Evaluation context’s role in driving positive word-of-mouth intentions ANDERS HAUGE WIEN* and SVEIN OTTAR OLSEN Tromsø University Business School, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway ABSTRACT Relevant literature recognizes that transaction-specific and cumulative evaluations are different, but few empirical studies test how these differences might affect the link between product evaluations and word of mouth (WOM). This study addresses this issue by assessing the simultaneous effects of perceived quality and satisfaction on the resulting positive WOM intentions for both types of evaluations. Results reveal that different factors drive positive WOM intentions depending on the context of the study. When the consumers’ evaluations are related to a specific transaction, perceived quality is the dominating predictor of positive WOM intentions. When the evaluations are cumulative, satisfaction is the dominating predictor of positive WOM intentions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTRODUCTION Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication plays a powerful role in influencing consumers’ product judgments (Bone, 1995) and their attribute evaluations (Lim and Chung, 2011). Understanding antecedents to WOM at times may be critical for marketers. In a recent meta-analysis of the antecedents of WOM communication, Matos and Rossi (2008) suggest that sat- isfaction is important as an antecedent, but satisfaction’s effect on WOM is weaker than the effects of several other consumer constructs such as quality, commitment and perceived value. In their discussion of the satisfaction construct, the authors make a conceptual distinction between transaction-specific satisfaction and consumers’ evaluations of multiple experiences with the same product over time, forming a more cumulative satisfaction response. However, in their conceptual study of the antecedents of WOM, Matos and Rossi (2008) make no distinction between if and how transaction-specific satisfaction versus cumulative satisfaction influences WOM intentions or actions. The idea of separating evaluations that are based on a specific experience versus those based on multiple experiences is also relevant to perceived quality evaluations (Dabholkar, 1995). Similar to satisfaction, the perceived quality of products and services is an important antecedent of WOM and other facets of consumer loyalty (Fullerton and Taylor, 2002; Zeithaml et al., 1996). Although some studies consider perceived quality as a relevant predictor of WOM for both services and products, no studies question how perceived quality versus satisfaction relates to WOM: Is quality a more important predictor of WOM than satisfaction? Does satisfac- tion mediate the relationship between perceived quality and WOM? Because of the ongoing discussion about the concep- tual distinction between quality and satisfaction as specific and general evaluation constructs (Gotlieb et al., 1994), as well as the causal relationship between quality and satisfaction (Brady and Robertson, 2001; Taylor and Baker, 1994), the answers to these questions are important. In their meta-analysis, Matos and Rossi (2008) discuss satisfaction and perceived quality as independent antecedents of WOM. Furthermore, they only refer to perceived quality in a service setting. By investigating the effects of perceived quality and satisfaction on WOM simultaneously, this study expands the current understanding of what drives WOM intentions. How different types of moderators (individual characteristics and context) influence the relationships among quality, satis- faction and intention/loyalty is a new and emerging area of research, particularly in the service industry (Evanschitzky and Wunderlich, 2006). By developing a model that is tested in two different evaluative contexts—one in which the consumer evaluation is based on a specific experience in a given context and one in which the product is evaluated as general experiences over time—this study examines the effects of transaction-specific context versus cumulative evaluation context on WOM antecedents. As these two contexts involve different time frames, they may play important roles in the relationship between satisfac- tion and loyalty (Oliver, 1999; Olsen, 2002). For instance, Jones and Suh (2000) find that satisfaction differs in its predictive ability of repurchase intentions depending on whether the eval- uation is transaction specific or cumulative. Thus, to investigate whether the transaction-specific context or cumulative evalua- tion context could have a moderating effect on the relationships between quality, satisfaction and WOM seems worthwhile. Consumer research is adopting the idea of distinguishing between transaction-specific consumption and more long-term consumer relationships (Garbarino and Johnson, 1999). Hence, understanding the theoretical implications of this concept on the link between consumers’ evaluations and behavioral inten- tions is important (Jones and Suh, 2000). Perceived quality has a stronger influence on positive WOM than satisfaction in a transaction-specific context, whereas in the cumulative context, the influence of satisfaction on positive WOM is stron- ger than that of perceived quality. Thus, the theoretical under- standing of the WOM phenomenon is extendable by showing that the evaluation context influences how WOM is deter- mined. The authors examine these relationships in the food area, suggesting that the study contributes to an understanding of how WOM is stimulated for those products with tangible evaluation cues (Hartline and Jones, 1996). *Correspondence to: Anders Hauge Wien, Tromsø University Business School, University of Tromsø, N-9037 Tromsø, Norway. E-mail: anders.h.wien@uit.no Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, J. Consumer Behav., 11: 504–513 (2012) Published online 26 September 2012 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/cb.1402