Asia Pacific Journal of Information Systems (APJIS)

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Past Issue

Date	September 2017
Vol. No.	Vol. 27 No. 3
DOI	https://doi.org/10.14329/apjis.2017.27.3.139
Page	139~155
Title	Analyzing the Effect of Electronic Word of Mouth on Low Involvement Products
Author	Youngeui Kim, Hyun Sil Moon, Jae Kyeong Kim
Keyword	Electronic Word of Mouth, eWOM, Low Involvement Product, Social Media, Online Review
Abstract	As social media are increasingly being used as a marketing platform, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) has also become popular in both research and business areas. However, although many studies have examined the effect of eWOM, the products investigated in most of these studies, such as films or books, are not likely to be consumed daily. Therefore, in this study, we analyze the effect of eWOM on low involvement products, which are inexpensive and enough for everyday spending. Given that low involvement products have unique characteristics such as low price, we conduct an experiment using a real sales dataset related to soft drinks. We also analyze the effect of eWOM in two social media platforms. We find that eWOM influences the sales of low involvement products, but such influence is dependent on the characteristic of the social media platform. Based on these results, we suggest that marketers and retailers selling low involvement products must consider eWOM, such as reviews, and differentiate their strategies based on their focused social media platform.