Moderating Effects of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions on Relationship between AEWOM and FEWOM in Thailand

This research aims to examine the moderating effects of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions at the individual level on the relationship between acceptance and subsequent forwarding of electronic word of mouth (EWOM) in Thailand. EWOM is currently considered as one of the most influential communication channels for businesses, marketers, and various kinds of consumers. Cultural values can also be a factor to influence consumers’ decision-making behaviors. Hypotheses were developed by adopting Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, but with the newly developed scale, Individual Cultural Values Scale (CVSCALE) in order to observe the cultural diversity among Thai nationals at the individual level, and to investigate the moderating effect of Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions on the relationship between Acceptance of Electronic Word of Mouth (AEWOM) and Forwarding of Electronic Word of Mouth (FEWOM). A structured online questionnaire was used to collect data from 204 respondents, all of which were Thai and currently using one or more social networking service (SNS). The results indicated that people who have accepted EWOM tend to forward the EWOM further, and among Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions, Power Distance, Collectivism, and Masculinity significantly moderated the relationship between AEWOM and FEWOM

THE IMPACTS OF CULTURAL VALUES ON ELECTRONIC WORD OF MOUTH : OPINION LEADERSHIP AND OPINION SEEKING

Purpose: The importance of electronic word of mouth has been proven in consumer-dominated communication. It is also one of the most effective ways to influence consumers when it comes to the purchase decision process. What is more, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are widely used in business research even though it has criticized. This study aims to explain the relationship be- tween Hofstede's dimensions and two flip-side of electronic word of mouth (opinion leadership orientation and opinion seeking orientation at the individual level. Method: This study will include two main steps which included (1) initial research and (2) official research. In details, qualitative and quantitative research methods would be used in the initial research. A deep interview with few samples was carried out to check the validity of the scales. Then, the initial survey was carried to confirm the reliability of the scale. In official research, quantitative research was used to identify the relationship between variables. Findings: This study is suggested that there is a positive relationship between opinion leadership orientation. Still, opinion seeking orientation is found to have a positive association with uncertainty avoidance and negative relationship with power distance. Value: Theoretically, this study confirmed that Hofstede’s dimensions could be measured at the individual level as well as find out the relationship between cultural values and two flip-side of electronic word of mouth. Practically, this study is to assist the firm in their viral marketing, especially in seeding strategies and behavior of the characteristic of recipient

Cross-cultural electronic word-of-mouth: a systematic literature review

Purpose: Global adoption of the internet and mobile usage results in a huge variation in the cultural backgrounds of consumers who generate and consume electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Unsurprisingly, a research trend on cross-cultural eWOM has emerged. However, there has not been an attempt to synthesize this research topic. This paper aims to bridge this gap. Methodology: This research paper conducts a systematic literature review of the current research findings on cross-cultural eWOM. Journal articles published from 2006 to 2021 are included. This study then presents the key issues in the extant literature and suggests potential future research. Findings: The findings show that there has been an upward trend in the number of publications on cross-cultural eWOM since the early 2010s, with a relatively steeper increase toward 2020. The findings also synthesize cross-cultural eWOM research into four elements and suggest potential future research avenues. Value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is currently no exhaustive/integrated review of cross-cultural eWOM research. This research fills the need to summarize the current state of cross-cultural eWOM literature and identifies research questions to be addressed in the future.Comment: 18 pages, 2 tables, 2 figure

the role of social capital, trust and tie strength in a sample of ecuadorian and Portuguese Millennials

Nowadays SNSs grow in importance and still cross-cultural studies about the factors that influence the engagement of electronic word-of-mouth are limited. Therefore, this study explores the influence of social relationship variables on eWOM behaviors, between Ecuador and Portugal. An online survey was conducted among 145 Ecuadorian and 47 Portuguese, Generation Y, Facebook users. The findings displayed for Portuguese users, eWOM key motivating factors for opinion seeking is bridging social capital, while for sharing information bonding social capital and tie strength. Contrarily in Ecuador bridging social capital influenced three eWOM behaviors. For both cultures, bonding social capital predicted the desire to share

The Roles of Culture in Online User Reviews: An Empirical Investigation

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is a prominent source of information that significantly influences consumer purchase decisions. Recent literature has extensively explored the impact of eWOM on consumers-generated reviews and purchase decisions. However, few studies have analyzed the role of culture on eWOM. We use a novel dataset of Airbnb eWOM messages in order to empirically extend the findings by Banerjee and Chai (2019). We find that the sentiment of individualistic customers is worse than that of their collectivistic counterparts when both groups experience the same level of negative disconfirmations. Furthermore, guests from a relatively more distant culture rely less on heuristics. In particular, quality signals, such as the "superhost" status, are more influential to consumers from a less distant cultural background.Comment: 35 pages, 4 tables, 2 figure

Social media marketing across cultures: how does consumer behavior on Facebook brand pages differ between cultures

This dissertation explores the relationship between culture and social media marketing. Differences in consumer behavior on social media are analyzed. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are employed to predict these differences between cultures. The data was organically gathered from 6750 posts from 225 different Facebook brand pages and 15 different countries. The gathered data included the engagement metrics such as the amount of likes, shares and comments and the various versions of likes such as: love, wow, funny, angry and sad. To the author’s knowledge this is the first study that uses real world organic data to analyze differences between cultures on social media. Descriptive results are displayed through charts and then the statistical significance is measured through linear regressions. Interesting differences were found that could be explained by Hofstede’s dimensions. One of these is that countries low in individualism and/or high in power distance share posts more than comment on them. Also, the use of the funny and wow emoticon responses seems to be related to higher scores on individualism. These findings have theoretical and practical implications. Some academics posit that cultures are converging, and cultural dimensions are becoming obsolete, because of new communication platforms such as social media (Sobol, Cleveland, & Laroche, 2018). Findings from this dissertation imply that Hofstede’s dimensions could still be powerful predictors of some consumer behavior patterns, even on Facebook. Managers could adopt more viral marketing campaigns in countries where posts get shared more and use invitations to tag friends in the opposite countries. Furthermore, they could become more aware of cultural differences in emoticon sentiment that might influence their success and cater to these expectations accordingly.Esta dissertação explora a relação entre cultura e marketing de redes sociais. São analisadas as diferenças entre o comportamento do consumidor nas redes sociais. As dimensões culturais de Hofstede são utilizadas para prever as diferenças entre culturas. Os dados foram recolhidos organicamente de 6750 publicações de 225 diferentes marcas de páginas de Facebook e de 15 países diferentes. Os dados recolhidos incluíram as métricas de engajamento, como número de gostos, partilhas, comentários e as várias versões dos gostos, como: adoro, wow, riso, ira, triste. Para o conhecimento do autor, este é o primeiro estudo que usa dados orgânicos do mundo real para analisar as diferenças entre culturas nas redes sociais. Resultados descritivos são exibidos através de gráficos e, em seguida, a significância estatística é medida através de regressões lineares. Foram encontradas diferenças interessantes que poderiam ser explicadas pelas dimensões de Hofstede. Uma delas é que os países com baixo individualismo e/ou alto em distância ao poder, fazem mais partilha de publicações em vez de comentários. Além disso, o uso de reações como riso e wow parecem estar relacionadas com pontuações mais altas em individualismo. Estas descobertas têm implicações teóricas e práticas. Alguns académicos postulam que as culturas estão a convergir e as dimensões culturais estão a tornarse obsoletas, graças às novas plataformas comunicação como as redes sociais (Sobol, Cleveland, & Laroche, 2018). Os resultados desta dissertação indicam que as dimensões de Hofstede ainda podem ser poderosos indicadores de alguns padrões de comportamento do consumidor, mesmo no Facebook. Os gerentes podem adotar mais campanhas de marketing virais em países onde as publicações são mais partilhadas e usar os convites para identificar amigos em países opostos. Além disso, eles podem tornar-se mais conscientes das diferenças culturais no uso das reações emocionais que podem influenciar mais o seu sucesso e atender de acordo com essas expectativas

A Comparison of US and Korean Consumers: A Cross-Cultural Study of Brand-Related UGC Found in Discussion Boards of Product Review Sites

This study is a partial replication of Fong and Burton’s 2008 study. Fong and Burton (2008) conducted a cross-cultural study comparing Chinese and US Internet users in terms of willingness to engage in information-seeking and information-giving, utilizing Hofstede’s (1980; 1991) individualistic/collectivistic cultural dimension. The current study examines cross-cultural differences in the use of UGC between US and Korean consumers by conducting a content analysis of the discussion boards of six digital camera review sites based in the US and Korea. It content-analyzes 1871 online postings on discussion boards of US-based and Korea-based product review sites. The study adopts Hofstede’s (1980; 1991) individualistic/collectivistic dimension and Hall’s (1981; 1990) cultural contexts (high-context & low-context cultures) as cultural dimensions, and found some cross-cultural differences and similarities between US and Korean Internet users by examining four hypotheses concerning US and Korean Internet users’ willingness to engage in information-seeking, willingness to engage in information-giving, tendency to use implicit communication styles, and tendency to use explicit communication styles

How Loyal are you to Media Content Subscription? A Cross-cultural Comparison of North America and China

This thesis is a cross-cultural study of eWOM, comparing the contexts of North America and China. Media content subscription, featured by invisibleness, is hard to predict before the subscription, thus eWOM becomes an externalization of the perceived quality of media content websites. Consumers from diverse cultural backgrounds may be affected to a different extent by positive and negative eWOM. This study also analyzes consumer behavior under the framework of the six Hofstede (2001) cultural variables: collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, masculinity, and indulgence. Electronic Word-of-Mouth(eWOM) has an impact on consumers’ perceived quality and brand loyalty of the website they subscribe to. This study will focus on both positive and negative eWOM to explore different patterns of the valence of eWOM by the following structure: first, analyze the mediation effect of perceived quality in the relationship between eWOM and brand loyalty; second, analyze the moderation effect of Hofstede’s six cultural variables

Cause-related marketing in the digital era: how enterprises can deal with international campaigns in individualist versus collectivist countries

The purpose of the paper is to (i) analyze how different users of social media (Twitter) interact and spread cause-related communication and (ii) explore how people search for cause-related marketing campaigns online, allowing a comparison between individualist and collectivist cultures. A social network analysis was used to map the different types of networks created by online users. A second in-depth study on how online users search for cause-related marketing campaigns used a 5-year analysis. Online users in individualist countries are more engaged with a broader community than those in collectivist countries who focus their attention on a narrower set of CRM messages. These findings are useful insights for companies and charities, which should adopt different strategies depending on the culture.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

The effects of cultural differences on social media behaviour

This paper studies the relationship between culture and social media marketing using Hofstede's cultural dimensions. The data were organically gathered from 6,750 posts from 225 different Facebook brand pages and 15 different countries. The gathered data included the engagement metrics such as the amount of likes, shares and comments and the various versions of likes such as love, wow and funny. Interesting differences were found that could be explained by Hofstede's dimensions. Countries low in individualism and/or high in power distance, share posts more than comments. Also the use of the funny and wow emoticon responses are related to higher scores on individualism. Findings from this paper show that the use of Hofstede's dimensions to group countries into different cultures predicts some online consumer behaviour patterns, particularly on Facebook.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio