Negative Electronic Word-of-mouth can Support Product Recommendation: Experimental Investigation

Recently, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication has been included in various online recommender systems. However, the type of information that effectively recommends a product is not clearly understood. To allow consumers to select an optimal product, it is necessary to understand the human purchasing model and discover an interface design that can effectively present information. It has been predicted that pages that include negative eWOM facilitate trust toward the system, although cognitive resources are required to process the information. The results of a controlled experiment show that participants who encountered negative eWOM and have less cognitive load could developed higher trust toward the product and were motivated to purchase it. This study implies that cognitive factors such as access to negative eWOM are important for developing trust and motivating product buying behavior. It contributes to determining when negative eWOM can be effective and provides new knowledge about developing consumer buying models on the web.