An experimental study of Chinese tourists using a company-hosted WeChat official account

Company-hosted WeChat official accounts (WOA) have emerged as a commonly-used marketing channel recently. The relationship between user motivations and behaviors in WOA need to be explored. This study distinguishes between consumers hedonic and utilitarian motivations for using travel agency-hosted WOA, and empirically investigates the influence of WeChat user motives and trust on usage behaviors and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the relationships among motivation, behavior, trust and WOM. The results show that utilitarian motivation has a significant effect on consumer participation behavior which obviously impacts the user's WOM intention. Furthermore, the outcomes also indicate that trust affects user participation behavior and WOM intention significantly. The findings provide theoretical insights into consumer behavior in social media and contribute to managerial implications for practitioners.