Rumor Sharing in the Marketplace: What motivates the Consumer?

Abstract

Rumors are often shared in the marketplace about products, services, brands or organizations. These rumors get communicated from consumer to consumer in the form of Word of Mouth (WOM). An exhaustive review of literature identified four motivations for consumers to share rumors in the marketplace; which included anxiety management motivation, information sharing motivation, relationship management motivation and self enhancement motivation. The review was not conclusive in identifying any scales for the measurement of these motivations. The paper tries to develop a measurement scale for these four motivations. Structured interviews were conducted to identify 33 items that motivate a consumer to share rumors. Based on an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis four factors were identified and the results retained 21 items. The scale displayed good reliability scores.