Paper Title
A Study on The Relationship Between Food Community Review Readership and Purchasing Behavior
Abstract
Recently, Internet popularity changed people�s life, and the advancement of technology let the speed of delivering messages improve. Many Internet community platform was born, that provide a new channel of communication for the people. In Taiwan, more than 60% of internet users are inclined to browse for consumer information and food critics. When planning on purchasing goods or visiting a restaurant, consumers are accustomed to first search for information and consumer reviews before making a decision. Therefore, consumers searching information about virtual members� discussions and recommendations for the product, in order to know the dining experience of others, as a reference to its own purchasing decisions. However, prior research seldom explored that consumers read the article of food community, combining with social presence(SP) and persuasion knowledge model(PKM) impact on the subsequent behavior of consumers. When consumers read the comment of food community, they will perceive community word-of-mouth(WOM) and community SP, and began to doubt the authenticity of the articles when they perceive community commercialization. These are important issues that to study consumers� response in PKM, influence of those costumers to trust and identity of food community as parametric variable and purchase behavior of consumers. This study has adapted the model of social identity theory. Discuss consumer�s trust and identity on food community affect the relationship in purchasing behavior after consumers read virtual member�s comment. When consumers� trust and identity of food community are affected by WOM, SP and PKM; when consumers have trust and identity of food community, at the same time, and generate a positive impact on consumer purchasing behavior. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed the mediation impact about WOM, SP, and PKM.
Keywords� Word of Mouth, Social Presence, Persuasion Knowledge Model, Customer-Community Identification.