Word-of-Mouth
Word-of-Mouth (WOM) is oral person-to-person communication between an information receiver and a sender, who exchange the experiences of a brand, a product or a service based on a non-commercial purpose (Arndt, 1967). This means that communication serves as a crucial influencing role on consumer behaviors, such as buying, switching and diffusing (Coleman, et al., 1966; Arndt, 1967).
In the era of information, the Internet provides human beings with a new way of communication, which is more efficient and effective. Word of mouth may be in electronic form, diffused via the Internet (Barbagallo, et al., 2012). An information sender is able to communicate not only with family, friends and acquaintances, but also with anyone who may be unknown to the sender but has some interest in the information (Goyette, et al., 2010). This is true also for an information receiver, who is able to obtain information from anyone on the Internet. Thus, word of mouth on the Internet influences the information receivers more quickly, broadly, widely, significantly and without any geographic limitation (Gelb & Sundaram, 2002).