Media Richness in Online Consumer Interactions

Abstract

Consumer-opinion Web sites provide people with unparalleled opportunities to articulate their opinions on products and services, read those of others, or interact with other consumers. The success of such Web sites is limited by three challenges: the quality of contributions, users' motivation to participate, and readers' trust in the writer's competence. Drawing on the concept of media richness, this article investigates how such Web sites could provide richer and more useful exchanges to both consumers and companies. The results suggest that consumer-opinion Web sites can provide richer exchanges when they separate the tasks of information exchange and social interaction and support them with appropriate levels of richness.

Impacts of Word of Mouth (WOM) on E-Business Online Pricing

“…Generally speaking, people are willing to heed the advice of strangers, so the anonymity of the WWW is by no means an obstacle to the success of eWOM. Furthermore, consumer opinion Web sites have cropped up on the WWW, providing unprecedented opportunities for consumers to voice their opinions on companies, products, and services in a structured, written format, such as product reviews, complaints, discussion threads, or chats (Pollach, 2005). Regarding eWOM, two features can be explicitly drawn based on previous studies.…”