본 연구는 구전활동을 수행하는 것이 구전대상인 제품이나 서비스에 대한 전달자의 태도에 미치는 영향을 이해하기 위하여, 고객이 지닌 일관성 욕구의 수준과 구전의 원천인 만족경험에 대한 고객의 귀인유형이 어떤 상호작용을 하는지 실험적인 방법을 사용하여 고찰하였다. 또한 전통적인 형태의 구전뿐만 아니라 추천에 대하여 보상이 제공되는 보상된 구전 상황에서는 그 효과가 어떻게 달라지는지 탐구하였다. 본 연구모델에 의하면, 일관성 욕구가 높은 소비자는 자신의 구전활동에 대하여 일관성과 정당화를 중시하는 반면, 일관성 욕구가 낮은 소비자는 구전과정에서 자기중심편향이 활성화되는 것으로 제안하였다. 그리고 기업 관련 귀인의 만족경험에 대한 구전이 더욱 일관되고 정당화하기 쉽고, 고객 관련 귀인의 만족경험에 대한 구전이 자기중심편향에 더 적합할 것이며, 나아가 일관성 욕구 수준과 귀인유형이 일치될 때 태도강화 효과가 발생할 것으로 예상하였다. 실험결과를 요약해보면, 먼저 일관성 욕구가 높은 소비자는 기업 관련 요인으로 만족하여 구전을 할 때 서비스에 대하여 더욱 호의적인 태도를 형성한 반면, 고객 관련 요인으로 만족한 경험에 대한 구전은 전달자의 태도형성에 유의한 영향을 미치지 않았다. 반면, 일관성 욕구가 낮은 소비자는 고객 관련 요인으로 만족하여 구전을 할 때 더욱 호의적인 태도를 형성하였지만, 기업 관련 요인으로 만족한 구전은 태도형성에 유의한 영향을 발휘하지 않았다. 또한, 일관성 욕구가 높은 소비자가 기업 관련 요인으로 만족한 경험에 대하여 보상된 구전을 하는 경우, 자연적 구전보다 서비스에 대한 태도가 덜 호의적으로 나타났다. 즉, 추천보상을 자신의 구전행동에 대한 외적인 동기요인으로 지각함으로써 정당화가 어려워지고, 그 결과 구전의 태도강화 효과도 감소되었다. 반면, 일관성 욕구가 낮은 소비자는 보상된 구전에 대해서 차별적인 반응을 보이지 않았다. 본 연구결과는 기존의 공개선언 효과를 확장하고, 구전 및 귀인문헌에 대한 이해의 폭을 넓히며, 기업의 구전관리와 관련하여 실무적인 시사점을 제공한다.

Word-of-mouth(WOM) has long been known to play important and various roles in the marketing and consumption process, and it started gaining more popularity among firms and scholars due to the recent emergences of new technologies like social network services. Although a substantial amount of knowledge has been accumulated regarding antecedents and consequences of WOM, we know much less about its impact on the communicator herself. It appears quite apparent to predict that it will affect her own attitudes or feelings about the product if a customer talks about her opinions or experiences of a product. Psychologists have already demonstrated these possibilities through public commitment effect -communicating one’s attitude in a verbal or written format makes it more extreme - and emotional recovery effect -expressing one’s emotions about negative experiences lessens negative feelings. In the marketing literature, Garnefeld, Helm, and Eggert(2011) show that the positive effect of WOM transmission behavior and the communicators’ brand loyalty is stronger for consumers with a low level of product knowledge, and Park and Ryu(2011) find that the emotional recovery effect of WOM varies by the motives of WOM. Understanding the effects of WOM participation on communicators also provides significant implications for the firms that pay attention to Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Relationship Management, which emphasizes the value of existing customers as well as new customers. In this research, the authors examine the roles that consumers’ need for consistency and attribution of satisfaction(i.e., locus of control) play in determining the relationship between WOM transmission and own attitude change, and study both traditional natural WOM and new rewarded WOM - a reward is offered in exchange for referral. Need for consistency is one of the most basic human motives; People desire to pursue a balance among their cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses. Individuals with a high level of need for consistency place greater weights not only on consistency but also justifiability of their and others’ responses. This tendency becomes stronger in public. In contrast, individuals with a low level of need for consistency consider self-enhancement motives more important. Among the three dimensions of Weiner’s(2000) attributional causes, the authors suggest that locus of control - whether company-related causes or customer-related causes -be closely associated with the different motives which individuals emphasize. That is, company-related causes of satisfaction will be perceived to be more legitimate and valid, and thus will provide easier justifications for one’s responses. On the contrary, customer-related causes are likely to be perceived to be more subjective and self-serving, and will be harder to justify the responses. Therefore, Hypothesis 1 posits that consumers high in need for consistency will show a more favorable attitude toward service after they engage in WOM transmissioner about their satisfying experiences attributable to company-related causes(vs. no WOM), whereas they will show no difference in the customer-related attribution condition. On the other hand, individuals low in need for consistency will formulate a more favorable attitude toward service after engaging in WOM transmission about their consumption experiences attributable to customer-related causes (vs. no WOM), whereas they will show no difference in the company-related attribution condition. Hypothesis 2 compares the impact of rewarded WOM with that of natural WOM. Since referral rewards will work as an additional extrinsic motive or elicit situational attributions for WOM, consumers will perceive it to be less legitimate and justifiable engaging in rewarded WOM behavior. This condition will be relevant only to consumers high in need for consistency, and their attitude will be become less favorable after WOM in the rewarded WOM compared to the natural WOM condition when they make company-related attributions for satisfaction. The authors conducted an experiment with 2(need for consistency: high vs. low) x 2(satisfaction attribution: company-related vs. customer-related) x 3(WOM type: natural WOM vs. rewarded WOM vs. no WOM) between-subjects design. The main dependent variable was communicator’s attitude toward service, and general emotion that the communicator experienced during WOM transmission was also measured for exploratory analysis. 293 college students participated in the experiment, and they were randomly assigned to one of the 12 conditions. Planned-contrasts were performed to test the hypotheses. As to Hypothesis 1, participants high in need for consistency showed a more favorable attitude when they had engaged in WOM about company-attributed satisfaction(vs. no WOM)(3.75natural WOM vs. 2.53no WOM; F(1, 281) = 8.82, p < .01), whereas engaging in WOM did not have any influence in the customer-attributed satisfaction condition (3.06natural WOM vs. 2.64no WOM; F(1, 281) = 1.03, p > .30). On the other hand, participants low in need for consistency showed a more favorable attitude when they had engaged in WOM about customer-attributed satisfaction(vs. no WOM)(3.68natural WOM vs. 2.91no WOM; F(1, 281) = 4.23, p < .05), whereas engaging in WOM had no effect in the company-attributed satisfaction condition (3.40natural WOM vs. 3.61no WOM; F(1, 281) = .25, p > .60). As for Hypothesis 2, participants high in need for consistency showed a less favorable attitude when they had engaged in rewarded WOM about company-attributed satisfaction(vs. natural WOM)(3.75natural WOM vs. 2.82rewarded WOM; F(1, 281) = 5.40, p < .05), whereas there was no difference in the responses among other conditions(high in need for consistency -customer-attributed satisfaction: 3.06natural WOM vs. 2.64rewarded WOM, F(1, 281) = .97, p > .30; low in need for consistency -company-attributed satisfaction: 3.40natural WOM vs. 3.46rewarded WOM; F(1, 281) = .02, p > .85; low in need for consistency -customer-attributed satisfaction: 3.68natural WOM vs. 3.52rewarded WOM; F(1, 281) = .17, p > .65). In addition, the result of emotion showed a similar pattern to that of attitude. In conclusion, the research findings make significant contributions to the literature by extending the public commitment effect to WOM domains with new moderators and by introducing indirect effects of attributions, and also offer insights to firms for their WOM strategy.