Title: Electronic word of mouth on social media websites: role of social capital theory, self-determination theory, and altruism

Authors: Saqib Mahmood; Muddasar Ghani Khwaja; Ahmad Jusoh

Addresses: Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia ' Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia ' Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

Abstract: Purchase decisions in recent times are extensively dependent on social media referrals. The effective utilisation of social media has become compulsory for the organisations in order to remain competitive. In the emerging markets like Pakistan, promotions through electronic word of mouth on social media have incepted, but still it's quite difficult for the organisations to cope-up with the contemporary electronic word of mouth needs. Nevertheless, the Pakistani social media marketing managers are unfamiliar in motivating social media users to engage in electronic word of mouth. For that reason, the current research aims to understand the social capital theory and self-determination theory dimensions and altruism role in engaging customers for sharing products and services associated with word of mouth on social media websites. Structural, cognitive, and relational dimensions of social capital are manifested as tie-strength, shared language and trust respectively. Autonomy, competence, and relatedness of self-determination theory are manifested as voluntary self-disclosures, innovativeness, and trust respectively. In order to affirm literary associations among the constructs, structural equation modelling using MPlus was executed on the responses of 550 Pakistani social media users. The outcomes attained manifestly accepted the established hypotheses. Based on these findings theoretical and practical implications are produced.

Keywords: electronic word of mouth; eWOM; social capital theory; self-determination theory; SDT; altruism; social media websites.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSC.2019.104217

International Journal of Space-Based and Situated Computing, 2019 Vol.9 No.2, pp.74 - 89

Received: 19 Feb 2019
Accepted: 01 Apr 2019
Published online: 22 Dec 2019 *

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