An empirical investigation of electronic word-of-mouth: Informational motive and corporate response strategy

The proliferation of the Internet has given birth to a number of complaint web sites where dissatisfied and frustrated consumers can easily articulate their opinions and comments on products, services, or companies. Little attention, however, has been paid to the influence of online complaints on potential consumers’ behaviors. This study attempts to provide the understanding of causal attribution process in the online complaining behaviors. The results showed that informational factors, such as vividness and consensus, facilitated consumers’ attribution to companies’ responsibility for the negative events, and subsequently led to changing their evaluation of the companies. In addition, we found that corporate response strategies to online complaints should be different from the conventional response strategies. Published by Elsevier Ltd.