Abstract Online word-of-mouth has been found to influence consumption. However, there are still no conclusive results about how online word-of-mouth affects consumer psychology and behavior. Therefore, this paper develops a moderated mediation model to examine the impacts of different online word-of-mouth components on consumers' purchase intentions, from the consumer inspiration perspective. We further investigate the boundary condition due to different product types. This paper shows that the valence and ratings of online word-of-mouth have positive effects on inspiration, but the number of online word-of-mouth has no significant effect. Moreover, online word-of-mouth can positively influence consumers' purchase intention, and inspiration has significant mediation effects in those relationships. However, this mediation effect is moderated by product types. Compared with the non-experiential product categories, online word-of-mouth of experiential products leads to stronger inspiration, which leads to stronger purchase intentions, and thus stronger mediation effects of inspiration. Finally, a well-controlled experiment was conducted to rule out the alternative explanation of trust. This paper provides an additional research perspective of online word-of-mouth, shows the mechanism and different impact of different dimensions of online word-of-mouth on purchase intention under different product types, and provides theoretical basis and practical implications for enterprises to improve word-of-mouth management.
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