The Influence of Marketers´and Consumer´s Voices in the Era of Social Media

This paper shows that consumers’ trust in online advertising
(oAD-Trust) and customer reviews (eWOM-Trust) is a powerful
segmentation base of online consumers. Therefore, the
authors (i) introduce a psychometrically-sound measurement
instrument (the 22-item eWT-Scale) and (ii) apply it for
developing an empirically-based consumer typology using a
cluster analysis approach. By implementing the concept of trust
to online communication, this research identifies and profiles
four segments. Findings show that one third of consumers
are High trusters – a particularly valuable consumer group for
marketers as they are receptive to oAD and trigger diffusion of
marketing messages online and offline.