Identifying associations between mobile social media users’ perceived values, attitude, satisfaction, and eWOM engagement: The moderating role of affective factors

Abstract

Recently, the explosive growth of mobile social media technologies has dramatically transformed individuals’ interpersonal interaction, decision-making, and daily lifestyles. The primary objectives of this current article are to investigate the possible influences of perceived values (hedonic and utilitarian) on WeChat users’ affective responses (attitude and satisfaction) and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) engagement. This study represents one of the few that utilized customer-perceived value theory and uses and gratifications theory to establish a conceptual framework to determine consumers’ word-of-mouth behaviors in the WeChat setting. Based on a web-based survey of 408 WeChat users, structure equation modeling was implemented to identify and confirm the hypothesized research model. Overall, the results reveal that hedonic value and utilitarian value positively and significantly impact WeChat users’ attitudes and anticipated satisfaction. Additionally, satisfaction has a significant influence on eWOM engagement. Furthermore, utilitarian value is discovered to exert a significant indirect effect through satisfaction on eWOM engagement. The obtained outcomes offer fresh insight into whether and how mobile social media could promote mobile social media users’ attitudes and gratification which subsequently would facilitate indicators of eWOM engagement in contemporary mobile-mediated context.