How WOM Affects Evaluation of Products for Encourages Behavioral Changes:

Abstract

: This paper discusses the effect of consumer reviews on a reader’s purchasing decision-making, especially in the case of products encouraging behavioral changes such as diet-machines. Since the perceived quality of these products depends on the user’s own effort level, readers will predict the value of the product by analogizing how their own efforts will help in obtaining a positive result after purchasing the product. We hypothesize that the reader’s self-efficacy and perceived value of dieting will affect their cognitive and emotional empathy, so that the predicted value of the product will be affected by perceived empathy. A web-based survey was conducted, and the results suggested that emotional empathy influences the impression of products, while cognitive empathy predicts their dieting effect. In addition, effects of consumers’ self-efficacy and attitudes toward dieting were discovered. Consumers with high self-efficacy feel empathy for positive reviews, while consumers who place more value on dieting feel cognitive empathy. These findings demonstrate the reader’s analogical process of predicting the value of “behavior-changing products” based on other consumers’ WOM.