A cross-cultural study of market mavenism in social media: exploring young American and Chinese consumers’ viral marketing attitudes, eWOM motives and behaviour

A web survey of 440 American college students was conducted in April, 2010 and a paper survey of 835 Chinese college students was distributed in summer and fall, 2010 to examine young consumers’ social media use, market mavenism, viral marketing attitude, and product recommendation behaviour in a cross-cultural context. Structural model testing results showed that subjective norm and affection outcome expectation motivated American and Chinese market mavenism. Their perceived subjective norm and pleasure influenced their viral marketing attitude. More importantly, their frequency of product recommendations on social networking websites was determined by their time spent on social networking websites, viral marketing attitude, eWOM intent to help the company and market mavenism. The implications for the industry and academia are discussed.

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