IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v80y2017icp176-187.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The influence of word-of-mouth on attitudinal ambivalence during the higher education decision-making process

Author

Listed:
  • Sipilä, Jenni
  • Herold, Kristiina
  • Tarkiainen, Anssi
  • Sundqvist, Sanna

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of word-of-mouth (WOM) on consumers' attitudinal ambivalence in the context of higher education decision-making. Construal level theory (CLT) is combined with attitudinal ambivalence literature to generate hypotheses about how different types of WOM (i.e., praise and activity) received during the decision-making process reduce attitudinal ambivalence. The subsequent consequences of attitudinal ambivalence for decision-making are also studied. A two-wave survey of applicants to international higher education programs is used to test the hypotheses. This study contributes to the ambivalence literature by showing that different types of WOM information reduce attitudinal ambivalence depending on the temporal closeness of a choice and the consumption of a service. The findings have implications for the management of attitudinal ambivalence and WOM throughout the consumer decision-making process and consequently for assisting consumers in making choices.

Suggested Citation

  • Sipilä, Jenni & Herold, Kristiina & Tarkiainen, Anssi & Sundqvist, Sanna, 2017. "The influence of word-of-mouth on attitudinal ambivalence during the higher education decision-making process," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 176-187.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:80:y:2017:i:c:p:176-187
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.07.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296317302436
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.07.014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sha Yang & Mantian (Mandy) Hu & Russell S. Winer & Henry Assael & Xiaohong Chen, 2012. "An Empirical Study of Word-of-Mouth Generation and Consumption," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(6), pages 952-963, November.
    2. Nowlis, Stephen M & Kahn, Barbara E & Dhar, Ravi, 2002. "Coping with Ambivalence: The Effect of Removing a Neutral Option on Consumer Attitude and Preference Judgments," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 29(3), pages 319-334, December.
    3. Martin, William C. & Lueg, Jason E., 2013. "Modeling word-of-mouth usage," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(7), pages 801-808.
    4. Bettman, James R & Park, C Whan, 1980. "Effects of Prior Knowledge and Experience and Phase of the Choice Process on Consumer Decision Processes: A Protocol Analysis," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 7(3), pages 234-248, December.
    5. Lim, Boon C. & Chung, Cindy M.Y., 2011. "The impact of word-of-mouth communication on attribute evaluation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 18-23, January.
    6. Luce, Mary Frances & Jia, Jianmin & Fischer, Gregory W, 2003. "How Much Do You Like It? Within-Alternative Conflict and Subjective Confidence in Consumer Judgments," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 30(3), pages 464-472, December.
    7. Yeung-Jo Kim & Jongwon Park & Robert S. Wyer Jr., 2009. "Effects of Temporal Distance and Memory on Consumer Judgments," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 36(4), pages 634-645, December.
    8. Brown, Jacqueline Johnson & Reingen, Peter H, 1987. "Social Ties and Word-of-Mouth Referral Behavior," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 14(3), pages 350-362, December.
    9. Gaby A. C. Schellekens & Peeter W. J. Verlegh & Ale Smidts, 2010. "Language Abstraction in Word of Mouth," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(2), pages 207-223, August.
    10. Puccinelli, Nancy M. & Goodstein, Ronald C. & Grewal, Dhruv & Price, Robert & Raghubir, Priya & Stewart, David, 2009. "Customer Experience Management in Retailing: Understanding the Buying Process," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 15-30.
    11. Joseph R. Priester & Richard E. Petty & Kiwan Park, 2007. "Whence Univalent Ambivalence? From the Anticipation of Conflicting Reactions," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(1), pages 11-21, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Angela Maria D’Uggento & Luca Petruzzellis & Luigi Piper & Antonia Rosa Gurrieri, 2023. "In the name of the University: the choice to promote as a tool to influence decision-making," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 3151-3164, August.
    2. Audrezet, Alice & Parguel, Béatrice, 2018. "Using the Evaluative Space Grid to better capture manifest ambivalence in customer satisfaction surveys," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 285-295.
    3. Jian Mou & Gang Ren & Chunxiu Qin & Kerry Kurcz, 2019. "Understanding the topics of export cross-border e-commerce consumers feedback: an LDA approach," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 749-777, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kristiina Herold & Anssi Tarkiainen & Sanna Sundqvist, 2016. "How the source of word-of-mouth influences information processing in the formation of brand attitudes," Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 64-85, January.
    2. Amin Ansary & Nik M. Hazrul Nik Hashim, 2018. "Brand image and equity: the mediating role of brand equity drivers and moderating effects of product type and word of mouth," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 969-1002, October.
    3. Badrinarayanan, Vishag & Becerra, Enrique P., 2019. "Shoppers’ attachment with retail stores: Antecedents and impact on patronage intentions," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 371-378.
    4. Anne Hamby & Cristel Russell, 2022. "How does ambivalence affect young consumers’ response to risky products?," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 50(4), pages 841-863, July.
    5. Audrezet, Alice & Parguel, Béatrice, 2018. "Using the Evaluative Space Grid to better capture manifest ambivalence in customer satisfaction surveys," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 285-295.
    6. Zhang, Honghong & Fam, Kim-Shyan & Goh, Tiong-Thye & Dai, Xin, 2018. "When are influentials equally influenceable? The strength of strong ties in new product adoption," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 160-170.
    7. Zhang, Hao & Liang, Xiaoning & Qi, Chenyue, 2021. "Investigating the impact of interpersonal closeness and social status on electronic word-of-mouth effectiveness," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 453-461.
    8. King, Robert Allen & Racherla, Pradeep & Bush, Victoria D., 2014. "What We Know and Don't Know About Online Word-of-Mouth: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 167-183.
    9. Ranaweera, Chatura & Jayawardhena, Chanaka, 2014. "Talk up or criticize? Customer responses to WOM about competitors during social interactions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(12), pages 2645-2656.
    10. Bastos, Wilson & Moore, Sarah G., 2021. "Making word-of-mouth impactful: Why consumers react more to WOM about experiential than material purchases," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 110-123.
    11. Zhang, Tianyu & Dong, Peiwu & Zeng, Yongchao & Ju, Yanbing, 2022. "Analyzing the diffusion of competitive smart wearable devices: An agent-based multi-dimensional relative agreement model," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 90-105.
    12. Marchand, André & Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten & Wiertz, Caroline, 2017. "Not all digital word of mouth is created equal: Understanding the respective impact of consumer reviews and microblogs on new product success," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 336-354.
    13. Söderlund, Magnus & Mattsson, Jan, 2015. "Merely asking the customer to recommend has an impact on word-of-mouth activity," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 80-89.
    14. Shuai Yang & Xinyu Chang & Sixing Chen & Shan Lin & William T. Ross, 2022. "Does music really work? The two-stage audiovisual cross-modal correspondence effect on consumers’ shopping behavior," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 251-276, June.
    15. Yanju Zhou & Yi Yu & Xiaohong Chen & Xiongwei Zhou, 2020. "Guanxi or Justice? An Empirical Study of WeChat Voting," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 201-225, June.
    16. Baumeister, Stefan & Nyrhinen, Jussi & Kemppainen, Tiina & Wilska, Terhi-Anna, 2022. "Does airlines’ eco-friendliness matter? Customer satisfaction towards an environmentally responsible airline," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 89-97.
    17. Lee, Seung Hwan (Mark), 2014. "The role of consumers' network positions on information-seeking behavior of experts and novices: A power perspective," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 2853-2859.
    18. Zhi Zhang & Zhaoying Yang & Jiang Gu & Moon-Seop Kim, 2023. "How Does Multinational Corporations’ CSR Influence Purchase Intention? The Role of Consumer Ethnocentrism and Consumer Ambivalence," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-19, March.
    19. Dina Lončarić & Ivana Ribarić & Vlatka Farkaš, 2016. "The role of electronic word-of-mouth in the tourism market," Tourism and Hospitality Industry 15, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management.
    20. Jennifer K D’Angelo & Kristin Diehl & Lisa A Cavanaugh, 2019. "Lead by Example? Custom-Made Examples Created by Close Others Lead Consumers to Make Dissimilar Choices," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 46(4), pages 750-773.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:80:y:2017:i:c:p:176-187. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.