People as Transmitters: What Makes an Online Marketing Message Contagious?

Abstract

Word of Mouth (WOM) has been extensively studied as persuasive communication but it has seldom been studied as diffusive communication. This study focuses on online WOM as diffusive communication and the accompanying associated ripple effect by examining the informationpsilas quality, authenticity, authority, and interestingness. It also investigates how a participantpsilas opinion leadership and seeking propensities influence consumerpsilas online WOM activities. Our results show that all of the four WOM information dimensions have a positive effect on a transmitterpsilas level of acceptance of WOM, which in turn positively affects the transmitterpsilas sharing intention. This study indicates that in computer-mediated environments opinion seekers are more likely to be transmitter.