Word of Mouse: Exploring Cross-National Opinion Leadership on the Web

Past literature has identified opinion leaders as “individuals who acted as information brokers intervening between mass media sources and the opinions and choices of the population” (Feick & Price, 1987). Opinion leaders are considered important to marketers for the body of knowledge they possess (Asseal, 1984), for the information they transmit to others (Hawkins, 1983), and for their ability to influence transactions (Rogers, 1983). Cafferky (1996) suggests the primary influencer in word-of-mouth communications is the opinion leader. Opinion leaders include such people as market mavens (Cafferky 1996). However, while market mavens have a general marketplace knowledge or expertise, the influence of opinion leaders derives from product specific knowledge or expertise (Feick and Price (1987). Therefore, we would expect that Internet opinion leaders would report high levels of knowledge related to buying products on the Internet. In fact, Kwak, Fox and Zinkhan (2002) suggest opinion leadership is the most important personality variable for predicting Internet purchasing behavior.