The mediating role of negative e-WOM in the effect of the virtual store atmosphere and personalization on consumer inertia

Nowadays, virtual stores representing the web environment have become popular and personalization applications that offer special content based on information about individuals have started to increase. Consumer inertia, which refers to the consumer's tendency to continue to purchase a product or service that they have already purchased unless other factors interfere with it, has recently attracted considerable attention. On the other hand, it has been stated that negative experiences spread faster than positive experiences and can negatively affect consumer perceptions. Within the scope of this study, which examines whether negative e-WOM has a mediating role in the effect of virtual store atmosphere and personalization on consumer inertia, 877 survey data were collected from 7 regions of Turkey and the collected data were analyzed by structural equation modeling. The results show that virtual store atmosphere and personalization have an effect on consumer inertia, while negative e- WOM has no effect. Besides, it is concluded that virtual store atmosphere has an effect on negative e- WOM, while personalization has no effect on negative e-WOM. It was found that there was no mediating role of negative e-WOM in the effect of virtual store atmosphere and personalization on consumer inertia. In addition, it was concluded that there were some differences between the variables considered within the scope of the study regarding demographic characteristics and shopping habits of the participants. It is thought that all these results will increase the effectiveness of marketing strategies by deepening the understanding of consumer behavior and will provide an important perspective on the market.