Determinants of electronic word of mouth motivations: A research on university students following Youtubers

Innovations are taking place in every aspect of life in the world where development and change continue without any loss due to technological advances. One of the areas where these innovations are experienced is the area of communication. Technological advances and internet technology, by initiating a radical change in communication, eliminates the time and geographic boundaries in communication. When the Internet became an indispensable part of the daily lives of the people, the traditional way of communication changed its direction and it was replaced by the Internet. Accordingly, word of mouth (WOM), which is a form of communication and expresses the information transfer between individuals, has been replaced by electronic mouth-to-mouth communication (eWOM), which enables the reach of a global audience through social media platforms. eWOM can be said to be a curious and researched issue with the widespread use of internet. In this research, we try to explain the motivations that direct people to eWOM behavior which has become an important issue with the increase of internet and social media usage and social relations structures shaped by eWOM. In this respect, we perform a research on university students following YouTubers who were trying to channel their knowledge and experiences on the YouTube video sharing site. In the application part we study investigates eWOM search motivations, eWOM providing motivations and eWOM social relationship determinant factors. We search and introduce this research. Keywords: eWOM, YouTuber, Social Media Usage, eWOM Search, eWOM Providing