Antecedents of and their effect on trust in online word-of-mouth : case Finnish discussion forums

2011

The growing importance of digital marketing communications and digital marketing channels has raised challenges in understanding this new environment and consumers’ action within it. Objective of this study was to explore the dynamics of online word-of-mouth and consumers’ trust formation towards it. Literature review offers a comprehensive view to trust in its contradictory nature, to the unique characteristics of online word-of-mouth. Research was explanatory and causal, trying to find relationships between variables derived from previous studies and theory. Quantitative method was employed to measure following latent variables: Trustworthiness of a community, website quality, accuracy, r…