Determinants of customer engagement in electronic word of mouth - Empirical study to Vietnam cosmetic industry
Abstract
The dissertation is developed not only for the purpose of fulfilling the learning program requirements but also for the further understandings of customer engagement in electronic word of mouth in Ho Chi Minh City’s cosmetic market. There were six research questions to be proposed in order to fulfill the main research objective of identifying the effects of the determinants of customer engagement on e-WOM in Vietnamese cosmetic industry. Throughout the literature review chapter, there were five factors that are counted into the research model whether customer engagement with e-WOM is affected by tie strength, homophily, trust, normative influence, and informational influence. Quantitative research method has been adopted and it was conducted upon on the primary data collected from well-structured questionnaires with 200 respondents who are using cosmetic products in HCMC. Obtained results from multiple linear regression showed that all five factors impacted positively on customer engagement in which tie strength had highest effect, followed by trust, normative influence, informational influence, and homophily. Such empirical results were similar to the study of Suhan & Shenoy (2018) since these researchers also capture positive effects from these factors on customer engagement. However, the results were different to the study of Chu & Kim (2011) since these researchers obtained empirical evidence of homophily had negative influence on customer engagement. Upon on the findings, some practical recommendations were proposed to further improve customer engagement and returns higher positive e-WOM in Vietnamese cosmetic industry.