Effects of Brand Attributes on Word of Mouth: Mediating Role of Brand Trust and Brand Love

Abstract

These days, firms are facing intense competition and rising customer expectations in dynamic market conditions. This needs to develop bonding relationships with consumers to get good word of mouth in the market.  Despite of literature, there is still gap to underline the empirical relationships of relationship quality, brand trust, brand love and word of mouth in a developing country perspective. Therefore, current study is aimed to empirically analyze the relationship of brand attributes (i.e. brand quality, price perception and brand prestige), and word of mouth while investigating the mediating effect of brand trust, brand love and moderating role of country of origin and switching cost. Non probability sampling technique was followed to collect data from 380 respondents in Pakistan. Structure equation modeling (SEM) was applied using Smart PLS version 3.0 to test proposed hypotheses. Our results revealed that branding attributes have vital role to get word of mouth with double mediation of brand trust and brand love. However, the paths from brand quality, price perception, and brand prestige to word of mouth were not moderated significantly by country of origin and switching cost. The study has implications for policy makers and practitioners to pay more attention on brand quality, price perception, brand prestige, brand trust and brand love rather than on country of origin and switching cost to generate word of mouth in the market.