Abstract
Marketers increasingly seek to build brand advocacy not only via traditional word of mouth (in-person WOM) but also by engaging their (loyal) customers via online media (eWOM). In a survey and three follow-up experiments, however, we show that brand loyalty is less positively related to spreading eWOM than in-person WOM (Studies 1-3). We find that loyal consumers' willingness to engage in eWOM increases when they are motivated to signal their identity through a brand (i.e., high self-brand connection in Studies 1-3) or to help a brand (Study 4). Our findings support the notion that online communication spreads faster and is less spontaneous and more deliberate than face-to-face communication. In turn, loyal consumers need strong motivation tied to the brand to engage in eWOM.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 872-891 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | International Journal of Research in Marketing |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 18 Aug 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2017 |
Funding
All three authors contributed equally to this manuscript, and authors are named in alphabetical order. This work was supported by the SWOCC foundation , Amsterdam, the Netherlands. We thank the organizers and attendants of the 2015 Thought Leaders in Customer Engagement and Customer Relationship Management Conference for their feedback. We also thank Eddy Eelen for data coding, and Anne Klesse and Francesca Sotgiu for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Appendix A
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Grant Foundation |
Keywords
- (Electronic) word of mouth
- Branding
- Loyalty
- Self-brand connection
- Social media