM
– Goods Type
Responses to the eWOM
– Adoption of eWOM
– Purchase/Use Intention
– Perceived Helpfulness of eWOM
– Attitude Towards Products/Services
– Trust in the Vendor
– Perceived Credibility of eWOM
– Loyalty
– Perceived Usefulness of Products/
Services
– Intention to Adopt eWOM
– Confirmation
– Perceived Ease-of-Use of
Products/Services
– Extent of Elaboration on eWOM
Message
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Table 1: Number, stage, and the context of the eWOM
studies investigating each factor representing response to
eWOM.
Factors Representing
response
Context P* I* R*
Adoption of eWOM
SST* 1 1 3
B&M* 2 2
NA* 4 1
Purchase/ Use
intention
SST 7 2 2
B&M 2
NA
Perceived
Helpfulness of
eWOM
SST 2 3 4
B&M 1
NA 1
Attitude towards the
product/service
SST 1 2 2
B&M 2
NA 1 1
Trust in the Vendor
SST 3 3 3
B&M
NA
Perceived Credibility
of eWOM
SST 3 2 3
B&M
NA 1
Loyalty
SST
B&M 1 1
NA 2 1
Perceived Usefulness
of the product/service
SST 1 1
B&M 1
NA
Intention to Adopt
eWOM
SST 2
B&M 1
NA
Confirmation
SST
B&M 1
NA 1
Perceived Ease of
Use of the
product/service
SST 1
B&M
NA
Extent of Elaboration
on eWOM Message
SST
B&M
NA 1
* Note:
SST: Self-Service Technology Context
B&M: Bricks-and-Mortar Context
NA: Context Unknown
P: Pre-usage Stage
I: Initial-use Stage
R: Repeated-use Stage
Nonetheless, there is a gap in the literature whether
the same pattern exists for other factors of
consumers’ perception such as consumers’ perceived
ease-of-use and perceived usefulness of an SST.
Furthermore, as indicated in Table 1, none of the
twelve factors have been studied across the three
stages of the adoption process, in the bricks-and-
mortar context. For instance, although we know that
effectiveness of eWOM on consumers' trust in
vendor differs significantly across stages of adoption
process, in the SST context, we do not know if the
same pattern exists for the effectiveness of eWOM
on consumers' trust in vendor in the bricks-and-
mortar context. Such a fragmented scope of studies
in the eWOM literature makes it infeasible to draw
systematic conclusions about the effectiveness of
eWOM on consumers’ perception of adopting
products/services.
4.2 Factors Representing the eWOM
Message
We identified six factors representing the eWOM
that have been investigated in the eWOM studies,
depicted in Table 2. One of these factors, eWOM
valence, has been studied across the three stages of
SST adoption process. However, there are gaps in
the body of knowledge in regard to all of the six
factors across the three stages of bricks-and-mortar
adoption process. For instance, the literature shows
that the effect of eWOM valence on consumers'
perceived usefulness of an SST differs significantly
Table 2: Number, stage, and the context of the eWOM
studies investigating each factor representing eWOM
message.
Factors Representing
eWOM Message
Context P* I* R*
eWOM Valence
SST* 4 2 5
B&M* 4 1
NA* 3 1
eWOM Quality
SST 5 1
B&M 1
NA 2 2
eWOM Volume
SST 5 1
B&M
NA
eWOM Sidedness
SST
B&M 1
NA 1
eWOM Orientation
SST 1
B&M
NA 1
eWOM Consistency
SST
B&M
NA 1
* Note:
SST: Self-Service Technology Context
B&M: Bricks-and-Mortar Context
NA: Context Unknown
P: Pre-usage Stage
I: Initial-use Stage
R: Repeated-use Stage
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across different stages of SST adoption process
(Vermeulen and Seegers, 2009). Nonetheless, there
is a gap in the literature whether the same pattern
exists for the bricks-and-mortar context.
4.3 Factors Representing the Source
of the eWOM
We identified six factors representing the source of
eWOM, depicted in Table 3. None of these factors
have been studied across the three stages of adoption
process in the SST and bricks-and-mortar contexts.
This represents gaps in the body of knowledge in the
eWOM literature as to how these six factors affect
the effectiveness of eWOM on consumers’
perception of adopting products/services. As a case
in point, consumers read eWOM about the
products/services from a vast and geographically
dispersed group of strangers through blogs, online
consumer review platforms, shopping bot sites, and
social networking sites (Cheung and Thadani, 2012).
This has the potential to raise consumers' concern
about the credibility of the source of eWOM. In such
an uncertain situation, high degree of consumers’
Table 3: Number, stage, and the context of the eWOM
studies investigating each factor, representing source of
the eWOM.
Factors Representing
source of the eWOM
Context P* I* R*
Source Credibility
SST* 2 1
B&M* 1
NA* 3 2
Source Type
SST 3 2
B&M 1
NA 1
Source knowledge
SST
B&M 1 3
NA 1
Source Homophily
SST
B&M 1 1
NA
Source Motivation
SST
B&M 1
NA 1
Social Tie
SST
B&M 1
NA
* Note:
SST: Self-Service Technology Context
B&M: Bricks-and-Mortar Context
NA: Context Unknown
P: Pre-usage Stage
I: Initial-use Stage
R: Repeated-use Stage
experience with the products/services is expected to
have a significant positive effect on consumers’
perception of adopting products/services. However,
eWOM literature is silent on this issue within the
context of SST and bricks-and-mortar.
4.4 Factors Representing the Receiver
of the eWOM
We identified five factors representing the receiver
of the eWOM, depicted in Table 4. None of them
have been studied across the three stages of adoption
process. This represents a gap in the body of
knowledge in the eWOM literature as to how these
five factors affect the effectiveness of eWOM on
consumers’ perception of adopting
products/services. For example, the eWOM
literature provides support for the importance of
consumers’ pre-existing knowledge, need for
cognition, and need for change on the effectiveness
of eWOM on the consumers’ perception of adopting
products/services. Nonetheless, there is a gap in the
eWOM literature whether these factors have the
same effects across the three stages of the adoption
process. Considering the significance of the stage of
the adoption process in consumers’ perceptions of
Table 4: Number, stage, and the context of the eWOM
studies investigating each factor, representing receiver of
the eWOM.
Factors Representing
receiver of the eWOM
Context P* I* R*
Receiver’s
Involvement
SST* 3 1
B&M*
NA* 1 2
Receiver’s Pre-
existing Knowledge
SST 1 2
B&M 1 1
NA 1 2
Receiver’s Need for
Change
SST
B&M
NA 1
Receiver’s Need for
Cognition
SST 1
B&M
NA
Receiver’s
Demographics
SST 1
B&M
NA
* Note:
SST: Self-Service Technology Context
B&M: Bricks-and-Mortar Context
NA: Context Unknown
P: Pre-usage Stage
I: Initial-use Stage
R: Repeated-use Stage
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adopting products/services, such a lack of
knowledge represents a gap in the eWOM literature.
4.5 Factors Representing the Focal
Product/Service in the eWOM
A key determinant of eWOM effectiveness on
consumers' perception of adopting products/services
is the nature of the product/service (i.e., goods type)
under consideration, as indicated in Table 5.
According to Nelson (Nelson, 1970), search goods
are the products/service for which consumers have
the ability to obtain information on their quality
prior to adoption, while experience goods are
products/services that require sampling or adoption
to evaluate their quality. Examples of search goods
include cameras and natural supplement pills
(Mudambi and Schuff, 2010). Examples of
experience goods include music (Bhattacharjee et
al., 2006) and wine (Mudambi and Schuff, 2010).
Although the eWOM literature indicates that goods
type influences the effectiveness of eWOM on the
consumers’ perception of adopting products/services
in the SST context (indicated in Table 5), we do not
know if the same pattern exists in the context of
bricks-and-mortar. Considering the importance of
the goods type in consumers’ perceptions of
adopting products/services, such a lack of
knowledge represents a gap in the eWOM literature.
Table 5: Number, stage, and the context of the eWOM
studies investigating each factor, representing focal
product/service in the eWOM.
Factors Representing
the focal
product/service in the
eWOM
Context P* I* R*
Goods Type
SST* 2 2 1
B&M*
NA* 1 1
* Note:
SST: Self-Service Technology Context
B&M: Bricks-and-Mortar Context
NA: Context Unknown
P: Pre-usage Stage
I: Initial-use Stage
R: Repeated-use Stage
5 DISCUSSION
This paper tackles the question of how eWOM
affects consumers’ perceptions of adopting the
products/services through a literature review based
on a new theoretical framework. To that end, we
drew on grounded theory literature review method
and social communication framework to identify and
systematically review 47 pertinent eWOM empirical
studies. We have synthesized 30 conceptually
distinct factors representing the five dimensions of
the eWOM. Based on our findings, we identified
numerous important gaps in the body of knowledge
in the eWOM literature, which are in need of
attention in the future research. We find that despite
more than a decade of research, the extant eWOM
literature remains largely fragmented. Researchers
have chosen to study factors of their individual
interest and there is little systematic integration
among them. As a result, we observe findings that
are inconsistent or even contradictory. One example
is how the relationship between consumers’ prior
knowledge of the product/service and the
effectiveness of the eWOM on the consumers’
perceptions of adopting the product/service is
conceived. On the one hand, Chatterjee (2001),
Chakravarty et al. (2010), and Fan and Miao (2012)
identify a negative relationship between the
consumer’s prior knowledge of the product/service
and the effectiveness of eWOM on the consumer’s
perceptions of adopting the product/service. On the
other hand, Park and Lee (2009), Park and Kim
(2008), and Cheung et al. (2009) show a positive
relationship between the two factors. Such a
contradictory findings point to possible missing
moderators such as need for cognition and need for
change. Prior studies (e.g., Gupta and Harris, 2010,
Wood and Swait, 2002) have shown that consumers
with different levels of need for cognition and need
for change, ceteris paribus, behave in systematically
different fashions regarding their motivation to seek
and process information about the products/services.
Furthermore, scholars (e.g., Sussman and Siegal,
2003) have identified the moderating effect of
consumer’s motivation to seek and process a
message about a product/service on the relationship
between the consumers’ prior knowledge of the
product/service and the effectiveness of the message
on the consumers’ perceptions of adopting the
product/service. Notwithstanding their importance
on the effectiveness of eWOM message, the
literature is silent on the moderating effects of
consumers’ need for cognition and need for change
in all three stages of the products/services adoption
process.
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