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臺大管理論叢
第
26
卷第
3
期
241
Since the popularization of the Internet, eWOM, compared to traditional WOM, has
received growing attention in business practice. The studies of Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004)
and Mudambi and Schuff (2010) showed that in the 21st century, the gradual popularization
of the Internet led to the shift of WOM topics related to products or services into the Internet
space (Ghose and Ipeirotis, 2011). Several studies compared eWOM with traditional WOM.
The consensus was that eWOM is more easily accessible, has lower search cost, gets faster
and farther diffusion rate, leads to longer message retention, and has higher impact than
traditional WOM. Consumers can easily access more information about products or services
without the constraint of time or space. (Chen, Fay, and Wang, 2011; Chevalier and Mayzlin,
2006; Dellarocas et al., 2007; Duan et al., 2008b; Hu, Tian, et al., 2012; Park et al., 2012;
Tirunillai and Tellis, 2012).
Online review can supplement or substitute an enterprise’s offline or other forms of
communications related to product quality since it could reduce uncertainty associated with
purchasing a product or experiencing a service. Therefore, it has become an important source
of information for evaluating the quality of a product or service and making purchasing
decisions, so as to assist consumers in making wiser decisions (Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006;
Moe and Trusov, 2011). From the perspective of manufacturers, online review is a critical
success factor for new product sales (Cui et al., 2012). Compared with traditional WOM
among people, the dissemination of eWOM employs the Internet as its medium, while online
review is a new form of eWOM (Jalilvand et al., 2011; Pan and Zhang, 2011).
3. Domestic Literature on eWOM and Online Review (Taiwan)
This article first reviewed the achievements of Taiwanese scholars in their studies on
eWOM and online review. Using the Researcher Query Website of the Ministry of Science
and Technology (MOST), we identified scholars in the fields of “Marketing Management”
and “Information Management” and filtered their publications in domestic and international
journals using eWOM or online review as the keywords. Twenty pieces of literature from
Taiwanese scholars published between 2006 and 2014 satisfied the conditions, of which 11
were in Chinese and nine were in English. Three preliminary findings were summarized as
follows:
1. The theories that Taiwanese researchers quoted, the focuses of their research questions
and the variables under study, and their analytical method are heterogeneous. It is evident
that studies on eWOM and online review have diverse and rich opportunities.