Electronic word of mouth (E-WOM): A path to build the image of university

Globalization in higher education has a direct impact on competition among universities in Indonesia which become keener. The competition has not been only within universities in the country but also with universities from other countries. This keener competition has motivated each university to improve its quality continuously, so that they could survive and winning the competition. Furthermore, there was a universities ranking that standardized and recognized internationally, such as; Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, which was based in Spain. Webometric was a system that provided an assessment of all universities in the world through the university's website assessment. Meanwhile, the progressiveness of Internet Technology has made the spread of word of mouth (WOM) was not limited to directly face-to-face communication, but already in the form of electronic word of mouth (e-WOM). E-WOM has become a phenomenon that was essentially improving the image of organization especially in the context of Webometric measurement. This study aimed to identify and analyze the influence of someone’s motivation who engaged in e-WOM by using organization’s websites to enhance the image by exploiting the reputation and Webometric ranking.The research object was Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS), one of the largest University at Indonesia. Data was collected through the questionnaire to the academics community. This quantitative research engaging Partial Least Square (PLS) and enhancing with qualitative assessment. The results showed that there were significant correlation between factors of e-WOM towards improving the image of organization for reputation and webometric ranking.