Influence of Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) and Relationship Marketing on Brand Resonance:
A Mediation Analysis
Abstract: This study investigates how electronic work of mouth (eWOM) mediates the relationship between marketing relations and brand resonance. Based on the information obtained from 473 customers using an online questionnaire, this study analyses the relationship between eWOM, relationship marketing practices and the brand resonance of lifestyle products in an Indian context. The results from the multiple regression analysis indicate that the proposed hypotheses are valid, that relationship marketing significantly affects brand resonance, and that eWOM significantly mediates the relationship between the relationship marketing and brand resonance of branded apparel. The findings suggest that personalised attention and tangible rewards are effective relationship marketing strategies, and that these relationship-marketing practices—in association with eWOM—build up the strong brand resonance of branded apparel. The present study recommends that marketers should place emphasis on effective online and offline relationship marketing strategies, and should design appropriate eWOM strategies to enhance brand loyalty, brand attachment, brand community and brand engagement. Some of the managerial implications and the future scope of study based on the empirical findings are also highlighted in the present research work.
Keywords: brand resonance; relationship marketing; electronic word of mouth (eWOM); lifestyle products; regression analysis.
Introduction
Business organisations operate in a highly competitive environment as a consequence of a number of factors, such as the emergence of new markets, the rise in market demand, the increasing expectations of modern customers, the quality of services and products, value conscious customers, the rise in operational costs and declining profitability in addition to the inflation. Organizations can only survive by employing strategic and competitive measures towards attaining good positioning, a sustainable competitive advantage, differentiation and value creation. Several researchers, including, have advocated that two important strategic factors—relationship marketing and branding—are critical for competing effectively and fostering differentiation, as well as creating firm value and customer value. Relationship marketing and brand resonance have become part of the necessary requirement for modern organizations to Posit that relationship marketing enables marketers to build long-term relationship with customers, help brands understand their customers beyond a single interaction, and explain strategic variables associated with marketing efforts. In addition to relationship marketing, effective eWOM is another strategic measure that enhances customer awareness, builds purchase intention and influences final purchase.
Effective relationship marketing and eWOM help business organizations to reduce the risks associated with a competitive business landscape. A strong brand mitigates risk, aids in the decision-making process and differentiates the brand from other offerings. The customer-based brand equity (CBBE) pyramid or brand resonance model proposed by Keller provides a sequential structure for building a strong brand. As a top element of the CBBE pyramid, brand resonance is the extent to which a consumer develops strong behavioural, psychological and social bonds with the brands. Brand resonance plays a crucial role in managing the customer relationship, developing sustainable brand equity, creating loyalty and building an emotional association with the brand. Brand Resonance is a dominant state of the psychological relationship that every organisation would like to establish with its customers. It is the way a by which a customer relates to a brand. This study is concerned with examining the association between relationship marketing, eWOM and brand resonance for lifestyle products.
In recent years, marketing professionals have focused on managing customer relationships
and their marketing as a theoretical lens for understanding consumer–brand interactions. Many studies have introduced the use of the relationship metaphor to enhance the understanding of the various dimensions of brand resonance. According to a review of the branding literature, the construct of brand resonance defines the stepwise development of the brand relationship. Even though previous studies have investigated brand resonance in consumer research, the role of eWOM communication in strengthening relationship marketing for better brand resonance remains unknown. The research question is whether relationship marketing has an effect on the brand resonance of clothing products. Moreover, does effective eWOM communication mediate the relationship between relationship marketing components and apparel brand respondents? The study of this is more contemporary and justifiable in an Indian context, as India is considered to be the second largest emerging market for consumer goods due to its favorable demographical and socio economical advantage, rising disposable income, effective brand promotions, high demand for lifestyle products, increasing consumption, and spending on lifestyle products and luxury items. The Indian apparel market has witnessed a huge influx of international brands in the last few years. The findings of the present work will be beneficial for marketers in designing suitable relationship and eWOM strategies to influence brand resonance among consumers in this emerging economy.
Literature Review and Hypothesis Development
Relationship Marketing and Brand Resonance
Relationship marketing is a value creation process intended to retain existing customers, develop powerful relationships to affect their repurchase decisions, and generate brand advocacy. It requires generating, maintaining and improving the strong relationship with customers and other stakeholders within and outside an enterprise. According to, an improved capability to target profitable consumers, a unified assistance across channels, improved marketing force efficiency and effectiveness, improved pricing, customised products and services, enhanced consumer service efficiency and effectiveness, and individualised marketing messages are the seven core benefits of relationship marketing. With the regular usage of the marketing methods at the disposal of business owners, relationship marketing is playing a greater role as they look for ways to differentiate themselves and create long lasting, meaningful brand and customer experiences.
Keller defined brand resonance as the strength or extent of the psychological connection that customers have with the brand and the degree of operation generated by this loyalty. According to Keller, brand resonance has four dimensions, which comprise brand loyalty, brand attachment, brand community and brand engagement. Tracking out the linkage between relationship marketing dimensions and brand resonance, brand attachment is directly influenced by the core factors of relationship marketing, which include trust and satisfaction. The research of validated the significant and positive relationship between conflict handling and brand loyalty through trust and relationship quality. When the service providers deal with the conflicts of customers effectively and efficiently, they develop a loyalty towards
the enterprise or the brand. Beyond conflict handling, empathy also generates the loyalty of the customers, as per the research conducted. With such great advantages, brand resonance can be used by the organisation to gain a competitive advantage. Many organizations seek to enhance brand resonance dimensions by using relationship marketing. Relationship marketing has more significance to service enterprises compared to product enterprises. The above arguments lead to the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis (H1). Relationship marketing has a positive effect on brand resonance towards
branded apparels.
Relationship Marketing and eWOM
Relationship marketing involves the creation of easy two-way communication between customers and the business, tracking customer activities and providing tailored information to customers based on those activities. EWOM has made it easy for marketers to enhance their relationship with customers, establish strong communication, and convince customers in favour of their products. EWOM is any favourable or unfavourable communication made by prospective, existing or previous customers about a brand or organisation, which is capable of reaching to millions of individuals and organizations through the internet. EWOM communication—usually attributed to written words, indirect interactions, anonymity and a wide scope—offers higher reliability and better understanding and significance to shoppers than commercial information sources on the internet created by marketers. EWOM brings a significant change in the knowledge, attitude and behaviour of the audience. EWOM messages effectively minimize the chances of risk and ambiguity while making the purchase decision, and thus influences consumers’ subsequent intention to purchase. Spending on marketing and advertising campaigns to acquire new customers and retain existing customers can be expensive. Relationship marketing influences customers to become brand ambassadors and effectively spread word of mouth digitally for the brand, which consequently drives sales.
These arguments lead to the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2 (H2). Relationship marketing has a positive effect on eWOM for branded apparels.
Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) and Brand Resonance
EWOM plays an important role in improving brand recognition and creating positive brand relationships. EWOM is recognised as an effective tool for building brand awareness, creating hype in the marketplace, influencing purchase decisions and developing brand loyalty. Examining the effect of eWOM on brand image and purchase intention, found the strong influence of eWOM on brand image and purchase intention. Several studies have examined the relationship between the individual elements of brand resonance (i.e., brand loyalty, brand attachment, brand community and brand engagement) and eWOM. In the social media environment, loyal consumers usually tend to be ambassadors of the brand for other consumers. Several researchers have attested that positive eWOM creates and strengthens customers’ loyalty towards brands. Regarding brand attachment, the studies of found that brand attachment develops emotional bonds with customers and motivates them to generate positive WOM.
Research Methodology
Branded apparels were chosen for this study as lifestyle products. The data for this
study were collected through responses received from Indian consumers using an online
questionnaire generated through Google document for three months, from June to August
2020. The customers were requested to reply by email. The survey questionnaire consisted
of three sections. The first part consisted of questions related to the demographic profile
of the respondents and the motivation of purchasing branded apparels. The second part
of questionnaire contained attributes related to relationship marketing practices, EWOM effectiveness and brand resonance. Relationship marketing was measured by interpersonal communication, direct mail, tangible rewards, preferential treatment, customisation methods and the individualisation attention, as adopted from the previous study. EWOM was measured according to seven attributes taken from the previous works. Brand resonance was measured by developing four constructs namely Behavioural Loyalty, Affective Attachment, Sense of Continuity and Affective Engagement, which were taken from previous studies. Participants were instructed to indicate their preferences according to their level of agreement with the given attributes in a five-point Likert-scale (where 5 designated strongly agree and 1 designated strongly disagree).
A panel of experts and academicians of the marketing domain vetted the initial questionnaire by judging the content’s validity, the clarity of its items’ meanings and the linkages of the identified variables with the research objectives. For reliability, the questionnaire was pilot tested using 55 respondents, representing 13% of the total proposed sample, who were considered the representatives of the study population. The value of Cronbach’s alpha was found to be 0.983, which suggested the acceptable level of reliability of the questionnaire. The consumers were invited to participate in the study via email and by posting invitations to well-known sites using snowball sampling, in which potential respondents were asked to complete the questionnaire and forward it to someone known to them. Initially, the questionnaire was mailed to 1500 respondents. The researchers received 498 responses and, after editing, 473 respondents were found fit to be used in this study, excluding 25 responses that were incomplete or insincerely answered. The sample size was calculated for an infinite population keeping a level of confidence of 95% and a margin of error of 0.05 to calculate that the sample size. The data thus received was systematically arranged, tabulated and analysed through SPSS software. Some of the statistical techniques like descriptive statistics, regression analysis and the Sobel test for mediation analysis were used to draw the inferences.
Results
The demographic profiles of the respondents presented in Table 1 indicate that 52.6% of respondents were in the age group of 19–25 years. In total, 25.4% of the respondents were in the age group of 26–35 years, 10.8% of respondents were in the age group of 36–45 years, and 2.1% of respondents were in the age group of 46–55 years. The remaining 9.1% of respondents were above 55 years. The majority of the respondent (69.6%) were in the male category, and more than half (57.3%) of the respondents were unmarried. Regarding education level, 39.1% of the respondents surveyed were graduates,19.9% were postgraduates, and 25.8% of respondents were below graduation level. In total, 15.2% of the respondents had qualifications like technical degrees or diploma certificates. Regarding the monthly income level, 31.9% of the respondents were earning INR 20,001 40,000, 29.8% were earning INR 40,001–60,000 and 20.5% were receiving INR 60,001 80,000. The remaining 17.8% of respondents had a monthly income in the range of INR 80,001–100,000. Students dominated the sample with 44.6%, followed by salaried individuals (32.1%) and business professionals (12.3%).
Mian Mukarram
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