Dissertation

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

As the popularity of internet has increased to a great level, word of mouth has been changed from linear to networked mode. Virtual communities, blogs, discussions and online forums including social networking websites have become an effective tool for consumers and marketers to exchange information between them. Conventional and old word of mouth systems have been converted to online word of mouth wherein it is having features of extensiveness, fast information spread, huge information quantity which can be spread anonymously in a very lesser time which is also easily accessible and widely available. It leads to savings in efforts of information search and time.

In eWOM acceptance there is a huge role of the expertise of the customer and his personal attributes. Customers judge the online reviews and quality of reviews based on his/her expertise and involvement. Trust in the credibility of the response helps customers overcome the risk in shopping. According to the previous studies it has been showed that when there is a moderate risk involved in purchase then customers always look for more credible online responses, i.e. a source which they consider as trustworthy. This credible information source can depend on customer to customer, some customers may find social networking websites trustworthy whereas some may find special community discussions or online blogs credible. The aim of this research is to determine how credibility of the online response influences the intention of purchase in mind of customers.

Degree of involvement of customer also judges how they process the information. Customer with high involvement will always think rationally and process information through a central route whereas customers who have low degree of involvement will look for peripheral route for processing information and will get influenced by emotions. So marketers who want their online reviews to direct the behavior of customers to increase...