Study on the Influence of Little Red Book’s Electronic Word-of-Mouth on Consumer Purchase Behavior Intention

Abstract

With the development and popularization of the Internet, e-commerce has become an important channel for consumers to purchase goods and services. In the e-commerce environment, consumers often face information asymmetry and uncertainty. Therefore, they seek the evaluations and recommendations of other consumers to reduce purchase risks and increase satisfaction. These evaluations and recommendations are known as
electronic word-of-mouth.

This study takes the Little Red Book platform as the research object. The main objective of this study is to explore the influence of information quality, emotional trust, perceived usefulness and social interactivity in the electronic word of mouth on consumers’ behavioral intention on the platform. Specifically, this study has the following four objectives: 1) To explore the impact of information quality in the Little Red Book electronic word of mouth on consumer behavioral intention, 2) To explore the impact of emotional trust in the Little Red Book electronic word of mouth on consumer behavioral intention, 3) To explore the impact of perceived usefulness in the Little Red Book electronic word of mouth on consumer behavioral intention, 4) To explore the impact of social interactivity in the Little Red Book electronic word of mouth on consumer behavioral intention. Little Red Book is a content-driven social ecommerce platform where users can share their lifestyles, beauty and skincare tips, travel guides, and directly purchase related products or services on the platform. Little Red Book has a high level of user activity and user stickiness, as well as a large amount of diverse electronic word-of-mouth content, making it a suitable object for this study.

This study adopts a quantitative research method and collects 376 valid data by distributing questionnaires online and analyses the data. This study examines the impact of electronic word-of-mouth on consumer behavioral intentions from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The conclusion of this study that: 1) Information quality in eWOM on the Little Red Book platform has a significant positive impact on consumers’ behavioral intention, 2) Emotional trust in eWOM on the Little Red Book platform has a significant positive impact on consumers’ behavioral intention, 3) Perceived usefulness in eWOM on the Little Red Book platform has a significant positive impact on consumers’ behavioral intention, 4) Social interactivity in eWOM on the Little Red Book platform has a significant positive impact on consumers’ behavioral intention. The study of information quality, emotional trust and perceived usefulness on behavioral intention finds that all four have a positive effect, and social interactivity can increase the impact of these four factors on consumers’ behavioral intentions.

Keywords: electronic word-of-mouth, perceived usefulness, social interactivity, behavior intention.

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Master of Business Administration (International Program), Siam University, Bangkok, Thailand