The Influence of eWOM Source Credibility and Product Involvement on Travel Product Purchasing Intention of Malaysian Chinese
Abstract
Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has become one of the important reference before purchasing. Through sharing the use of experience and reference to online consumer evaluation, it enhances the autonomy of purchase decision-making. This study attempts to investigate whether eWOM source credibility and product involvement affect travel product-purchasing intention by using the international website, TripAdvisor, as the research scope. An online structured questionnaire is designed for Malaysian Chinese online users or whoever visits https://cn.tripadvisor.com/ to search destinations or travel information with random sampling method. The purposes of this study are listed as follows: (1) To study the influence of eWOM source credibility on the purchase intention of Malaysian Chinese. (2) To study the influence of product involvement on the purchase intention of Malaysian Chinese. (3) To study whether the degree of product involvement interfere with eWOM source credibility. Hope the result of this study can help Taiwan Tourist industry to understand the consumption patterns and to make effective marketing strategies before entering the Chinese tourism market in Malaysia. It also attempts to provide a reflection of the tourism-related combination of industry, official, and university to develop marketing strategy toward the ‘new southward policy’ while facing the rapid growth of global mobile commerce.
Keywords: eWOM, source credibility, product involvement, purchase intention, Malaysian Chinese
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