Interpersonal trust reinforcing the adoption of a brand. Hung and Li (2007)
and Woerndl et al. (2008) indicate that viral marketing is the most influential and
persuasive channel to market products, depending on the trust between an informant
and recipient. Bone‘s research (1992) ( as cited in Palka et al., 2009) has shown that
the stronger the ties of interpersonal relationship, the more likelihood is to generate
word-of-mouth communication about a product or customer experience. A
trustworthy source like a friend or family leads to a recipient‘s perceptual affinity that
increases the credibility of an advertising message and positively affects a recipient‘s
purchase intention (Palka et al., 2009). Swanepoel et al. (2009) further suggest that
the more a recipient views the source as having expertise, trustworthiness and
attractiveness, the more persuasive the word-of-mouth communication is.