We expect the tie strength between WOM participants to moderate the impact of
WOM on the sender’s future WOM intentions and self-enhancement. The selfperception
theory supports the inclusion of tie strength as a potential moderator.
The theory argues that individuals not only infer their attitudes and future
behavioural intentions from their own overt behaviour, but also infer the context in
which that overt behaviour occurs (Bem, 1967). In this study, the context is the social
context in which WOM behaviour occurs. We expect that the influence of tie
strength on WOM-self-enhancement relationship will vary between P-WOM and
N-WOM contexts