Motivations to Seek Electronic Word of Mouth Communications and Information Adoption: Development of a Conceptual Model

Abstract

Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) plays an important part in our everyday life. eWOM communications have been shown to affect the adoption of information, thus affecting the information seeker's decision-making. Identifying and studying how motivations to seek eWOM affect information adoption can prove beneficial in aiding new product, services and, in general, technology strategy development and adoption. This research aims at developing a model to investigate how certain specific motivations may affect the adoption of information sought through eWOM. This paper develops a set of hypotheses to help evaluate how motivations affect the information seeker's adoption of the information sought, based on the moderating effect of gender. The paper improves on the knowledge of factors affecting information adoption and the impact of gender, and thus help advance our understanding of consumer behaviour online and information processing. Future empirical research will test the proposed hypotheses to advance our understanding of the role of motivations when seeking eWOM information.