The relationship between viral marketing and consumer purchase intention, the moderator role of brand image and age: Evidence from smartphone users in North Cyprus

This research aims to examine the effects of two viral marketing attributes; namely viral advertising and E-WOM on customer purchase intention. In particular, the authors contemplate the prima facie nature of the relationship by examining brand image and age as contingent boundary conditions (moderator role). The population of the study consists of graduate students in a private Cypriot university.
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The relationship between viral marketing and consumer purchase intention, the moderator role of brand image and age: Evidence from smartphone users in North Cyprus Management Science Letters 10 (2020) 1307–1320 Contents lists available at GrowingScience Management Science Letters homepage: www.GrowingScience.com/msl The relationship between viral marketing and consumer purchase intention, the moderator role of brand image and age: Evidence from smartphone users in North Cyprus Dima Anwer Sawaftaha*, Cemal Çalıcıoğlua and Razan Ibrahim Awadallahb a Girne American University, Marketing Department, via Mersin 10, North Cyprus, Turkey b Girne American University, Business Management Department, via Mersin 10, North Cyprus, Turkey CHRONICLE ABSTRACT Article history: This research aims to examine the effects of two viral marketing attributes; namely viral advertising Received: October 25, 2019 and E-WOM on customer purchase intention. In particular, the authors contemplate the prima facie Received in revised format: No- nature of the relationship by examining brand image and age as contingent boundary conditions vember 20 2019 (moderator role). The population of the study consists of graduate students in a private Cypriot Accepted: November 22, 2019 Available online: university. A sample size of 177 participants is recruited using a convenience sampling technique. November 22, 2019 Multiple linear regression and analysis of variance are the statistical analyses employed to test the Keywords: developed hypotheses. The findings reveal that viral marketing influenced on customer purchase Viral Marketing intention magnified under the moderating role of brand image but age did not affect the relationship. Customer Purchase Intention Interestingly, viral advertising had a greater effect on customer purchase intention than E-WOM. SmartPhones Finally, discussions of this research finding in light of academic knowledge are put forward before Viral advertising suggesting future research directions. E-WOM © 2020 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada 1. Introduction In the era of advancing technology and information change, communication and connectivity through the internet web have substantially risen (Hajli, 2014). The evolution of the web, as one of the technologic advancements, created a radical shift in the way firms interact with their consumes (Pinheiro et al., 2014). When forming a blueprint for viral marketing, a bundle of factors must be taken into consideration, such as platforms, media type, ads content, and targeted customers (Fill & Turnbull, 2016). Viral marketing has generated a great revolution in the marketing world as a new technique, and most of it depends on marketing specialists and their face to face practice with customers; this method let the marketers select a few people through social media websites, blogs or general websites to plant their idea or product in a viral natural message and then leave it spread among the customers without any effort to reach an endless number of recipients who are working on the dissemination continuously. The philosophy of simple viral marketing based on e-mail has spread all over the world, and the word of mouth (WOM) has been used in dealing, promoting and selling, but face-to-face until the Internet has emerged and has made a significant shift in the world of marketing (Hmaed, 2014). Meaningful evaluations of any product or service are best done by seeking customers’ feedback (Ugonna et al., 2017). This helps the problem floats on the surface to realize the effect of viral marketing, viral advertising, and electronic word of mouth on purchase intention. This relationship has been investigated from the professional marketer’s perspectives (Alsamydai, 2016; Fritz & Shaw, 2017; Saleem et al., 2017). The researcher is going to assert this issue by analyzing the customers’ point of view, i.e. graduate students’ perspective at GAU. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: deemamubaslat@gmail.com (D. Anwer Sawaftah) © 2020 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada doi: 10.5267/j.msl.2019.11.027 1308 After reviewing the available recent studies we found a lack of studies that cover the exact relationship of this one, the study of (Rakib, 2019) which derived in Denmark to study the culture of Danish customers concentrated on “viral marketing mes- sage and customer purchase intention” as a primary variables, but did not use any secondary variable (moderate or mediator). Motwani and Haryani, (2018) derived their study by considering “viral marketing and consumer purchase intention” as pri- mary variables, but did not use any secondary variable. Trivedi (2017) studied “viral marketing message and consumer be- havioral intention” through the mediating effect of the brand in general. The study of Fritz et al. (2017)studied “viral marketing message and customer purchase intention” without any secondary variables. Regarding to the study of Trivedi (2017) sought to study the same relationship at the field of electronics taking into consideration the age of the customers; Hence, the re- searchers derived this research by combining the (viral advertising and E-WOM) as an attributes for the independent variable ( ...