The notion of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication has received considerable attention in
both business and academic communities. Numerous studies have been conducted to examine the effectiveness
of eWOM communication. The scope of published studies on the impact of eWOM communication is
large and fragmented and little effort has been made to integrate the findings of prior studies and evaluate the
status of the research in this area. In this study, we conducted a systematic review of eWOM research. Building
upon our literature analysis, we used the social communication framework to summarize and classify
prior eWOM studies. We further identified key factors related to the major elements of the social communication
literature and built an integrative framework explaining the impact of eWOM communication
on consumer behavior. We believe that the framework will provide an important foundation for
future eWOM research work.