Paper Title
Opinion Leadership and Electronic Word Of Mouth (EWOM): A Multiple-Mediation model of Customer Brand Attitude and Customer Brand Loyalty
Abstract
Drawing on theory and research on opinion leadership and Electronic word of mouth (EWOM), we examine customer brand attitude and customer brand loyalty as tow mediators of the relationship between opinion leadership and electronic word of mouth. Using a sample of 361 customers in the context of hotels, we find support for our hypothesized model. We assessed reliabilities of the individual measurement scales using Cronbach’s (1951) coefficient α, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Hierarchical regression and Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient in SPSS 22.0. All final factor loadings, reliability calculations. Hence, we tested all hypothesized effects by constructing bias-corrected confidence intervals from 10,000 bootstrapped samples (Tepper, Moss, & Duffy, 2011).
The results of the positive relationship between opinion leadership and EWOM was full mediated by customer brand attitude. Second the results of the positive relationship between opinion leadership and EWOM was full mediated by customer brand loyalty. Third opinion leadership is positive relationship with EWOM, customer brand loyalty and customer brand loyalty. Fourth examine multiple mediation results indicate that the customer brand loyalty-based mechanism is significantly stronger than the customer brand attitude-based mechanism for building EWOM from opinion leadership initiatives. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings. We also offer several promising directions for future research.
Keywords - Opinion Leadership, Customer Brand Loyalty‚ Customer Brand Attitude, Electronic Word of Mouth (EWOM).