What Drive Consumers to Spread the Word in Social Media?

Abstract

The on-line social networks or social media facilitated the interactions and the information sharing between the Internet users. The marketers aware of the importance of the word of mouth and recommendation, tried to use the social networks to contact consumers and encourage them to promote their brands by playing the role of market mavens. In this study we tried to identify the motivations or the determinants of the word of mouth on the on-line social networks. For that purpose, we presented an integrator model which includes psychological and social factors to understand this phenomenon. We conduct exploratory and confirmatory analysis to ascertain friability and validity of measures. We used PLS analysis to test hypothesis. Findings and managerial implication are also presented.