意见领袖是影响消费者购买意愿的重要因素。相比现实世界的口碑传播,虚拟社区的人际传播速度更快、传播范围更广,其意见领袖的影响力不可小视。意见领袖因其发言内容侧重点不同而可分为交易型、专家型和信息型三种型态。在企业主导的虚拟社区,成员一般会给予产品较多的正面评价,但却较难产生具有公信力的意见领袖;而在消费者主导的虚拟社区,则较易形成成员公认的意见领袖。企业开展口碑营销,可通过自行建立讨论区和参与消费者主导的讨论区,寻求意见领袖对本企业产品的支持,促成企业营销目标的达成。
Opinion leader is one of the most important factors that influence consumers' purchasing inten- tion. Compared to the real world of word-of-mouth communication, in a virtual community, interpersonal communication speed is faster, dissemination range is wider, and opinion leaders' influencing power can not be ignored. According to the difference of their speech content, we can classify opinion leaders in a virtual community into three types including transactional opinion leader, professional opinion leader and well-in- formed opinion leader. In the virtual community dominated by an enterprise, its members tend to give a more positive evaluation to a product, but it is difficult to generate a credible opinion leader. However, in the vir- tual community dominated by consumers, it is easy to form an opinion leader recognized by members. The enterprise that launches word-of-mouth marketing strategies should seek opinion leaders' support for its prod- ucts and reach its marketing goals by establishing its own forum and participating in the forum dominated by consumers.