How Perceived Risk and Suspicion Moderates the Relationship Between Information Source, eWOM, and Purchasing Decision

Introduction

In the emerging of information technology and technology for last decades, the context of online shopping has transformed the ways people shop from traditional shopping to the process of using technology as an instrument (Duarte et al., 2018). Online shopping is proved to have more advantages and benefits than traditional shopping style. For business, technology-based platforms provide effective marketing channels, remove geographical barriers, and reduce the operating costs (Chen & Xie, 2008). On the other hands, customers prefer online-shopping because it is less time-consuming and easier to inspect and select the products, and provides more choices of products (Duarte et al., 2018). Past researches suggested that online-purchase decision-making factors such as information sources and the electronic word of mouth (eWOM) play a crucial role in determining and shaping the customers’ attitudes and behaviors (Hussain et al., 2018). Before deciding to purchase, customers tend to conduct their own research of the products, which they are interested in, by either asking their families and friends or looking for some reviews websites and check what other customers comment about their experiences. In-store shopping and online shopping have different characteristics, even though the two compliment and generate each other (Farag et al., 2007). Customers can perceive the product characteristics in a store like the physical product, price, seller and buyer interaction. However, for online shopping, customers tend to focus more on how the product can offer differently than the others such as: the benefits of the products compared to others; how customers perceive the new product into the person’s experience, belief, demand; the difficulty to understand and grasp; or how it can provide a trial run and test before purchase. Thus, the online product characteristics can be defined as the capabilities or attributes of the product.

Recently, the evolution and development of the Internet have led to the instruction of a new form of word of mouth: electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). eWOM is described as all informal communication on the Internet, which is addressed to consumers and related to a particular goods or services or the sellers thereof (Litvin, Goldsmith, & Pan, 2018). Since eWOM is available to all consumers who have can use online platform to share their opinions and comments, it is soon to be considered as one of the most influentially informal media (Huete-Alcocer, 2017). Researchers suggested that eWOM is the most potential tools in purchase decision making (Basri et al., 2016) and in the online-platform customers rely on the eWOM likes product comments and reviews but there are numerous sellers who manipulate those resources for their benefit (Hu, Liu, & Sambamurthy, 2011). Thus, eWOM is an important factor affecting customer’s decision but if customers suspect that the given information is being manipulated, it is unlikely that they would trust the information at all. Furthermore, the information sources regarding products is a massive resource, it can come from individual, acquaintances and strangers as a previous research suggests that it is highly possible for peoples to make purchase when they are influenced by others, when they receive enough information and the value they place in the product (Jin & Phua, 2014); even though there are benefits from online shopping but there are also risks and it can affect the decision as well, but there is a lack of research of which criteria can cause the customers to less likely to go shopping online, basically how perception of risk and suspicion can mitigate the online-purchase decision.