The Impact of eWOM Conformity and Perceived Value on Purchase Intention

Abstract

Because of the technology advancement the Internet has become an essential element in daily life and people will search for information about products or services online before making purchase decisions Among the information eWOM is one of the important elements that people will take into considerations Conformity which can be divided into normative and informational influence (Deutsch & Gerard 1955) is found that it is also associated with eWOM (Tsao et al 2015) Therefore this study aims to discuss the mediating effects of normative and informational influence on the relationship between eWOM and perceived value and then further discuss the influence power of normative and informational influence This study adopts the method of questionnaires to test the hypotheses The questionnaire items include measures on eWOM normative influence informational influence perceived value and purchase intention and this study collected 408 valid questionnaires The findings are as follows Firstly positive eWOM can have a positive influence on the perceived value Secondly there are positive and partial mediating effects of normative and informational influence on the relationship between eWOM and perceived value Thirdly females’ mediating effect of the conformity influence on the relationship between eWOM and perceived value is more significant than males’ one Finally the perceived value can significantly and positively influence purchase intentions

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Meng-Kuan Lai (Supervisor)