The Power of eWOM through Social Networking Sites

Abstract

This paper disentangles the effects of positive and negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) through Social Network Sites on customer loyalty and its antecedents satisfaction and trust. A quantitative vignette study was used to collect data from 276 smartphone users, based on a mixed design allowing both within-subjects analyses and between-subjects analyses. The results suggest that both positive and negative eWOM have significant impact on customer loyalty, satisfaction and trust. We found evidence for the ‘negativity bias’. Interestingly, the results suggest that negative eWOM has relatively more effect on behavioral loyalty, whereas positive eWOM has relatively more effect on attitudinal loyalty.