The impact of word-of-mouth communication on attribute evaluation

Wright and Lynch (1995) propose that the medium that best communicates the type of attributes is the one most congruent with that type of information. This paper extends on this media congruence hypothesis by examining the impact of word-of-mouth (WOM) communication on the WOM recipient's ratings of search and credence attributes in two different service contexts. Results from two experiments suggest that negative WOM (but not positive WOM) is more effective in changing the evaluation of credence attributes than that of search attributes for unfamiliar brands. This finding implies that marketers of such unfamiliar brands need to have different approaches to deal with the impact of negative WOM on different attribute types.