The influence of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has changed consumers’ life style and has brought unprecedented opportunities for marketing activities. Today, due to the growth of the Internet and social networking sites, eWOM has the power to reach more people and is therefore perceived as more influential than ever. This makes eWOM along with social networking sites, two concepts to acknowledge. Thus, for companies to make the most out of them like advertising agencies and internet marketing consultants, they need to gain the necessary knowledge. This study help explain consumers are affected by eWOM through social networking sites, through uses and gratification theory.
In the specific area, a research gap was noticed, namely, how eWOM in social networking sites is perceived. To fill this gap, we adopted consumers’ online brand-related activities (COBRAs) framework by Muntinga, Moorman, & Smit (2011) that specified eWOM behavior in social media as three gradual activities, consuming brand-related contents, contributing in brand-related contents, and creating brand-related contents. Six hypotheses and a research model were conducted to identify social media users’ motivations and consequents of engaging in eWOM contents. The empirical data was collected via questionnaire, where the majority of the respondents were within the target group, which was college students, aged 18-24.
It was revealed through the results, that self-presentation and entertainment have a direct positive effect on consuming eWOM through social networking sites. In addition, consuming eWOM contents was found to have a power to lead consumers involving in a deeper eWOM engagement like contributing in eWOM contents and creating those contents. This research has a potential impact to provide renewed insights for researchers into antecedents and consequences of eWOM behavior and advance the eWOM theory.

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