The effects of intentions of consumers’ electronic word-of-mouth communication on their decisions of buying

Abstract

Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication, seen as an important subject by researchers and practitioners for a long time, is a process of consumers who provide other customers some information about a product, a service, a brand or a company. If this process takes place on the Internet (e.g. reviews, tweets, blog entries, ‘likes’, images and videos), it is called e-WOM, and it is seen as an important development in contemporary behaviours of consumers. Opinions disappear after a while in offline WOM, but online WOM causes a permanent public opinion. For this reason, e-WOM draws considerable attention from both academics and practitioners. With the rapid development in e-trade, while a growing number of products are sold, these selling are accompanied by a vast variety of customer review and feedbacks. Online customer reviews provide important information about a product, a service, a brand or a company. Analysing and evaluating the WOM are very crucial for helping companies and customers decide. In this research, the effects of e-WOM on buying decisions of consumers are studied. In the research, young consumers, using the online platforms very often, are targeted, the effects of online information sharing on buying, rebuying and replacing behaviours are focused and a questionnaire, implemented on 360 consumers, is interpreted by presenting data obtained from the questionnaire.

Keywords: E-wom, word-of-mouth marketing, purchasing decisions, Internet Communication