Abstract
It becomes more and more important for marketers to understand why individuals adopt electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) on social networking sites. This paper aims to understand the social networking sites users e-WOM adoption based on the attachment theory. Attachment avoidance, attachment anxiety, and their interaction effects are tested to understand the direct effect on e-WOM adoption. Moreover, the mediating effect of self-surveillance and social surveillance between attachment styles and e-WOM adoption has also evaluated. The results indicated that attachment avoidance has an adverse effect on e-WOM adoption; attachment anxiety and the interactive effect have a positive effect on e-WOM adoption. Self-surveillance and social surveillance have a mediating effect between two attachment dimensions (avoidance and anxiety) and e-WOM adoption, and the interaction of anxiety and avoidance mediated by social surveillance.
1. Introduction
Electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) is becoming an important marketing tool in the social media era. Consumers are accustomed to sharing information with others on social networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook or Twitter. e-WOM is defined as “any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet” (Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh, & Gremler, 2004, 39).
5. Discussion
In this study, we tried to understand personal e-WOM adoption in social networking sites through attachment styles and sought to know why they adopt the product/service reviews in social networking sites. Attachment styles have demonstrated that have a significant effect on eWOM adoption on social networking sites in this study. Self-surveillance and social surveillance have been shown as the reasons why users adopt reviews in the social networking sites, especially, social surveillance as the main cause for fearful users to adopt e-WOM actively.
