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Hossein Norouzi, Negin Maleki, Sajad Abdolahpour,
Volume 5, Issue 4 (3-2019)
Abstract

Background and Aim: Today, the physical presence and traditional advertising in order to compete in the market of many businesses, especially the banking industry, is not enough, and the era of competition has tended to be digital or online. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of social media brand engagement on brand equity, with emphasis on the moderating role of trust and its impact on brand performance among the customers of the Bank Melli Iran of Tehran Province.
Methods: In terms of the objective, the study is a descriptive work and survey in nature, an applied work in terms of usage, and a correlation work in terms of implementation. In this regard, 385 customers of the Bank Melli Iran of Tehran province responded to the questionnaire by multi-stage cluster sampling.
Results: The results of the research showed that all the factors of identity, information availability, entertainment, personalized advertisements and brand affiliation have a positive and significant effect on social media brand engagement. The results also showed that social media brand engagement have a positive and significant effect on brand equity and brand equity on brand performance. In the end, the results showed that the trust variable in the relationship between social media brand engagement and brand equity has a moderating role.
Conclusion: In order to enhance the brand performance of the Bank Melli Iran, paying attention to engaging customers through social media and increasing their trust in influencing brand engagement and brand equity is important.
Afshin Mohsen, Darioush Afshin, Alireza Rousta,
Volume 8, Issue 3 (11-2021)
Abstract

Objective: The study aims to explain the role of brand equity in increasing market share, based on information seeking behavior and needs in Kish commercial centers.
Method: This is applied exploratory-explanatory qualitative research. Population included branding and economics experts who were selected as a research sample by targeted snowball method of 14 people. To analyze the information related to the semi-structured interview, the content analysis method based on open coding, axial coding and selective coding based on the data theory of the foundation was used.
Findings: The results showed that marketing strategies through 5 elements of product, price, location, promotion, process management. Management factors through two components of leadership and human resource management have added value to the brand of Kish commercial centers. The added value created creates a competitive advantage. Also, environmental capabilities include: Infrastructure, technology, environmental features, security and recreation as background conditions and external factors including political-economic factors, information seeking behavior and information needs through customer information and market information as an intervener. The competitive advantage of Kish commercial centers is affected and ultimately increases the market share or in other words the development of customers and improves the financial performance of these centers.
Results: The results showed that increasing market share is a complex process and is strongly influenced by brand value added, which is affected by marketing strategies and management factors. In addition, in order for Kish commercial centers to be known as a brand, they must first gather the necessary and sufficient information about customers and then the market.

Dr Yazdan Shirmohammadi, Mr Qasem Aryafard,
Volume 10, Issue 3 (11-2023)
Abstract


purpose: The mobile application market is expanding rapidly. Furthermore, a new form of online-to-offline services available in mobile shopping apps, which help users instantly search for what they want online, try them on in nearby offline stores, and pay online, increasingly becomes popular. As technology is developing rapidly and the smartphone has become an essential part of our daily life, the smartphone is a versatile tool that can perform many functions. Shopping also changes its process from offline to online and is based on mobile. With the increase in the use of the Internet from smartphones, most of the Internet consumption is done through smartphones and not through personal computers as in the past (Kim et al., 2021). In recent years, online to offline has emerged as a new e-commerce model that differs from traditional e-commerce models. In this model, consumers can obtain information, access products through an online channel, and then consume them in offline stores. The rapid development of the online to offline model has led to the rise of online tourism platforms. Some tour operators choose to cooperate with online tourism platforms to sell tourism products with the aim of expanding market demand. In the case of the online-to-offline tourism supply chain, the tourism platform sells its product online and the tour operator provides the service offline. Through division of labor and cooperation, both of them can focus on applying their respective advantages to achieve a win-win situation. With the online-to-offline tourism model, consumers can book tourism products through an online platform anytime, anywhere. Before making a final decision, consumers often review the information displayed on the web page of online tourism platforms, especially the available reviews (Luca and Zervas, 2016, as cited in Zhou et al., 2022). Tourists can gather online information about price, service level, and product quality to make better purchase decisions. This has created many opportunities as well as severe challenges for the survival and growth of tourism-related companies (He et al.,2019). Companies providing online to offline services recognize smartphones as a useful communication channel for strategic marketing, and therefore they are willing to use smartphones to provide various services and types of information directly to customers and constantly reflect their needs (Fuentes & Svingstedt, 2017). Since the online platform is data controlled, so that the information is asymmetric, there will be problems such as fake reviews, rating fraud, false advertising, etc. This phenomenon puts consumers in an unfavorable information situation. According to the "Online Tourism Consumption Trend Report and Consumer Rights Protection Trend Report (2019)", the problems of online tourism platforms are mainly focused on ten aspects, including information leakage, false advertising, tourism products with big data analysis to harm Existing consumer income and data fraud investigation (Zhou et al., 2022). These problems not only affect consumers' tourism experience and reduce consumer satisfaction, but also damage the credibility of the tourism platform and weaken consumers' trust in the platform. Therefore, privacy protection is an important problem in this field. Since online to offline applications in tourism is an emerging and practical issue, it is very important to investigate this issue in our country. Previous studies have largely ignored service quality evaluation and decision-making by traditional travel agencies, hotels, and airlines. Although the importance of service quality in tourism firm development has been demonstrated by some researchers, few have studied the benefits of service quality from online tourism supply chains to offline hospitality and tourism fields for tourists. Also, in the researcher's point of view, the features of mobile shopping applications that are based on online to offline services are questionable as to what features affect the delight and satisfaction of tourists and lead to the brand's reputation. Meanwhile, the influence of the information quality (including the intrinsic information quality and the textual information quality) and the services quality (including the convenient services quality and the accessible services quality) perceived from online to offline mobile shopping applications on the delight of tourists and the reputation of the tourism brand is questionable. The researcher thought that it was not investigated in the previous research and the researcher investigated these issues in this research.
Methodology:Considering that tourism and hotel businesses can easily use online to offline tourism platforms by applying the results of this research to have satisfied and loyal customers, this research is applied in terms of purpose. On the other hand, in this research, the type of relationship and the degree of influence of the variables were described, so the method of doing the work is descriptive and correlational. In fact, the impact of information and service quality on privacy protection, delight, and reputation of tourism brands in mobile shopping applications based on online to offline (O2O) is investigated. A quantitative method was also used to collect data. The statistical population of this research is European tourists who traveled to Iran. Since the target population is unlimited and its exact size is not available, according to Cochran's formula for the unlimited population, 384 people are considered for the sample size. The convenient non-randomly sampling method is a suitable method for sampling. The collection of information takes place in two stages: library and field. By referring to reliable databases, the researcher examines scientific articles, books, dissertations, and theses to prepare the theoretical foundations of his subject. Then, a questionnaire is used to collect the data required by the researcher in the field and survey method. The questionnaire was made by the researcher. The questionnaire includes five demographic questions (gender, age, marital status, education, employment status). 39 items were designed to answer the research questions, which are analyzed with a Likert scale. In the inferential findings section, the pairwise relationships of the variables were evaluated with Pearson correlation test and the conceptual model of the research was tested with structural equation modeling test with AMOS software. Also, mediation relationships were tested using the Sobel method.
Findings: The online-to-offline service platform channels provide tourists with innovative tools to get service information, order travel package online (via apps) and check-in offline almost instantly. The main purpose of this research is to discover the effect of information quality (including intrinsic information quality and contextual information quality) and service quality (including convenient service quality and accessible service quality) perceived from online to offline based mobile shopping applications with perceived privacy protection on the delight of tourists and the reputation of the tourism brand. The findings indicated that the information quality (including the intrinsic information quality and the textual information quality) and the quality of services (including the convenient services quality and the accessible services quality) perceived from online to offline mobile shopping applications with the protection of privacy perceived on the delight of tourists and tourism brand reputation is effective and all hypotheses were confirmed.
Conclusion:In today's world, searching for information online is very important and common for tourists to make decisions. In recent years, online to offline has been used as a new e-commerce model. This research shows that all dimensions of a mobile phone shopping application, such as the information and services quality provided, privacy protection, are effective on delight of tourists and ultimately the brand's reputation. In fact, considering the wide importance of information needed by tourists, the validity of this information, considering the quality of intrinsic and textual information in applications is very important and effective. On the other hand, the quality of the services provided in these types of applications, easier access and their appropriateness are also factors that should be considered in this type of shopping applications. On the other hand, the higher the quality of information and services, the more the privacy of people in the online world is preserved and the delight of tourists increases. This delight of tourists also improves and increases the reputation of the attitudinal and behavioral brand.
This study investigates the impact of information quality including (intrinsic information quality and contextual information quality) and service quality (including the intrinsic information quality and the textual information quality) perceived from online to offline mobile shopping applications on delight of tourists and the behavioral and attitudinal reputation of the tourism brand. For this reason, the research model of Kim et al. (2021) is used, which was added to it with the researcher's innovation of the brand reputation variable. The results showed that the information quality intrinsic information quality and contextual information quality) and service quality (including the intrinsic information quality and the textual information quality) perceived from online to offline mobile shopping applications are effective on the delight of tourists and the behavioral and attitudinal reputation of the tourism brand. This research concludes that the quality of information provided in mobile shopping applications is important for tourists, especially European tourists in Iran. The quality of intrinsic information and the quality of textual information significantly affect tourists' perception of information quality, and this quality of information has an effect on the delight of tourist. Therefore, tourism industry managers should describe their products and services with detailed and accurate information. When providing it in mobile shopping applications, such as online-to-offline platforms, since the accuracy of information is a key feature of inherent information quality, practitioners in this industry must also thoroughly ensure that the data provided is up-to-date and reflect consumption transactions. Also, the results showed that convenience and high accessibility positively increase the perceived service quality of online to offline platforms. Based on this, tourism industry managers should create easier access for services. In particular, since new phone models are released frequently nowadays, mobile shopping applications must have compatible payment systems to remove barriers to tourists' purchases. Therefore, according to the available results, it is only in this case that mobile shopping applications can have high accessibility and convenience to affect the quality of mobile shopping application services. Another thing that was investigated in this research was the protection of privacy. The results show that privacy protection is a very important factor in creating the delight of tourists, this issue is observed in all the countries of the world that have achieved the technology of mobile shopping applications. Unfortunately, today, some technological advances endanger their privacy from the point of view of customers. For example, CCTV cameras, which are in most tourist places and should protect the safety of tourists, can violate their privacy, or artificial intelligence, which has many capabilities, in the view of some people, spies on their information and violates their privacy rights. Therefore, in the researcher's point of view, despite this level of concern in the world, tourists in our country also have concerns about privacy and take into account the care of their privacy when evaluating the quality of online services. As discussed in this study, managers should be confident that their security systems do not violate tourists' privacy to directly contribute to delight of tourist and brand reputation. Based on the results, it can be suggested that high-quality information helps customers who want to effectively find information on a specific topic and helps customers avoid unnecessary efforts to process useless information. Therefore, providing high-quality information can increase the delight of tourist. Tourism booking and review websites need to improve their entertainment element and create a more interactive and interesting experience for those browsing them. The information provided by the websites must be useful and up-to-date, match the needs of the user and provide links to other websites relevant to these users. By informing tourists about developments, sales plans, product updates and any other content they may find interesting and relevant, it helps to improve delight of tourists and ultimately brand reputation. Also, when tourists have a problem, they can be assured that they can talk to a genuine, caring and ideal person in person or on the phone. Even in the digital world, people like to connect with others. Since this research has a new topic in the field of technology in tourism, the researcher recommends that in future researches, this topic should be investigated with other statistical communities such as local tourists, international tourists, specific hotel guests and other sectors.
 

Aghdas Soleimani, Zohre Kazemi, Mohammad Aghaei, Zahra Ghorbani,
Volume 10, Issue 3 (11-2023)
Abstract

Purpose: Today, internet-based technologies have brought new transformations to human life. Customers are able to compare products offered by sellers around the world to buy their online products. On the one hand, the widespread use of these technologies provides benefits for online companies that are constantly increasing. The importance of this issue is felt when there is a lot of competition between a large number of similar companies with different types of services. Now, companies are using social media technologies to advertise information about their brands. Social media are a good option for accessing and collecting information from other consumers. These media are widely used for social media marketing and provide various methods for marketers to reach and interact with consumers. Social media marketing refers to "the use of social media technologies, channels, and software to create, deliver, exchange, and provide offerings that have value for the stakeholders of an organization." Online marketing activities lead to the development of knowledge among users, empowering users from predictions about their future businesses, monitoring customer behavior through changes in the content produced, attracting new customers, increasing sales, and fast use and saving time. The goal of social media marketing is to help companies increase market share and customer purchase intention.  Today, social media marketing plays a fundamental role in influencing purchase intent due to its ubiquity among consumers. These platforms provide essential information that guides purchase decisions and simplifies decision-making. Purchase intention is an activity in which consumers consider purchasing a product or a service. Purchase intention is the likelihood that a consumer will continue to purchase in the future. Consumer purchase intention can be influenced through the sharing of information or engagement in conversations and comments from other consumers. A strong presence on social media significantly affects purchase intention and builds customer trust. On the other hand, marketers consider brand trust as an important and relevant concept to purchase intention. Brand trust is defined as the willingness of consumers to rely on the power of the brand to fulfill the stated goal and the belief that the brand has the ability to deliver the promised benefits. Studies that have been conducted in the past have stated that brand trust is a precursor to purchase intention. Sung & Kim (2010) and Ellitan, Havina & Lukito (2022) believe that brand trust is considered as a variable that has a significant impact on purchase intention. For many years, brand attitude has been an important topic of research in marketing. Therefore, marketers consider it the most important predictor of consumer behavior towards a product or service. Basically, brand attitude refers to the consistent preference of consumers towards a specific brand and the overall evaluation by the consumer towards the brand. Attitude towards an object (including a brand) includes salient beliefs that are acquired through experience and can fluctuate positively or negatively as a function of past experiences. A favorable attitude towards a  brand increases the likelihood of consumers continuing to use it in the future. Consumer attitude typically has a strong influence on their purchase intent. One of the growing global trends in Iran is the increasing demand for luxury goods. The luxury goods market has attracted the attention of researchers and marketing professionals due to its rising growth rate. In 2017, the global market for luxury fashion goods exceeded $1.2 trillion. It is expected that by 2030, approximately 500 million consumers will be luxury fashion customers. Research also shows that about 80% of the global luxury market is influenced by digital technology, and it is expected that online sales of luxury brands will reach 20% of total transactions by 2025. Many luxury brands now have official pages on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, where they publish news about their products and brands. In Iran, luxury fashion brands are trying to achieve profitability by targeting a specific target group. Despite their significant activity on social media, these brands have not been successful in attracting customers through this channel. In addition to increased competition in the domestic market, the import of foreign brands with official dealerships or the entry of these brands and their original counterparts from unconventional channels are serious threats to the Iranian fashion market. Additionally, unofficial pages selling fashion products on social media or the sale of personal luxury products have made these items more accessible to interested individuals and made the competition more difficult. Despite the activities of luxury fashion brands on social media, these activities are not interactive and feedback is not received from customers about the products and services of these brands. As a result, these brands have not been successful in attracting customers, creating positive attitudes, and gaining their trust to the desired extent. Therefore, it is necessary to examine and identify the factors affecting the purchase intention of consumers of luxury clothing brands, including social media marketing, brand attitude, and brand trust, in order to help improve knowledge and improve planning in this field. Despite the importance and expansion of social media marketing in the country, not many studies have been conducted to identify the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention for luxury products. The researchers of this study, after reviewing the research background, found that the role of brand attitude and brand trust in the relationship between social media marketing and customer purchase intention has not been considered in both foreign and domestic research. Given the research gap in this area, the present study investigates the impact of social media marketing on the purchase intention of consumers of luxury clothing brands, taking into account the mediating role of brand trust and brand attitude, which has not been studied before.
Methodology: The present study has a quantitative approach and is applied in terms of purpose. In terms of nature and method of data collection, it is descriptive-survey. The statistical population of this study is all consumers of the luxury brands Paten Jama, Charm Mashhad, Salyan, Denis Trico, and Navin Charm in Iran, who follow the social media pages of these brands. The reason for choosing these brands is that they all have active representative pages on the social media platform Instagram. This is because it makes it possible to identify followers of these brands and people who are attached to these brands. Given the unlimited nature of the statistical population and the lack of access to the entire target population, the sample under study was taken using the available sampling method. In this way, the online questionnaire of the present study was shared with the followers of the Instagram pages of these brands. Due to the unknown size of the population, the sample size was estimated at 385 people using the Cochran formula.The questionnaire for the present study was prepared with 27 questions using a five-point Likert scale. A set of standard questionnaires from previous studies were used to measure the variables under study. The questions for the social media marketing variable were extracted from the standard questionnaire of Cheung, Pires & Rosenberger (2020), the questions related to purchase intention were extracted from the questionnaire of Lakshamana (2018), the questions for the brand attitude variable were extracted from the tool questionnaire of Qasemi and Vesta (2014), and the questions for the brand trust variable were extracted from the research questionnaire of Yazdani, Ronagh, Laqayi and Mostafshar (2019). In this study, the validity of the questionnaire was obtained through expert review. The questionnaire was sent to six experts and university professors who had at least five years of experience in the field of research, and after the necessary modifications, the validity of the questionnaire was confirmed. The reliability of the questionnaire was also obtained using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The questionnaire was distributed among 31 people, and a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 92% indicates the appropriate reliability of the questionnaire. In this study, Amos software and path analysis method were used to analyze the relationships between dimensions and indicators.
Findings: Social media, as a powerful and successful marketing tool, helps companies to connect activities and interactions between consumers with the brand in a more enjoyable way than ever before. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of social media marketing on consumer purchases through brand trust and brand attitude. The findings indicated that social media marketing has a positive and significant effect on brand trust and brand attitude. In addition, brand trust and brand attitude have a positive and significant effect on consumers' purchase intention; Also, social media marketing affects purchase intention through brand trust and brand attitude.
Conclusion: Today, marketers are increasingly concerned with understanding how social media is used in the purchase decision process. Social media offers marketers numerous opportunities to connect with consumers and build more meaningful relationships with them. Social media also provides opportunities to create and share marketing content with target audiences. Social media users have an easier time making decisions and enjoying their work compared to those who use other information sources. In the luxury brand sector, social media also appears to play a key role in the success of a brand. Studies have shown that luxury brand marketing on social media has a positive impact on consumers' favorable perception of luxury, luxury desire, and purchase intention. This study investigated the application of the social media phenomenon in marketing. To this end, it conceptualized the use of social media in marketing and evaluated its impact on consumers' purchase intention of luxury brands with the mediating role of trust and brand attitude. The findings suggest that the use of social media improves consumers' attitude and trust during the initial stages of information search and alternative evaluation. In this study, 6 hypotheses were tested. The results of the first hypothesis showed that social media marketing has a positive and significant impact on consumers' trust in the brand. Social media marketing is considered an effective tool in developing customer relationships. In addition, these interactions create trust and reduce uncertainty that may prevent customers from interacting with brands and making online transactions. Therefore, the higher the quality and informativeness of a social media, the greater the consumer trust in a brand. This means that brand trust is influenced by social media marketing. The findings of this study support the results of previous research. For example, a study by Amalina & Tiarawati (2016) found that if social media marketing is managed effectively, brand trust increases. This is because the transfer of good information creates the perception that the brand can meet the needs of the consumer. Chahal & Rani (2017) also stated that social media experience is an important driver of trust in a particular brand. The existence of social media makes it easier for marketers to reach a wider range of consumers. The results of research by researchers such as Ibrahim (2020) and Behnardi & Rogers (2018) also confirm the positive impact of social media marketing on brand trust. The results obtained from the confirmation of hypothesis number 2 of this study show that social media marketing has a positive and significant impact on consumers' attitudes towards the brand. Social media marketing can be an effective tool for interacting with the community, providing information, and receiving feedback, which leads to increased brand attitude (Poluan, Pasuhuk & Mandagi, 2022). The result is consistent with the instrumental research of Qasemi and Vesta (2014). The third hypothesis investigated the direct effect of social media marketing on consumers' purchase intention, the result of which is in contrast to the findings of the studies of Laksamana (2018) and Alfilo Ansari (2019).The result obtained from the confirmation of the fourth hypothesis of the present study shows that consumer trust in the brand has a significant effect on consumer purchase intention. It can be interpreted that the level of trust in a brand is taken into account by consumers in decision-making for product purchase. Based on the theory of planned behavior, the control belief of a decision relates to the activities that have been carried out, so this can be affected by brand trust because, according to Delgado-Ballester et al. (2003), brand trust includes hope, honesty, and concern. Expectations refer to promises that must be fulfilled in connection with consumers. Honesty refers to the consistency between words and actions in dealing with any situation experienced by consumers. Attention refers to a form of empathy that shows attitude towards consumers when faced with product-related problems. The result is in line with the previous studies of researchers such as Chae, Kim, Lee & Park (2020) and Song and Kim (2010). Ibáñez, Hartmann, & Calvo (2006) also showed that brand trust directly affects purchase intention, and this is very relevant when customers decide to change brands due to the high level of perceived risk and ambiguity. In the fifth hypothesis, the direct and significant effect of consumer attitude towards the brand on purchase intention was confirmed, meaning that a positive attitude towards a brand increases the percentage of brand acceptance probability and affects consumer purchase interest, purchase intention, and willingness to pay more. This result is in line with the findings of studies conducted by Qasemi and Vesta (2014), Yu, Liu, Lee, & Soutar (2018), and Li, Li, & Yang (2017). Finally, hypotheses 6 and 7, which tested the effect of social media marketing on purchase intention through brand trust and brand attitude, were confirmed. Therefore, the results of this study show that social media marketing cannot have a positive effect on consumers' purchase intention without the role of the mediating variables of consumer attitude and brand trust. This itself shows the importance of consumer attitude and trust in the brand in the effect of social media marketing on consumers' purchase intention.
 


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