People As Transmitters: What Makes An Online Marketing Message Contagious?

Word of Mouth (WOM) has been extensively studied as persuasive communication but it has seldom been studied as diffusive communication. This study focuses on online WOM as diffusive communication and the accompanying associated ripple effect by examining the information's quality, authenticity, authority, and interestingness. It also investigates how a participant's opinion leadership and seeking propensities influence consumer's online WOM activities. Our results show that all of the four WOM information dimensions have a positive effect on a transmitter's level of acceptance of WOM, which in turn positively affects the transmitter's sharing intention. This study indicates that in computer-mediated environments opinion seekers are more likely to be transmitter.