Understanding How Value Perception Changes in Response to Electronic Word-Of-Mouth

In the past few decades, value creation has emerged as one of the key priorities of many organisations. Under the COVID-19 epidemic, numerous companies discovered e-business generating the largest income in their overall portfolios. Such changes are predicted to avert the epidemic. The effect of online consumer reviews, a kind of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), on consumers’ value judgements of a service, accounting for the impact of the marketing mix ingredient of pricing, was comprehensively explored in this study. Three facets of eWOM were tested on a service, utilising web-based experiments: either positive or negative, and inconsistent (mixed). These conditions replicate word-of-mouth communications, which are typical in the modern world of internet commerce. Results demonstrated that, regardless of price acceptability levels considered by the customers, eWOM was more impactful on their value assessments. Mixed eWOM has been shown to negatively affect consumers’ ultimate price perception, a primary antecedent of value, that surpasses the effect of quality perception—a second antecedent, in value assessments. Consequently, value perception was evaluated to be substantially lower under mixed eWOM than eWOM being either absent or positive. Through the outcomes of this research, suggestions are provided for both industry professionals and researchers regarding how eWOM may be exploited to produce better value and consequently construct more successful acquisition of customers.