Social Media Marketing, Second Edition, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 3

Trustworthiness of Consumer-Generated Content

The motivation behind a consumer’s desire to consume, participate, and produce all boils down to trust. When discussing electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) in the context of social networking sites (SNSs), trust is a construct that cannot be ignored. In a classic academic literature, Hovland and Weiss (1951) argued that a communicator’s trustworthiness is likely to influence a receiver’s opinion about the source. This is not an uncommon relationship. For example, when we buy something online, if we do not trust a particular vendor, we will not be in a position to believe the claim expressed on the website. Reverting to the social media context, the higher the level of trust social media users ...