Word-of-mouth on financial products in online communities: an exploration into the why, what, and how?

Abstract

This paper examines consumers' motivations to engage in electronic word-of-mouth (WOM) and its influences on the cognitive and affective aspects of the WOM message. A sample of 201 consumers was collected from an online survey. Regressions show that four motivations had significant relationships with cognitive and affective aspects of positive messages and two in the case of negative messages. Cognitive and affective aspects were both found to be positively related to message effectiveness, although the former had a greater influence. Findings suggest that consumers use both positive and negative WOM to achieve their objectives, but are more selective when engaging in negative WOM. Managers should encourage consumers to share more factual information about their consumption experience with others through WOM. Managers will gain a better understanding of WOM by analyzing individual messages for its content and delivery.