2.3 External Factors of Online Luxury Shopping
2.3.6 Electronic Word of Mouth and Consumer Attitude
Electronic Word of Mouth (E-WOM) refers to ‘any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual or former consumers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet’ (Hennig-Thurau et al, 2004, p.39). A greater number of online shopper reviews significantly influences consumer purchasing decisions. E-WOM, or electronic word of mouth, can influence online shopping for goods both positively and negatively. As it is spread in a faster way, its effect is for a short time (Emergence Marketing, 2007). Since many consumers present review information and experience regarding their purchase online, these websites have become a medium for spreading word of mouth, affecting the purchase decisions of consumers who read their reviews. Nowadays, many studies in marketing find that consumers are paying increasing attention to e-WOM and the different forms of it regarding shopping sites and online brand
(Goyette et al, 2010; Kim, Kim, & Lennon, 2011; Yoo & Lee, 2012;Yoo, Sanders, & Moon, 2013; Cheng & Ho, 2015). User-generated content (UGC) review websites appearing under the concept of Web 2.0 break through the limitations of traditional WOM (Cheung & Lee, 2012). In this study, e-WOM is used to refer to any positive or negative feedback or information regarding any online luxury purchase about luxury fashion brand which will impact on consumer attitude toward online luxury purchasing. E-WOM played as a factor in the external variables that impact consumer attitude in the TAM model. Lee and Hodges (2012) proposed a model for investigating the antecedents and consequences of consumers’
attitudes towards an apparel website. But this study too was limited to a single website and a one-off survey conducted in 15-20 minutes. While empirically investigating e-shopping antecedents and effects, however, Jayawardhena and Wright (2009) found that the implication for e-retailers is that it is important to incorporate Web 2.0’s enhanced aspects into their websites, since they contribute to the positive e-shopping experience and by extension to consumer excitement. This provides more customised information that is both relevant and rich in its content. The goal of such tools is not to replace human intervention, but to complement it, if not to augment it. If an evaluator is responsible for a very large website, he/she would appreciate being able to locate the portions of the website to look at, rather than being forced to examine thoroughly all parts of the website. Similarly, if a tool can identify potential areas of usability flaws, the evaluator can have their attention attracted and verify its plausibility.
While analysing consumer conversations around advertisements in a Web 2.0 world, Campbell et al. (2011) suggest that attitude towards the evaluator is a necessary component in understanding response to consumer-generated advertising. They found that WOM stemming from less loyal consumers and communicated to weaker social ties is most powerful (Campbell et al., 2011). Having this tool supported is certainly desirable and helpful, but there is a big risk that evaluators completely rely on the results provided by such tools. The study of Campbell et al. (2011) is inherently subjective, and relies solely on human interpretation to abstract meaning from data. The analysis in that paper considered only four advertisements, and a large number of checks on reliability and validity were not carried out, which leaves several questions unanswered.
Song et al. (2011) examined online consumers’ behaviour and provided a more service- oriented view while developing an e-travel service quality scale. They found that customers judged the quality of information based on the amount of information about the product
presented on the retailers’ website. Neglecting information, usability or both led to poor customer perceptions of service quality. Similarly, Ho and Le (2007) add that while developing an e-travel quality scale, website functionality and customer relationships are the two most important and critical factors in evaluating the quality of the website and services.
They regarded security as the degree of customers’ trust and confidence in the website.
However, transferring the responsibility for evaluating and ensuring the usability of the scale is not acceptable, even when the tool provides the validated results on how to improve the usability of the website. For this to happen, quality models should be introduced and validated. Gounaris et al. (2010) analysed data by comparing three rival models using structural equation modelling. The prevailing model revealed that e-service quality had a positive outcome on e-satisfaction, while it also influenced, both directly and indirectly through e-satisfaction, on consumers’ behavioural intentions: that is to say, revisiting a website, word-of-mouth communication and repetitive purchases. As Hahn and Kim (2009) put it, e-WOM is a very important result of the online relationship. Therefore, in view of this rising importance of e-WOM, organisations are increasingly working on enhancing e-WOM strategies as this is a very important and powerful tool for online shopping malls.
The increased attention that has been attracted by this new concept is growing at a high rate.
This new form of WOM, which is online WOM or e-WOM, has also received a lot of attention from academic researchers. Zhang et al. (2010) explain that prior research studies have investigated the influence of e-WOM on business bottom line concepts, which include product sales, customer value and loyalty, and new product introductions. In addition to this, studies have examined the adoption of online services and the impact of e-WOM (Cheung et al., 2008), the innovation of services and the influence of e-WOM (Andreassen &
Streukensm, 2009), and the influence of e-WOM on product consideration and the quality of choice (Gupta & Harris, 2009). Another surprising finding by a study by Park and Lee (2009) states that the influence of negative e-WOM is far greater than positive e-WOM; the effect is also greater for famous and established e-retailers and shopping malls than for non-famous and non-established ones. E-WOM is also greater for experiencing goods than for searching goods. Studies have also investigated what leads consumers to produce e-WOM, which includes the impact of commitment and the experience that the consumers have with those products (Lee et al., 2006). Other studies also illustrated that satisfaction, loyalty and the usability of the website leads to producing e-WOM (Casalo et al., 2008). It is very reasonable to expect that consumers who have a greater search intention for product information will
tend to produce this positive or negative e-WOM more than people who have less intentions of searching for product information (Hahn & Kim, 2009). Several studies have also indicated that if trust, commitment, satisfaction and loyalty are high then positive e-WOM communication is more likely to develop through strictly controlled distribution (Mukherjee
& Nath, 2007; Rauyruen & Miller, 2007; Cater & Zabkar, 2008). Luxury brand managers encounter a dialectical tension between the need to keep up with social media trends and the need to maintain their brand integrity and exclusive reputation. Therefore, there is a clear gap between the role of social media and word of mouth in spreading the word regarding online shopping for luxury brands and how that in turn helps to influence the satisfaction, loyalty and behavioural intentions of consumers, which would also be elaborated in the findings of the present study.