Exploring the Determinants of Influential eWOM in Virtual Communities: An Empirical Study

Background and Research Goal: Word of mouth (WOM) has been widely recognized as an important source influencing consumers’ decision making process (Sen and Lerman, 2007). Electronic WOM (eWOM) exerts an even more significant influence on consumers ((Bickart and Schindler, 2001). Virtual community refers to a network of people with common interests who use electronic means to communicate and share interests, valuable resources, experiences and knowledge (Kardaras et al., 2003). Users of product virtual communities tend to have higher social interaction than users of product review websites (Fogel and Nehmad, 2009). Despite the overall higher influence of eWOM over Marketer Generated