eWOM: Extant Research Review and Future Research Avenues

Abstract

Executive Summary Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication is widely accepted as a critical factor in building marketing strategies and communications. Invention of the Internet and proliferation of social media have added a new electronic dimension to traditional WOM, thereby converting it into electronicWOM (eWOM). The extant literature has focused on various aspects of eWOM such as its effect on consumer’s purchase decision process, utilization of eWOM to build brand strength and consumer loyalty, information diffusion, and creating buzz among potential consumers. The purpose of this study is to do a systematic review and meet the two objectives: (1) summarize the extant literature in eWOM domain and (2) identify a few areas for future research. This article has been organized as follows. It starts with the definition and interrelationship between three keywords used in literature, which are traditional word-of-mouth (WOM), electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM, also referred as online word-of-mouth [OWOM]), and viral marketing. The article focuses on theoretical foundations and frameworks which form the basis of eWOM in the literature. eWOM borrows its foundation from different disciplines based on the research perspective. It highlights theories based on social perspective (sociology literature), information perspective (IS literature), and marketing perspective (specific theories from marketing literature). It identifies the motivational factors for consumer involvement in eWOM creation and diffusion process and summarizes the findings of literature on what drives consumer to spread eWOM on various channels. It discusses the findings from literature review on importance and effects of eWOM for marketing communications and marketing strategies. It provides actionable strategies for practitioners and marketers to suggest how they can utilize eWOM to improve performance, generate more sales and to communicate with consumers? It also looks at how to deal with negative eWOM and how a firm should respond to it. Finally, it analyses the current status of research and suggests a few areas for future researchers.

Uludağ’da Faaliyet Gösteren 4 ve 5 Yıldızlı Konaklama İşletmelerinin Çevrimiçi Tüketici Yorumlarının İncelenmesi: “TripAdvisor.com” Üzerinden İçerik Analizi

“…e-WOM'un değeri literatürde iki yaklaşım kullanılarak ölçülmüştür. Birinci yaklaşım, kaç kişinin etkilendiği, ikinci yaklaşım ise nihai ve hızlı benimseyen fayda sağladığını varsaymaktadır (Mishra ve S.M.Satish, 2016).…”

Fake Reviews in E-Commerce Marketing

“…Nevertheless, this impact is controversial [4]. The results differ concerning the effects of: the overall rating, the valence of the reviews, and the number of reviews [32]. Concerning the valence, it has been shown that positive fake reviews stimulate and negative fake reviews impair sales.…”

Electronic word-of-mouth effects on studio performance leveraging attention-based model

“…Currently, audience sentiment is the foremost factor of eWOM about the studios [7,8]. Many researchers realize that the traditional machine learning model does not provide sufficient decision support for studios [11]. Most of the work uses latent Dirichlet allocation [12] and nonnegative matrix factorization [13] to extract the eWOM feature from audience reviews.…”

“…However, the above works do not include any variables that capture the stock market of the studios, and our work can fill this gap in studios performance. Scholars measured the impact of eWOM through the parameters [11]. They also recognized the audience sentiment aspect of eWOM that may have a greater impact on the customer purchase decision.…”