Influence of eWOM on the purchase intention of consumers of Nikkei restaurants in Lima, Peru

PurposeeWOM is a very useful tool that is widely used nowadays to make a purchase decision. One of the sectors where this tool is very present is the gastronomic sector and Peru is no stranger to this gastronomic take-off. As a part of this take-off, Nikkei or Peruvian-Japanese cuisine have gained plenty of attention through digital social platforms, with a significant number of users relying on eWOM to determine which is their best purchase option; nevertheless, there is a lack of local investigations that addresses a correlation between eWOM and purchase intention in this type of restaurants. With the last statement, this study aims to determine the influence of eWOM on the purchase intention of consumers of Nikkei restaurants in Lima, Peru.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative descriptive and causal explanatory research was conducted, using the Information Acceptance Model (IACM) to test the purpose of the study. A total of 385 surveys were obtained and processed in SmartPLS.FindingsThe results show that consumers of Nikkei restaurants in Metropolitan Lima are mostly guided by the eWOM that is on social media to make a purchase decision. In addition, information usefulness is the eWOM dimension that most influences purchase intention. Finally, it was found that the credibility of the eWOM does not influence the information usefulness, which could be due to the distrust of the sources and the anonymity of the eWOM.Research limitations/implicationsThe present investigation identified that certain dimensions of the IACM does not influence their hypothesized counterparts, such as credibility and attitude towards information over information usefulness; circumstances that may conduct to other local studies based on the IACM applied to other type of restaurants to observe if there is some type of variation in the results obtained of both hypotheses.Practical implicationsFrom a practical point of view, the results obtained are valuable for social media marketers and generally digital marketing professionals, which by themselves provide a framework that assures a better understanding about the impact of eWOM in the purchase intention of Nikkei Restaurant consumers.Social implicationsAs the potential for this research to impact society in visible ways, it identifies how current individuals in a certain time and location, tend to act towards information obtained in social media or specialised forums; as well as how the characteristics of this information coul