Electronic Word-of-Mouth: Motives for and Consequences of Reading Customer Articulations on the Internet

  • Authors:

  • Thorsten Hennig-Thurau;Gianfranco Walsh

  • Affiliations:

  • Bauhaus-University of Weimar, Germany;Bauhaus-University of Weimar, Germany

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Electronic Commerce
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

The Internet makes it possible for consumers to obtain electronic word of mouth from other consumers. Customer comments articulated via the Internet are available to a vast number of other customers, and therefore can be expected to have a significant impact on the success of goods and services. This paper derives several motives that explain why customers retrieve other customers' on-line articulations from Web-based consumer opinion platforms. The relevance of these motives and their impact on consumer buying and communication behavior are tested in a large-scale empirical study. The results illustrate that consumers read on-line articulations mainly to save decision-making time and make better buying decisions. Structural equation modeling shows that their motives for retrieving on-line articulations strongly influence their behavior.