The Anonymous Friend: Effects of eWOM Sources' Personal Identifying Information

Abstract: Thanks to technology development, the concept of word-of-mouth has been given a new meaning. Electronic word-of-mouth allows a single message from an unknown sender to be seen and interpreted by millions of people on the Internet. Consumer-generated online reviews have an immense impact on other consumers' perceptions of the reviewed products and services, even though an eWOM receiver rarely knows anything about the message source. Questions that may arise could be: How do I know that I have the same preferences as the reviewer Is this review and its source credible The presence of personal identifying information (PII) about eWOM sources might help consumers to better assess online reviews. With this thesis, we aim to shed light on how and why differing levels and forms of eWOM source PII influence consumers' perceptions of online reviews, reviewers and the reviewed objects. The results from our experiment revealed that the more PII supplementing an identical hotel review exposed to respondents - especially PII in the form of a video presentation of the sender - the higher perceived source credibility, the more favourable the attitude towards the reviewed hotel, and the stronger the intention to choose it. Besides, respondents' attitudes and intentions were significantly mediated by their perceptions of likeness to the eWOM source and of source credibility.