Should we disable the comment function on social media? The impact of negative eWOM on consumers’ trust in fashion presentations

Abstract

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) has attracted a great deal of attention in both academia and practice in recent years. Our empirical study investigates the relation of negative comments and consumers’ trust in fashion presentations focusing on clothing. It is a product category characterized by a lot of online conversation and opinion sharing, but is surprisingly under-researched regarding eWOM. We calculate a multiple regression model moderated by consumers’ social media experience to identify the impact of a dichotomous eWOM stimulus. We find that negative comments referring to a fashion presentation cause a significant decrease of trust. However, the more experienced a user is in dealing with social media services such as Facebook or YouTube, the weaker this effect will get. These findings contribute to the existing academic discourse about the impact of negative eWOM.