Current research on motives for contributing to online review platforms

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Communications - Multimedia, Internet, New Technologies, grade: 2,0, University of Mannheim, language: English, abstract: The paper examines why people want to share information on the Internet and why they write online reviews. It will focus on the results of current research on the topic. Everybody is surrounded by decisions and is choosing one alternative out of a lot of possibilities all the time. But choosing is always connected with risk. This is why people search for further information about a product. There are different ways to gather this information. Scientists found out that consumers use word-of-mouth (WOM) as one of the most important source to collect knowledge before buying. Moreover, consumers do not use WOM to merely gather information but also to share information and their opinions about products, services and brands. Since the Internet is growing rapidly and thereby the amount of information available online is growing as well, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is an interesting topic for recent research. Moreover, the growing global connection and the ability to access Internet at any time and at any place, leads to a high relevance of this topic. Consumers are able to communicate their opinions, feelings and thoughts about services and products anytime and at any place. WOM is limited to a certain environment but eWOM has almost no limitations in its range. But not only the high range but also the anonymity is a great advantage of eWOM. Because of the growing spread of eWOM and the lack of research in this area, the available research will be discussed in the course of this paper to give an overview and identify limitations for further research.