Electronic Word of Mouth engagement in social commerce platforms: An empirical study

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the factors that encourage customer engagement with Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) from the perspective of information characteristics, consumer behaviour, consumer motives, technological and social factors. Drawing from the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Social Support Theory (SST) we propose a new model of eWOM engagement in s-commerce. This model was assessed using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique based on a survey of 218 s-commerce users in Nigeria. The findings confirmed that eWOM engagement is strongly determined by information credibility, information quality, social support, innovativeness, altruism, self-enhancement and sense of belonging. Additionally, using the Importance-Performance Map Analysis (IPMA), this study identifies information credibility, sense of belonging, attitude towards eWOM and social support as the most important factors that should be giving priority by managers in order to encourage consumer eWOM engagement in s-commerce platforms. Implications of the study and suggestions for future research are presented.