BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY
MSc Marketing Management
December 2018
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE IMPACT OF ELECTRONIC WORD OF MOUTH ON PURCHASE INTENTION OF GENERATION Y TOWARDS THE FASHION APPAREL INDUSTRY IN VIETNAM
A proposal submitted by
HA MINH LE
Under the supervision of: Dr. Kaouther Kooli
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 3
2. Outline Literature Review 5
2.1. Definition of key terms 5
2.2. The elaboration likelihood model 5
2.3. Related studies 5
2.4. Research model and research hypothesis 6
2.5. Potential implications of theory and practice 8
3. Proposed Methodology and Design, Data Collection and Analysis 8
References …..11
1. Introduction
Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) is positioned as one of the most effective marketing resources to the companies today (Thorsten et al., 2004). According to Li and Zhan (2011), eWOM is cheaper compared to traditional word of mouth and it brings the availability of discussion amongst customers about products and services with others in virtual environment. The main reason refers to the emergence of web-based technologies (Sharifpour et al., 2016). A survey recently conducted by TNSGlobal (2017) pointed out that in Vietnam, internet is the main tool for sharing, contributing, and finding information, with consumer content searching accounted for 69%. Given the significant impact of eWOM on consumer behavior (Goh, Heng, & Lin, 2013; Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal, & Hughes, 2013; Zhu & Zhang, 2010), its role in identifying customers’ purchase intention is highly visible for many industries in Vietnam, including fashion.
Customer purchase intention is determined as central part of customer behavior researches (Bansal and Voyer, 2000; Dumrongsiri, 2010; Zamil, 2011). There are tremendous numbers of empirical evidences which are developed to explore purchase intention of generation Y consumers. Generation Y is defined as the persons who are born between 1980 and 2000 and they are digital oriented and have high accessibility to information technologies (Anantatmula and Shrivastav, 2012). According to Nielsen (2016), Generation Y consumes 30% of total population of Vietnam or it is equivalent to 27 million people. With 95% of internet users are in the age of 15 – 24 (Evans, 2015), this seems to be the most active group on the internet and therefore, represents the future potential of the Vietnamese fashion industry.
The fashion and apparel industry in Vietnam is thriving due to the escalation of middle class and the diverse taste for fashion amongst young generation. It is experiencing fierce competition between local and foreign companies in both traditional retail and e-commerce (AsianUp, 2018). With a developing economic condition, the growth is mainly driven by young Vietnamese people, who have increasing expendable income and tend to show preference towards good quality but affordable products (Vietbao, 2012). Therefore, understanding customers purchase intention as well as adopting eWOM effectively in market...
