The impact of electronic word-of-mouth communication: A literature analysis and integrative model

The notion of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication has received considerable attention in both business and academic communities. Numerous studies have been conducted to examine the effectiveness of eWOM communication. The scope of published studies on the impact of eWOM communication is large and fragmented and little effort has been made to integrate the findings of prior studies and evaluate the status of the research in this area. In this study, we conducted a systematic review of eWOM research. Building upon our literature analysis, we used the social communication framework to summarize and classify prior eWOM studies. We further identified key factors related to the major elements of the social communication literature and built an integrative framework explaining the impact of eWOM communication on consumer behavior. We believe that the framework will provide an important foundation for future eWOM research work. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.