Investigation of the effect of electronic word of mouth communication on customers' food and beverage business preferences in terms of customers and businesses: The case of ankara province.

The way of communicating on social networks, which started with the invention of the Internet, has been effective in all areas of our lives over time. Internet technology, which initially appealed only to specific individuals and institutions, has become appealing to individuals of all ages over time. People have become able to obtain information about the food and beverage and accommodation establishments they will go to, thanks to the comments on the Internet. Word-of-mouth communication, which initially took place only between familiar individuals, has turned into electronic word-of-mouth communication with the invention of the Internet and the increasing social networks in parallel with this. With the COVID-19 pandemic experienced worldwide, there has been a significant increase in the frequency of individuals' presence in digital environments and electronic word-of-mouth communication. Thanks to these developments, for consumers who want to buy a product or service, comments made in social environments have become valuable in terms of preference and information search. The first aim of this study is to determine the level of impact of the comments made by experienced people in social media applications used by individuals over the age of 18 living in Ankara. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey was conducted among individuals over the age of 18. The second aim of the study is to obtain the evaluations of business owners and managers regarding the comments made about their businesses. For this purpose, interviews were conducted with selected firms in the province of Ankara that were accepted to be interviewed. Within the framework of these objectives, the mediating role of sensitivity to information in the effect of electronic word-of-mouth on consumers' purchase behavior was investigated through hierarchical regression analyses. As a result of the analyses, it was determined that the number of comments, comment quality and trust in comments, which v are the sub-dimensions of electronic word-of-mouth communication, positively affect purchase behavior, the number of comments, trust in the commenter and comment quality positively affect information sensitivity, and information sensitivity has a partial mediating role in the relationship between electronic word-of-mouth communication and purchase behavior. The data obtained from the interviews with business owners or managers were analyzed by content analysis and it was emphasized by the participants that social media applications are important in receiving customer demands, attracting new customers to the business, and increasing the corporate reputation of the business. In addition, it was determined that parallel results were reached as a result of the comparison of quantitative and qualitative research findings.