• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.343-355
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• 2013

E-reviews, electronic reviews, are generally perceived as trustworthy and credible by the consumers, because it is based on the experiences of other consumers who are independent of the marketers. Therefore, consumers may rely more on the review information as an important cue than direct experience or advertising. This paper explored the structural equation model to investigate the relationships among search motives of e-reviews, attributes of e-review, trust, and purchase intention for cosmetics. A self-questionnaire was developed based on previous researches. Data were collected from 300 female university students experienced purchasing cosmetics at the Internet and were analyzed by AMOS 20.0. Results showed that e-review attributes consisted of three factors: expertise/visuality, quality/functionality and advertising/design. Utilitarian and hedonic search motives were significantly related to expertise/ visuality attributes of e-review and then influenced the purchase intention for cosmetics, mediated by the trust of e-review. However, quality/functionality attributes related by utilitarian motive did not have a significant effect to trust of e-review and purchase intention for cosmetics. Regardless of search motives and trust of e-review, advertising/design attributes of e-review directly related to purchase intention of cosmetics. As predicted, the trust of e-review was an important mediated variable to stimulate the purchase intention of cosmetics at internet. The implications of findings for research and practice are discussed.