Every girl can be treated as a princess! An investigation of young Chinese female consumers’ cosmetics consumption – the impact of eWoM

With the rise of the digital technology and social medias, electronic word of mouth(eWoM) has become very influential in the process of consumer decision making, i.e. information sharing, exchanging product knowledge, sharing individuals’ experience, and communicating purposes. The advantages of adopting eWoM over traditional WoM are listed as follows, information accuracy, easy access to the information, convenience and real-time interactions. It is interesting to see how eWoM influence cosmetics consumers’ purchasing intentions and product preferences in China. Besides changing infrastructure, online shopping has also been viewed as a trendy lifestyle in Mainland China. The online transaction value of Chinese cosmetics retailing is growing at 5% annually over the past decade (Morgan Stanely, 2016). Furthermore, more than 86% of female Chinese consumers rely heavily on eWoM (online reviews) when it comes to the choice of brands, new product launch promotion and new cosmetics trends…etc. (Nielsen, 2014).

In order to understand the impact of eWoM on Chinese female consumers’ buying decision in cosmetics industry. We employed the information adoption model to investigate the Chinese female consumers’ online shopping behaviour and decision-making process. Our findings provide insights of showing how online reviews can influence consumer decision making in cosmetics purchase behaviour in a positive way to achieve their desired goals. The study provides useful recommendations for industry practitioners on how to utilise our research findings to achieve greater success when building eWoM for cosmetics businesses.