A Dyadic Interview Analysis of WOM Motivations and Situation in Seeker-Initiated Communication

• Main Authors: Chen, Mei-li, 陳美莉
• Other Authors: Tung, Wei
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/30688549536470618155

碩士 === 國立嘉義大學 === 行銷與流通管理研究所 === 94 === In the literature, most researchers concerned about how the word-of-mouth (WOM) influences the promotion of products; and some mentioned the active motivations regarding consumers’ diffusions of WOM. However, from our daily experience, we learnt that consumers generally seek friends’ prior experience or personal product expertise to assist them in making complex product choices. This seeker-initiated WOM communication is our research’s focus. Besides, past researches neglected the real circumstances of that interaction, but only considered the issues of WOM senders and receivers behaviors separately. This research aims to understand the motivations of senders and seekers (receivers) in the context of seeker-initiated WOM communication; moreover; we employ the dyadic in-depth interview method and coupled with pairs-compared analysis technique to reveal such important interaction context. From this research finding, the result shows that the seekers’ motivations include: (1) Reduction of the risk; (2) Understanding of product information; (3) Reduction of search time; (4) Improvement of community interaction; (5) Determination of social position. However, the ‘determination of social position’ is not an obvious factor in our research. The senders’ include: (1) Altruism; (2) Product involvement; (3) Self-enhancement; (4) Regret aversion; (5) Company assistance; (6) Egoism. We notice that ‘Regret aversion’ and ‘Egoism’ motivations were observed only in the seeker-initiated context. The pairs-compared analysis also proves that the WOM behaviors (included: (1) Product information; (2) Product suggestion; (3) Personal experience behavior.) not only under the influence of senders’ motivations but also impacted by the WOM contexts (included: (1) Decision consultation; (2) Decision dependent; (3) Decision evaluation; (4) Socialization.) initiated by inquirers. This research begins at the perspective of consumer’s initiate WOM motivations and behaviors; later, it is intended to reveal some of the important academic and practical issues that entail further research study.