The relationships between products’ hedonic and utilitarian values and three word of mouth variables

Abstract

Word of mouth (WOM) research and word of mouth marketing are often associated with two challenges. The first challenge stems from inconsistent findings in previous research about WOM drivers. The second challenge is the difficulty for marketing professionals to anticipate WOM processes. Anticipating consumers’ WOM is difficult because consumers’ WOM occurs in the consumers’ private lives. The current research aims to address the two challenges noted above by joining a recent research stream that focuses exclusively on the inherent relationships between products and consumers’ WOM behaviour. The main premise of the current research is that if a relationship between products or product values and WOM activities does exist, then this would give the marketer a greater chance of predicting consumers’ WOM activities. In the current research, products are represented by their hedonic and utilitarian values, whereas consumers’ WOM behaviours are represented by three variables; WOM spread, WOM request, and WOM influence. Hedonic and utilitarian values of products are chosen because they seem to be the best reference to what a product is. A number of relationships between each of those two values and each of the WOM variables investigated in the study are proposed. Some of these relationships are postulated as direct relationships, and some are proposed as mediated by the variable of performance risk. To test the hypothesised relationships, a correlational research design is used in which the research instrument, a self-administered questionnaire, collected data from 294 participants. The research found a considerable contrast between hedonic values and utilitarian values in predicting consumers’ WOM spread. Such contrast was less pronounced in predicting consumers’ WOM request and WOM influence. Nevertheless, the moderate contrast between hedonic and utilitarian values in predicting WOM request and WOM influence could be of significance in guiding future research. The variable of performance risk was not found to be a mediator in the research model. Results are discussed and compared to previous findings from the literature. Additionally, implications and opportunities for future research are suggested.