The Scope of Motivation Studies for (e)Word-of-mouth

There are fundamental differences between research into WOM (word-of-mouth), in which communication occurs face-to-face, and one into eWOM (electric word-of-mouth), which occurs over the Internet between strangers. In specifically looking at motivational factors, this study reveals significant differences in that while traditional WOM studies mainly discuss recipient motives, eWOM studies (a) mainly discuss sender motives and (b) permit the inclusion of economic motives.


Introduction
Consumers are not isolated entities whose perceptions and attitudes are transformed solely by advertisements; they make decisions on what is a good product and what to buy based on being surrounded by other people in addition to receiving information from mass media (Ikeda, Kobayashi, & Shigematsu, 2004). The word-of-mouth (WOM) effect, in which information is primarily transmitted orally between concerned parties directly, has been tested since the 1950s as one of the effects of influence made by other people. Arndt (1967) defined word-of-mouth communication as "oral, person to person communication between a receiver and a communicator whom the receiver perceives as noncommercial concerning a brand, a product, or a service." In this manner, past studies only considered face-to-face communication, but today, the Internet has given rise to numerous online communities comprising people who have never met each other in person, and there are increasing opportunities for users to influence each other (Hamaoka & Satomura, 2009;Henning-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh, & Gremler, 2004). As illustrated in Table 1, Hamaoka and Satomura (2009) introduced a classification based on the media used and parties involved in addition to the conditions established by Arndt (1967), and defined communication that occurs with strangers over the Internet, whether via email or bulletin board, as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and all other communication as word-of-mouth (WOM).

Why Do People Exchange Information?
(1) Why do people exchange information face-to-face? Dichter (1966)  increase levels of involvement (Bauer, 1960). Richins (1983), in research focused exclusively on negative WOM, shows that important motivational factors for engaging in WOM are consistent with those indicated by Dichter (1966), that is, product involvement, self-involvement, and involvement with others. Here, positive word-of-mouth (PWOM) is information that promotes purchase of a product ("I recommend this product") and negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) is information that inhibits purchase of a product ("I do not recommend this product"). Much existing research has shown that PWOM has a positive influence on consumer decisions, and NWOM has a negative influence (Arndt, 1967;Burzynski & Bayer, 1977;Herr, Kardes, & Kim, 1991;Kuwashima, 2018a;Richins, 1983;Wilson & Peterson, 1989). However, Kuwashima (2016) pointed out that PWOM may also have a negative influence for highly conspicuous goods. Sundaram, Mitra, and Webster (1998)  (2) Why do people exchange information on the Internet?
Since information on the Internet is public and shareable with anyone, it has the characteristics of public goods. Therefore, people are fundamentally discouraged from sharing their own (valuable) information with others over the Internet. Kollock (1999)  Internet users. When gathering information from an online community, seeking information that fit one's own needs, expert information, product reputation information of users who tried them, and seeking answers to questions were strong motives. However, there was also a high response rate for "gaining benefits by sharing information" and "returning the favor for previously having received a comment or response from others in an online community." Miyata then evaluated respondents who raised these reasons for involvement according to how frequently they answered others or provided information in the online community and compared mean values across six levels. She found that while many respondents answered "because of having previously received comments or answers from other people in the online community" and "helping others is fair," their actual frequency was low. By contrast, although low numbers of respondents answered "to raise my reputation" and "out of personal attachment to the community," their frequency was high. Gruen, Osmonbekov, and Czaplewski (2006) focused on the utilitarian aspect of the exchange of "how to" at software user forums and suggested motivation, ability, and opportunity as the factors that define it. Their results show that motivation and ability had a significant effect on "how to" exchange, whereas opportunity did not. Furthermore, "how to" exchange can raise consumer evaluations of a company's product, which leads to repurchase and the intent of WOM.
As often seen in these studies, although there are users who provide information on the Internet, there are many who only browse information but do not contribute any information by themselves, that is, read-only members (ROM) (Miyata, 2005). Ikeda (1997) suggests reasons why certain users only read and do not output information: "message stress," an inability to contribute because they do not understand the message; "interpersonal stress," an inability to contribute due to an aversion to potential trouble in the community; "information overloading," an inability to contribute due to too much information; and "anonymity stress," an inability to contribute due to the lack of transparency about the other's identity. A questionnaire targeting users enrolled in electronic meeting room provided by online service provider NiftyServe revealed that while users who both receive and send information do not experience "information overload" or "anonymity stress," users who experience "interpersonal stress" tend to be ROM, and "message stress" was unrelated to both.

Economical Motives Emerge in eWOM
As is shown by the inclusion of term "noncommercial" in the

Conclusion
On the issue of motivation behind WOM behavior, studies on face-to-face WOM mainly discuss why people seek out WOM information, that is, "Why do consumers want to receive WOM?" However, in eWOM research, the main point of discussion is why people post WOM (a form of useful information) in a public space such as the Internet and allow this information to become a public good-in other words, "Why do people want to contribute WOM?" Although both approaches seem to discuss the same issue, research is in actuality addressing the different positions of WOM receivers and senders.
In face-to-face WOM, the reception side bears the cost of searching for the individual who, among one's acquaintances, possesses the sought-after information, so it is considered that the focus is on the reception side of WOM. Since the reception side wants to receive WOM, it is easy to conclude that speakers would naturally provide this information (about products, etc.) when requested, without having to go so far as to discuss the speaker's motivations.
In the case of eWOM, information about nearly any product can be Furthermore, as mentioned previously, there is another difference Summarizing the above differences in a chart would result in Table   2. Although WOM and eWOM use the same "word-of-mouth," studies differ in terms of the subject and phenomenon being researched.