Radical Changes in Marketing Industry: Consumer’s Outlook Towards Electronic Word of Mouth (e-WOM)

In the contemporary world everything has been digitalized and marketing sector has also seen significant changes. Before buying a product, people used to consult their peers, friends, or relatives, but this has altered now. We need not spend much time to know about the new product or brand. We instantly get to know about the products through social media platforms, websites, search engines, independent reviewing sites. This enables the consumer to get access to the newly introduced product as well as already existing products by electronic word of mouth in the form of online reviews. Therefore big salute to the internet and technology which made the things easier. Generally, consumers have the confusions while choosing the products. Certain questions arise when they decide to buy. The questions such as whether it is of good quality? whether the price of the product is reasonable or whether they are paying more penny? Before making an online purchase, customers typically read the reviews that are provided underneath the product in order to get answers to all of these questions and also look for reviews on social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram. Therefore this study tries to find out the consumer perception about online reviews which is considered to be the electronic word of mouth among the consumers. This study uses a descriptive approach to gather information from consumers by using a structured questionnaire. For the purpose of the study, 200 samples are collected from the Chennai city. The information gathered will be then analyzed to determine the expected outcomes of the study. The findings of the study will be beneficial to the consumers, producers, retailers and marketers. Keywords: Online reviews, Electronic word of mouth, Social Media sites, Review sites, Video platform, consumer perception当今世界已全面迈入数字化时代，营销领域亦迎来了深刻变革。过往消费者在选购商品前，往往会向同辈、朋友或亲友征询意见，但这一决策模式如今已发生根本性改变。如今我们无需耗费大量时间去了解全新产品或品牌，可通过社交媒体平台、官方网站、搜索引擎以及独立评测网站，即时获取产品相关资讯。这使得消费者能够通过以在线评论为载体的电子口碑（electronic word of mouth），获取新品及在售商品的各类信息。在此，谨向赋能万物便捷体验的互联网与技术致以敬意。 通常而言，消费者在选购商品时常会产生诸多困惑，在做出购买决策前往往会抛出诸多疑问：例如该商品品质是否上乘？售价是否合理，抑或是自己是否溢价购买？在进行线上购物前，消费者通常会浏览商品详情页下的用户评论，同时也会在YouTube、Instagram等社交媒体平台上搜索相关评测内容，以解答上述疑虑。 因此，本研究旨在探究消费者对于在线评论的感知（consumer perception）——在线评论在消费者群体中被视为电子口碑。本研究采用描述性研究方法，通过结构化问卷向消费者收集调研数据。本次调研共从金奈市（Chennai）收集了200份有效样本。后续将对采集到的数据进行分析，以得出本研究的预期结论。本研究的成果将对消费者、生产商、零售商及营销从业者均具备参考价值。 关键词：在线评论、电子口碑、社交媒体平台、评测网站、视频平台、消费者感知