Examining Factors affecting Attitude and Positive Word of Mouth among the Telegram Users

Telegram is a text and voice messaging service that has become an important social media in Iran, enabling users to share their messages, pictures, videos, and documents with each other. Although this social media has not been defined for selling goods and services, enables marketers to communicate with their audience directly or indirectly as a new tool of marketing and use it as a source of word of mouth marketing. Thus, the main objective of this research was to investigate the factors influencing the attitudes of Telegram users and its impact on positive WOM from the view point of the students of management faculties of Islamic Azad University in Tehran. For this purpose, 300 people were selected using convenient sampling method. Data were collected using standardized questionnaire that its validity and reliability was approved using experts comments and Cronbach's alpha coefficient, respectively. This research is an applied research in terms of objective and survey in terms of data collection. Moreover, the present research is correlational (quantitative type) in terms of investigating the relationship between the variables of research. The results of hypotheses testing using SPSS and PLS softwares suggested that the mental motivation of users (entertainment and sociality) beside the technical characteristics of telegram (easy of use and convenience), perceived usefulness, and trust have a positive impact on the attitude of Telegram users. Finally, their attitude and trust have impact on positive WOM. The results of this research provide insight for marketing managers of companies so that they can create positive comments about their products and services through the social media of Telegram according to the mentioned factors.