Paper Title
Exploring the Determinants of Brand Advocacy from Branding Perspective

Abstract
The primary objective of this study is to investigate and understand the determinants of brand advocacy particularly in the Malaysian’s food and beverage (F&B) industry. Brand advocacy essentially refers to the act of those consumers who elevates a particular brand through word-of-mouth marketing. Brand advocacy is crucial in today’s competitive business world as it is regarded as being more influential than marketer-initiated promotional messages. Specifically, this study aims to explain as well as to compare and contrast the influence of three main branding-related variables namely brand trust, brand salience and brand satisfaction in predicting the notion of brand advocacy. A total of 210 respondents were involved in this preliminary study which employed questionnaires survey as the main method of data collection. Hypotheses were tested using the stepwise multiple regression analysis. Out of the three proposed branding variables, the results revealed that brand salience is the most important determinant of brand advocacy followed by brand trust and brand satisfaction. Brand salience refers to the extent to a specific brand is thought of by consumers when making a purchase decision. Only one or two brands normally come to our minds (brand salience) at a specific point of time but one can trust (brand trust) or satisfy (brand satisfaction) with quite a number of competing brands. Keywords - WOM Marketing, Brand Satisfaction, Brand Advocacy, Brand Salience, Brand Trust