Significance of Ewom in the Road of Customer Journey
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Significance of eWOM in the road of customer journey. Acceptance of eWOM towards cross- cultural boundaries. Rahat Israque Fahim, Shakhawat Rafi Department of Business Administration Master's Program in Marketing Master's Thesis in Business Administration III, 30 Credits, Spring 2021 Supervisor: Vladimir Vanyushyn 2 [This page is left intentionally blank] 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The master’s thesis is an essential opportunity and interesting learning process for the students to broaden their knowledge in a specific field based on their interests. Of course, the way to complete the thesis is not so smooth and stressful and especially in the current pandemic which makes us separate from each other. In that situation, we have found some persons to whom we as a team would like to express our deepest appreciation to support throughout this journey. We would like to express our gratitude to our thesis supervisor, Vladimir Vanyushyn for his professional guidance, commitment, and valuable support we received throughout the research process. His motivations and experiences in the field of Marketing as well as in the business research field help us make significant development in this thesis. We also express appreciation to all of those participants who spent their valuable time participating in our survey. We admit that without their help the analysis would not be possible. Lastly, we are expressing the deepest appreciation for our parents who support us financially and mentally to through the entire study period in Sweden. Umeå, May 23, 2021 Rahat & Rafi 4 [This page is left intentionally blank] 5 ABSTRACT The digital era began a few years ago and day by day the dominance of the digital era is easily captivating all aspects of life. The business world is not out of that and for that reason, eWOM has born as a completely customer dominant platform. A few years back, people either normally depended on the information that the manufacturer wants them to know or had not enough opportunity to know in detail. Alternatively, traditional WOM (word of mouth) is where people get opinions from their friends and family members, and we would like to express it as a limited opportunity. Now the platform is getting wider, and information is vastly available to all because of technology. The goal of this thesis is to determine how eWOM influences consumer purchase intentions, as well as to determine how eWOM influences cultural variations in purchase intentions. Customer purchase intent is a complicated notion that requires customers to go through a procedure known as the customer journey. In this journey, different touchpoints and interactions might influence the consumer journey differently which can affect customer’s taste or brand loyalty. As a result, customer's taste or brand loyalty might be affected. Previous researchers have found some noticeable positive findings of the relationship between customer journey and the touchpoints, but the analysis based on cultural aspects and considering eWOM as newly emerged touchpoints remained unexplored. Our expressed research question is, How does eWOM affect throughout the customer journey towards the customer’s purchase intention in Bangladesh and in Sweden? To develop the conceptual framework, we have used customer journey theory, customer touchpoints and its newly emerged components of eWOM. To examine the cultural aspect, we have chosen two elements out of six developed by Hofstede. Because we believe culture is the core value of a society, which has a significant impact on people. For the analysis and result we have justified four components of eWOM, such as channels, source trustworthiness, valence, and length. Concerning the customer's purchase intention, we have found that eWOM has a significant impact on the customer buying behavior regarding to the Bangladesh and Sweden. Finally, our study shows that the channels and the source trustworthiness of eWOM have more influential effect on the customer journey that leads to the purchase intention. Again, the valence and the length of eWOM have unique variances between the two different cultural contexts. Keywords: eWOM, electronic word of mouth, Customer journey, touchpoints, Individualist- Collectivist culture, Customer purchase intention. 6 Table of Contents: 1. Introduction: ……………………………………………………………………...….9 1.1. Entering the Digital Era: ............................................................................................. 9 1.2. Theoretical Background ............................................................................................ 10 1.3. Problem Conceptualization: ...................................................................................... 11 1.4. Research Gap: ........................................................................................................... 12 1.5. Research Question: .................................................................................................... 13 1.6. Research Purpose: ..................................................................................................... 13 2. Theoretical Framework: ................................................................................................... 15 2.1. Introducing eWOM: .................................................................................................. 15 2.2. Classification of eWOM: .......................................................................................... 19 2.3. Advantages and disadvantages of eWOM: ............................................................... 20 2.4. Components of eWOM: ............................................................................................ 21 2.4.1. Channels:............................................................................................................ 21 2.4.2. Valence: ............................................................................................................. 21 2.4.3. Source trustworthiness: ...................................................................................... 22 2.4.4. Length: ............................................................................................................... 22 2.5. Introducing Customer Journey: ................................................................................. 22 2.6. Stages of the customer journey: ................................................................................ 26 2.7. Non-linear customer journey:.................................................................................... 26 2.7.1. Social and cultural influence:............................................................................. 27 2.7.2. Technological Influence: ................................................................................... 27 2.7.3. Numerical information and packaging cues: ..................................................... 28 2.8. The role of Culture: ................................................................................................... 28 2.9. Individualist vs. Collectivist in eWOM: ................................................................... 29 2.10. Purchase intention and eWOM: ............................................................................. 30 2.11. Conceptual Framework: ........................................................................................ 32 3. Scientific methodology: .................................................................................................... 33 3.1. Research Philosophy: ................................................................................................ 33 3.2. Research Approach: .................................................................................................. 34 3.3. Research Design: ....................................................................................................... 34 3.4. Research Strategy: ..................................................................................................... 35 3.5. Choice of theories: .................................................................................................... 36 4. Practical Methodology:..................................................................................................... 38 7 4.1. Experimental stimulus product: ................................................................................ 38 4.2. Sampling and Respondents: ...................................................................................... 38 4.3. Sample Size and Data collection: .............................................................................. 39 4.4. Pre-test:...................................................................................................................... 39 4.5. Questionnaire design: ................................................................................................ 40 4.6. Quality Criteria:......................................................................................................... 43 4.7. Ethical Consideration: ............................................................................................... 44 5. Empirical findings and Analysis: ..................................................................................... 45 5.1. Demographic and Geographic:.................................................................................. 45 5.2. Cross-Tabulation of Usage & Experience:................................................................ 47 5.3. Mean: T-test .............................................................................................................