WHY DO NEGATIVE E-WOM MESSAGES SOMETIMES POSITIVELY INFLUENCE CONSUMER ATTITUDE?

With the advent of the Internet in the United States, Japan, and other developed countries, electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) consumer reviews have come into vogue. While most studies have shown that negative e-WOM has negative effects on consumer attitude, some recent studies implied that the existence of negative e-WOM on a single website can enhance consumer attitude toward the website.However, no research has not identified the conditions for the positive effects of negative e-WOM. Thus, we investigate the moderating effects of the types of receivers, reviews, and products. Also, we investigate the moderating effects of the order of positive and negative e-WOM reviews posted in a single website.The effects of four factors are investigated —product characteristic (utilitarian vs. hedonic), review characteristic (attribute- vs. benefit-centric), receiver characteristic (expert vs. novice), and the orders of negative e-WOM (top vs. bottom) when the ratios of positive to negative e-WOM reviews are 10:0, 8:2, and 6:4. A laboratory experiment with virtual e-WOM sites is utilized. Four hundred twenty students participate in the experiment. All hypotheses are supported in at least 5% levels.The results of ANOVA show that negative e-WOM has positive effects on consumer attitudes towards products in the case of hedonic products and expert consumers reading attribute-centric review. Moreover, negative e-WOM has a greater positive effect when it is at the top of the website as opposed to at the bottom. This study contributes to our current understanding of e-WOM effects on consumer behavior.