8/12/2019 e-wom5.pdf

1/3

649 Advances in Consumer Research

Volume 33, 2006

Location, Location, Location: The Relative Roles of Virtual Location, Online Word-of-Mouth

(eWOM) and Advertising in the New-Product Adoption ProcessFiona Sussan, George Mason University

Stephen Gould, Baruch College

Suri Weisfeld-Spolter, Baruch College

EXTENDED ABSTRACTIt is no secret that the emergence of cyberspacehas changed

marketing communications (Rogers and Allbritton 1995; Silk et al.

2001). More prominently, the Internet has changed from face-to-

face social based interpersonal communications to one of com-

puter-based social networking (Wellman 2001). Cyberspace al-

lows consumers to gatherin virtual communities and exchange

opinions that lead to an information democracy in which the

information is tilted toward the consumer instead of being manipu-

lated by marketers (Armstrong and Hagel 1993; Bargh and McKenna

2004; Rheingold 1993l; Sawhney and Kotler 2001). In other words,

cyberspace allows the opportunity for the voices of consumers to

possibly drown that of the marketers.

In spite of the advocacy and the reality of the proliferation of

online word-of-mouth, (eWOM) with 33% of all adult Americans

having participated in it in one way or another(www.pewinternet.org), researchers mainly remain silent about

this phenomenon in relation to advertising within the new-product

adoption process. Traditionally, marketing and interpersonal com-

munications were separated by time and place with mass media

transmission first, followed by word-of-mouth interpersonal com-

munications through face-to-face social contacts (Two-Step Flow

by Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955; New-product Diffusion Process by

Rogers 1962). The quality of the Internet merging both mass media

and interpersonal communications into onechanged that (Deighton

1997). Consumers can now access both marketing and interper-

sonal communications at the same time and at the same space on

multiple websites. The question then becomes, how does this new

combination affect the persuasion process within new-product

adoption? Are the combined advertising and word-of-mouth mes-sages effective in all websites?

Previous persuasion research has elicited that when there is an

incongruity between the source (the messenger) and the message

(content) in advertising, the persuasion effect could be negative

instead of positive as originally intended (Slater and Rouner 1996).

In this paper, we argue further that even when the source and

message are congruous, their incongruity with the locationcould

lead to a lesser or even an opposite persuasion effect than intended.

In other words, this paper speculates that when a firm includes

positive eWOM in its own website to facilitate its marketing

communication messages, similar to that of mass-media based

advertising using fellow consumersword-of-mouth endorse-

ment, the persuasive effectiveness may diminish. This is because

consumers would most likely perceive the positive eWOM as adeliberate part of manipulated marketing communications, a phe-

nomenon especially not welcome under the Internet-based new

information democracy previously mentioned (Sawhney and

Kotler 2001). This paper extends this argument to suggest that the

inclusion of positive eWOM in a firms website may in fact

undermine the firms own marketing messages.

In order to make eWOM a part of an effective persuasive

communication within the new-product adoption process, we sug-

gest allocating it within a 3rd-party independent website that has no

affiliation with the advertising firm. While the independency of the

source enabling a more persuasive effect is not new, in this paper we

are extending the independency requirement to the location

which hosts both the source and the message. We hypothesize that

the independency of the location will maximize the persuasive

effectiveness of the message.

Further, we hypothesize that simply advertising on a 3rd-party

independent website would not necessarily increase its persuasive

effectiveness when compared to that of the firmsown websites.

This is due to the fact that persuasion knowledge model posits that

consumers can detect advertising messages and can identify an

agent trying to influence them and will activate their persuasion

knowledge accordingly. In this sense, consumers do not vary their

attitudes toward the advertising message in either website.

This paper aims to measure the perceived persuasiveness of

the combination of advertising and word-of-mouth communica-

tions in two types of websites (firm-sponsored versus 3rd-party

independent-sponsored websites) toward the new product adoptionprocess to include consumersinterest and likelihood to adopt a new

product. A fictitious movie with its advertising and word-of-mouth

information were given to four groups of subjects to measure their

response on website location effect, word-of-mouth effect and

quantitative information effect.

A 2 (firm-sponsored vs. 3rd-party sponsored independent

website) x 2 (advertisement only vs. advertisement plus eWOM)

between-subject design was used in this experiment. The product

used was a new movie DVD. The independent variables consisted

of website location and eWOM. Involvement and likelihood to

adopt a new product were the two dependent variables. A total of

ninety subjects were recruited from a participation pool at a large

Northeastern university. The subjects received course credit for

participation. All subjects were assigned randomly to the treatmentconditions.

After conducting an ANOVA, we found empirical support for

positive online word-of-mouth having an additive effect to adver-

tising in 3rd-party sponsored websites but not in firm-sponsored

websites. The results also supported the interaction effect between

website location and eWOM messages, with eWOM added to

advertising in a 3rd-party website having a larger additive effect on

consumers involvement and likelihood to adopt a new product than

in a firm-sponsored website. The results also supported the hypoth-

esis that consumers do not differ in their involvement or likelihood

to adopt a new product when exposed to only the advertisement,

regardless of where it is placed.

In particular, the findings of this study bring forth new evi-

dence that positive word-of-mouth does not have an additive effecton advertising when they are placed within the companys own

website. This new evidence adds empirical support to the body of

literature that has prophesized that the new virtual space will change

the landscape of marketing and interpersonal communications to

become a hybrid of mass interpersonal communications that em-

powers the consumer (Deighton 1997; Sawhney and Kotler 2001).

Finally, this paper makes three important contributions. It

adds knowledge to current literature in (1) website strategic man-

agement in deciding where not to include word-of-mouth commu-

nications, (2) word-of-mouth communications in the interaction

effect of word-of-mouth and advertising in the online environment,

8/12/2019 e-wom5.pdf

2/3

650 /Location, Location, Location

and (3) new-product adoption in shedding light as to why not all

positive word-of-mouth communications are effective.

REFERENCES

Alba, Joseph, John Lynch, Barton Weitz, Chris Janiszewski,

Richard Lutz, Alan Sawyer, and Stacy Wood (1997),

Interactive Home Shopping: Consumer, Retailer, and

Manufacturer Incentives to Participate in Electronic

Marketplaces,Journal of Marketing, 61(July), 38-53.

Armstrong, A.J. and J. Hagel III (1996), The Real Value of On-

Line Communities,Harvard Business Review, (May-June),

134-141.

Bargh, J.A. and K. McKenna (2004). The Internet and Social

Life,Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 573-590.

Bickart, Barbara and Robert M. Schindler (2001), Internet

Forums as Influential Sources of Consumer Information,

Journal of Interactive Marketing, 15, 31-40.

Chaiken, Shelly and Durairaj Maheswaran (1994), Heuristic

Processing Can Bias Systematic Processing: Effects of

Source Credibility, Argument Ambiguity, and Task

Importance on Attitude Judgment,Journal of Personality

and Social Psychology, 66 (3), 460-473.

Deighton, John (1996), The Future of Interactive Marketing,

Harvard Business Review, (Nov-Dec),151-162.Dellarocas, C. (2003), The Digitalization of word of mouth:

Promise and challenges of online feedback mechanisms,

Management Science, 49(10), 1407-24.

Friestad, Marian and Peter Wright (1994), The Persuasion

Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Persuasion

Attempts,Journal of Consumer Research,21 (June), 1-31.

Guernsey, L. (2000), Suddenly, everybodys an expert on

everything,The New York Times, February 3.

Harris, K., S. Baron, and B. Davies (1999), What Sort of Soil

do Rhododendrons Like?Comparing Customer and

Employee Responses to Requests for Product-Related

Information.The Journal of Services Marketing, 13(1), 21-

37.

Jain K. and Srinivasan N. (1990), An Empirical Assessment ofMultiple Operationalisations of Involvement, In M.E.

Goldberg and R.W. Pollay (Eds.),Advances in Consumer

Research, 17, 594-602.

Katz, E., & Lazersfeld, P. (1955),Personal influence: The part

played by people in the flow of mass communications,

Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

Kiecker, P. and D. Cowles (2001), Interpersonal

Communication and Personal Influence on the Internet: A

Framework for Examining Online Word-of-Mouth,Journal

of Euromarketing, 11(2),71-88.

Rheingold, H. (1993), The Virtual Community,Reading, MA.

Addison-Wesley.

Rogers, Everett, M. and Marcel M. Allbritton (1995), Interac-

tive Communication Technologies in Business Organiza-tions,The Journal of Business Communication, 32 (2),177-

195.

Sawhney, M.S. and P. Kotler (2001), The Age of Information

Democracy,D. Iacobucci (Ed.)Kellogg on Marketing,

(pp.386-408). New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Shah, Dhavan V., Jack M. McLeod, and So-Hyang Yoon, 2001,

Communication, Context, and Community: An Exploration

of Print, Broadcast, and Internet Influences,Communication

Research, 28(4), 464-506.

Slater, M.D. and D. Rouner (1996), How Message Evaluation

and Source Attributes May Influence Credibility Assessment

and Belief Change,Journalism and Mass Communication

Quarterly, 73,974-991.

Silk, Alvin J., Lisa R. Klein, and Ernst R. Berndt, 2001, The

Emerging Position of the Internet as an Advertising Me-

dium,Netnomics: Economic Research and Electronic

Networking, 3 (2),129-148.

Senecal, Sylvain, and Jacques Nantel, (2004), The Influence of

Online Product Recommendations on ConsumersOnlineChoices,Journal of Retailing, 80, 159-169.

Suitor, Jill, Karl Pillemer, and Shirley Keeton (1995), When

Experience Counts: The Effects of Experiential and Struc-

tural Similarity on Patterns of Support and Interpersonal

Stress,Social Forces, 73(4): 1573-1588.

Walthen, C. Nadine and Jacquelyn Burkell (2002), Believe it or

Not: Factors Influencing Credibility on the Web,Journal of

the American Society for Information Science and Technol-

ogy,53(2), 134-144.

Wellman, B. (2001), Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise

of Personalized Networking,International Journal of Urban

and Regional Research, 25(2), 227-252.

Zaichkowsky, Judith L. (1985), Measuring the Involvement

Construct,Journal of Consumer Research, 12(December),341-352

8/12/2019 e-wom5.pdf

3/3

651 Advances in Consumer Research

Volume 33, 2006

SPECIALSESSIONSUMMARY

An Examination of the Concept of Postmodern Home and the Role of Consumption in

Home-Making PracticesFleura Bardhi, Northeastern University

Eric Arnould, University of Arizona

OVERVIEW AND CONTRIBUTIONSHome is a fundamental construct in social sciences thatrepresents the emotional and meaningful relationship that consum-

ers form with place (Altman and Werner 1985). However, con-

sumer research on home is scarce (McCracken 1989; Sherry 2000).

Home has been studied mainly as a context for decision-making and

commercial exchange (e.g., Frenzen and Davis 1990; Grayson

1998). But previous work argues that home constitutes an important

place for self-development and family life (Claiborne and Ozanne

1990; Hill 1991; McCracken 1989; Venkantesh, et al. 2001). These

studies suggest that home is a symbolic and sacred object, and

allude to consumersuse of possessions and consumption practices

to transform place into home environments. However, we lack

studies that focus on the role of the marketplace in home practices

as well as studies on the concept of home per se. Furthermore, this

session suggest that consumer researchers move beyond an out-

dated conceptualization of home as a fixed place, typically identi-

fied with the house or the homeland, and in which the consumers

display a strong, affective, nostalgic, and permanent connection to

a place. By focusing on the concept of home, this session advances

our understanding of the ways that consumers relate to place in

postmodernity as well as the role that the marketplace plays in

consumershome related practices, such as indwelling and con-

structing a home.

Consistent with a current movement in social sciences that re-

examines the ways that consumers relate to place in postmodernity,

the three papers in this session investigate the ways that contempo-

rary life conditions have transformed the notion of home and argue

for an increasing role of the market in the social construction of

home. The first paper by Bardhi and Arnould investigates a mobile

notion of home among contemporary nomadic consumers. They

find that the home in postmodernity is not necessary defined in

terms of place, but in terms of relationships, possessions and spatial

patterns. Mobile professionals actively engage in practices that

transform public, commercial spaces into private and salient spaces

of home. The second paper by Rosenbaum focuses on aged infor-

mantsconsumption of a diner. This study demonstrates the social

role this consumptionscape plays in the lives of aged consumers

becoming either an extension of their homes or a replacement

home. The study investigates how consumers and service providers

co-construct the consumption experience in this diner as a home

experience through their social relationships, the regularity of

consumption practices in the diner, and the domestic activities that

take place there. The third paper by Venkatesh is part of an ongoingresearch project, Family Portal Design.This research shows how

the integrative use of technology in multiple aspects of domestic life

blurs the traditional boundaries between the home as private sphere

and society as public sphere. In the postmodern home, work and

domestic lives are interpenetrating, while home takes on nomadic

qualities and is no longer fixed to a place (see also Venkatesh et al.

2001). This study argues for a polysemous understanding of tech-

nology at home.

Making a Home on the Road: A Mobile Concept of Homeamong Transnational Mobile Professionals

Fleura Bardhi and Eric Arnould

Global geographical mobility is a normal condition of

postmodernity. Seven hundred million people move daily across

borders while eighty million people reside outside their native

home country (Beck 2000). Many people live between and betwixt

several homes and others are in a continuous state of mobility

without a fixed place to call home (Featherstone 1995; Urry 2002).

How do these contemporary nomads construct a sense of home on

the road? What is the meaning of home for these mobile popula-

tions? How do they use possessions and commercial setting in the

process of home making? These research questions are addressed

in this study.

Home is one of the central social concepts that consumers

orient themselves in time and space as well as a highly symbolic and

often sacred object. However, consumer research on home is scarce

(Sherry 2000). Mobile consumersconnections to home and the

influence of this relationship in consumer behavior have been

discussed in the acculturation literature. However, acculturation

studies have examined mainly sojourner consumer segments

sedentary consumers for whom mobility is only a temporary

condition and they sustain the connection to a place they call home.

We also do not know much about the ways that mobile consumers

construct a home on the road (Thompson and Tambyah 1999). The

focus of existing studies has been on the ways that sojourners

sustain connection with existing homes while on the road. Finally,

consumer research has been informed by an implicit notion of home

as fixed to a place (homeland or dwelling).

This study addresses these issues by studying the notions of

home among consumers who willingly live nomadic lifestyles,

such as transnational mobile professionals (TMPs) (Featherstone

1995). TMPs are members of a mobile professional class that has

emerged worldwide with the development of the global economy.

This global consumer segment is characterized by cosmopolitan

orientation and voluntary nomadism, always on the road from one

global city to the other, without a clear anchoring of identity to place

or nationality (Featherstone 1995; Hannerz 1996). The data for this

study is comprised of 35 semi-structured, long interviews with

highly mobile global professionals. The informants were selected

on the bases of sampling criteria derived from the literature on

TMPs. The sample includes roving professionals, business travel-

ers, and expatriates located in different parts of the world. The

researchers traveled in the informantsplaces of residency or workto conduct the interviews, which lasted from 1 to 5 hours. N*Vivo

was used to code the data following a preliminary list of codes and

the recommended techniques of qualitative data analysis.

The study found that TMPs desire to have a home and engage

continuously in practices that enable them to maintain or recreate a

sense of home on the road. We find that TMPs define home in a

mobile sense, in three different ways. First, TMPs define home in

terms of order: home is found in places where certain spatial and

temporal patterns exist or are created. Second, TMPs define home

in terms of salient relationships. Findings show that TMPs experi-