Impact of Electronic Word of Mouth on Brand Equity. Case of Big Market.

Abstract

Word of Mouth is one the oldest channels of marketing. With the development of technology and internet, this term is converted in electronic word of mouth, because gossips are not mostly taking place between the neighbors, but in a virtual world through social medias. Gossips in the internet related to a brand or a product can be positive and negative, by affecting in the capital brand of a company. Henry Ford said that a company reputation takes 20 years to be built and only a minute to be destroyed. In addition, it is applied for the capital brand, therefore managing social media and particularly negative comments, need more attention. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact electronic word of mouth in capital brand and each of its dimensions: brand awareness, brand association, brand image, perceived quality and brand loyalty. In order to realize this analysis is used quantitative method, where the primary data are collected through a questionnaire delivered online in social media. The reason of delivering online was to ensure a high number of participants, where in total were 160. For this study, the brand of Big Market was chosen. It is a famous chain of supermarkets. Social media was chosen as a marketing mean. To test the hypothesis Pearson Correlation method was used. From the analysis resulted that there exist a positive important relationship between Brand Equity and Electronic Word of Mouth. In addition, a positive important relationship existed between EWOM and each of the dimensions of Brand Equity that are Brand Association, Brand Awareness, Brand Loyalty, Brand Image and Perceived Quality. In conclusion, we can say that Electronic Word of Mouth has a positive important impact in Brand Equity and each of its dimensions. These results are important for every company and specially for marketing managers, who should invest more in social media, because it is an effective tool with low cost and affect positively in increase of their capital brand.