Online Word of Mouth as a Determination in Adolescents’ Purchase Decision Making: The Influence of Expertise and Involvement Communications of the IBIMA

Because of the abundant information available on the Internet, adolescents can gain product knowledge with little effort. Nowadays, Internet serves as a new channel besides family members for adolescents to seek information. This study examines the associations of intention to consult online word-of-mouth to purchase involvement and product expertise. The purpose of this study is to discuss the effect of product expertise and purchase involvement on the influence on purchase decision of word-of-mouth from online community, family members, and friends. The expertise was divided into product experience and product knowledge in this study .There were 321 adolescent subjects completed the questionnaires. Cluster analytical procedures were applied based on individuals’ expertise. The respondents were entered into three major segments: novice, experienced, and expert. This study adopted Structure Equations Modeling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses, and to measure the relationships among involvement, purchase experience, product knowledge and purchase decision influence. The survey results showed that invoice adolescents tend to consult others, no matter online, family, and friends, more than experienced and expert adolescents. Expert adolescents consult much word-of-mouth from online community than experienced and novice consumers. Moreover, experienced consumers consult much word of mouth from family than expert or novice consumers.