THE EFFECT OF WORD OF MOUTH ON PURCHASE DECISION WITH RESPECT TO THE SENDER RECEIVER’S RELATIONSHIP AND WAY OF COMMUNICATION

The main purpose of this research study is to examine whether two types of word of mouth ( face to face word of mouth and electronic word of mouth) have the same effect or different on purchase decision of the consumer. Another purpose of this study is to examine how word of mouth changes as the closeness strength (strong, weak and zero closeness) changed between sender and receiver of the message. Students of two universities were taken as participants for data collection. The most important thing about these participants was that they were from commerce-related departments and had the internet facility. We employed the Chi-square test, t-test, F test, ANOVA, and two-way ANOVA test to analyze data. The analysis shows that both types of word of mouth, electronic word of mouth, and face-to-face word of mouth almost have the same effect on the consumer's purchase decision. On the other hand, as closeness strength of sender and receiver's relationship changes from “strong closeness” to “zero closeness” influence of word of mouth decreases.