The impact of electronic word of mouth (Ewom) to the purchase intention for comestics products of colledge-studying student in Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

By means of the increasing ubiquity of digital technology, businesses now have fantastic opportunities to reach their targeted consumers through social media platforms. Businesses may easily identify customers’ needs, and then implement some marketing strategies to reach them. Since then, the concept of “Electronic Word of Mouth” or eWOM has been introduced as the way consumers can exchange information online. It can be done in various forms such as online product reviews, personal emails or social media posts. This study aims to find out the influence of eWOM on students’ cosmetic purchase intentions in Ho Chi Minh city and also make some recommendations to utilize it in the cosmetic industry. The research model investigates the influence of eWOM through 7 independent variables including (1) The relationship between the sender and receiver; (2) The transmission channels; (3) The experience of the sender; (4) The quality of the information; (5) The quantity of the information; (6) The knowledge and understanding of the receiver. (7) The receiver’s interests. The author conducted a study on 320 college-studying students in Ho Chi Minh city and collected 261 statistically valid responses for analysis. The results based on EFA analysis showed that the quality of the information has the most significant impact on consumers’ cosmetics intentions while the receiver’s interest has the smallest. The study made numerous recommendations to the beauty industry on increasing the quality, credibility, and quantity of eWOM so that it can help improve their business performance. The present study, however, has some limitations such as non-probability sampling methods, the narrow scope of the survey which may lead to bias in explaining the research findings.