Comparison between influence of word-of-mouth released by corporate and posted by existing customers

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24530517
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Commerce
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: SHIBUYA Satoru 東北大学, 経済学研究科(研究院), 教授 (00333493)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 類似性 / 消費者認知 / インターネット / クチコミ

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study has compared between the influence of word-of-mouth released by corporates (which we called as promotional condition) and the influence of word-of-mouth posted by consumers (which we called as social condition), and conducted three experiments. As a result, every experiments showed that consumer's interest about the others were always stronger in social condition than promotional condition. The influence by other's word-of-mouth was also always stronger in social condition than promotional condition.
In addition, we conducted another experiment where we explored about similarity perception in subliminal condition. As a result, in subliminal condition, the number of items which were showed on the screen didn't exert any influence onto participants attitude and purchase intention, whereas the level of importance of items showed on the screen and used to manipulate participants' similarity perception exerted significant influence on participants.

Free Research Field

商学