The Gender Differences in the Effect of Two-sidedness E-WOM Presentation Order on Product Attitude

In the Internet environment, electronic word-of mouth plays an important role in affecting consumers’ attitude toward product and service. However, there exists a widespread situation that consumers may receive two-sidedness e-WOM (An e-WOM has both positive and negative message about the same object), and past research has shown that gender differences and situational involvement affect consumers’ perception of e-WOM. This article demonstrates how presentation order of two-sidedness electronic word-of-mouth and gender influence in consumers’ perception and attitude toward product under different situations. Our study found that two-sidedness e-WOM presentation order and gender influenced product attitude: under low-involvement situation, males (females) exhibited primacy (recency)effects when receiving a two-sidedness e-WOM which containing both positive and negative messages about product. Under high-involvement situation, all respondents appeared to process two-sidedness e-WOM systematically and consider more relevant information in their evaluations. The result revealed that females continued to exhibit recency effects, but the primacy effects with males disappeared, they will exhibit obvious recency effects.