Evaluation of Electronic Worth of Marketing (EWOM) source credibility in terms of risk perception, information adoption and purchase intention

With the development of the Internet, the interest in electronic commerce has increased and traditional word of mouth communication has been largely replaced by electronic word of mouth (EWOM: Electronic Word of Mouth). Before purchasing a product and/or service, consumers have begun to research about that product and service on online platforms. The purpose of this study is to analyze how online consumers evaluate the messages on shopping sites within the scope of source credibility and how they affect consumers' perceived risks, their behavior of accepting information and their purchase intentions. The online survey method was used in the study, and the collected 812 data were tested with the Partial Least Squares Method-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). According to the research results; It was seen that the dimensions of EWOM source credibility excluding homophilia, positively affected perceived risk, the relationship between EWOM expertise and trusthwothness and EWOM information adoption was significant, but the relationship between EWOM objectivity, EWOM homophily and EWOM information adoption was not supported by the analysis results. It was concluded that EWOM source credibility dimensions, except for the expertise dimension, positively affect the purchase intention. In addition, the hypotheses that perceived risk positively affects EWOM information adoption and that EWOM information adoption positively affects purchase intention are supported by the results of the analysis. While it was concluded that EWOM information adoption had a mediating role between EWOM expertise and EWOM credibility and purchase intention, this relationship was not supported for other dimensions. It was concluded that the perceived risk had a mediating role between other source credibility dimensions and EWOM information adoption except EWOM homophily.