E-business consumers are increasing as internet has propagated and generalized rapidly and eWOM (electronic World of Mouth) activity to share experiences and knowledge about products through internet become active. As word of mouth information spreads...
E-business consumers are increasing as internet has propagated and generalized rapidly and eWOM (electronic World of Mouth) activity to share experiences and knowledge about products through internet become active. As word of mouth information spreads widely among online consumers and many consumers come to use such word of mouth information, eWOM has influence on consumer's decision-making of desire to purchase and this has also influence on the success or failure of products, services in the market as a result. In the meantime, eWOM is influenced by various factors such as benefits came from word of mouth, social network, business environment, cultural value, personal taste and so on.
Therefore, in this study, it focuses on cultural value as one of important factors to have influence on eWOM to verify which influence cultural value has on eWOM. Particularly, it sets locus of control, which does not have direct relation with cultural value and eWOM, to verify the effect of cultural value. Also, in this study, it indicates the limitations of cultural value at national level and in consideration of cultural value as the prospective at personal level not at national level, it verifies the effect of cultural value at personal level to have on eWOM utilized four kinds of social cultures, which are groupism, avoidance of uncertainty, masculinity and power distance. In addition, in this study, it classifies eWOM activity into provision of in-group eWOM information and provision of out-group eWOM information to verify the relations between social value, locus of control, and eWOM.
In this study, it evaluates the existing studies covering social value, locus of control, eWOM activity comprehensively to verify the relations between social value, locus of control, eWOM activity at personal level and through this, it sets study model and study hypothesis and carries out statistical hypothesis testing through empirical analysis. For the empirical analysis, It selected Korean and Chinese office workers in their twenties and thirties who were familiar to internet and experienced in eWOM activity for the sample and performed the final analysis in use of AMOS 7.0 program of 216 Korean consumers and 162 consumers in total 378 consumers.
To see major results of this study, it compares the social value between two groups of Korean and Chinese in the viewpoint at personal level and as the result, it was able to confirm the existence of difference, which was different from the one in viewpoint at national level, through which it implies the importance of social value at personal level observed from the level of individual consumers in the design and implementation of international marketing strategy, which was no less than the one at macroscopic viewpoint. Also, it was able to confirm the relation which had been established newly between social value, locus of control, and eWOM activity through the empirical analysis, by which it implies the locus of control's role as an intermediary to improve the importance and effect of cultural value in the eWOM activity.