The present study focuses on customer-sharing of information on mobile phones. The data for the study was collected through administering a structured questionnaire to a group of University students living on the same campus in the city of Udaipur in Rajasthan. The survey instrument included a variety of measures that assess the innovativeness, involvement, Internet usage and online connection of the communicators. Based on the impact of various factors, electronic Word-of-Mouth (WOM) was examined in terms of customers seeking further opinion on the product/service or becoming opinion leaders on the product/service. It was observed that innovativeness and Internet usage have a high positive impact on opinion leadership and Internet usage and online connection have a greater influence on opinion seeking. It was further noticed that opinion seeking or opinion leadership are not mutually exclusive outcomes, but in fact, influence each other, suggesting that the online behavioral outcome falls on a continuous spectrum and mutually interact with each other in a continuous fashion.

Word-of-Mouth (WOM) remains an extensively researched marketing paradigm since the 1960s with incessant evolution in its forms and definitions (Carl, 2006). The widely cited definition of WOM given by Arndt (1967) describes WOM as “an oral, personto- person communication between a receiver and a communicator whom the receiver perceives as noncommercial, regarding a brand, product or service” (p. 66). Westbrook (1987, p. 261) has defined WOM as “all informal communications directed at other consumers about the ownership, usage or characteristics of particular goods and services or their sellers”. WOM has two key participants: communicators and receivers. The communicators have been given various names by the researchers such as ‘opinion leaders’ (Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955), ‘early adopters’ (Rogers, 1962/ 2003), ‘influentials’ (Weimann, 1994), and ‘influential Americans’ (Keller and Berry, 2003) (as cited in Carl, 2006). It is the opinion leader who interprets and spreads the message content for opinion seekers and thus influences the decision making of the opinion seeker.

The advent of information technology and Internet in particular, has led to the emergence of new forms of communication channels and platforms. These channels are not only user-friendly, but also highly interactive and provide several means to create and exchange user-generated content. In the given context, Westbrook’s (1987) description of WOM may be “e-defined” for online WOM as: “all Internet-mediated informal communications directed at consumers about the ownership, usage, or characteristics of particular goods, services or their sellers where the communicator is perceived to be free of any commercial influence”.

Information Technology Journal, Word-of-Mouth (WOM), Social Media and WOM, Electronic Word-Of-Mouth (WOM), Opinion leadership, Opinion seeking.