WORD OF MOUTH ENGAGEMENT IN ONLINE BRAND COMMUNITY: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW ANALYSIS. Pinang, Malaysia. Malaysia

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1 Fundamental and Applied Sciences ISSN Research Article Special Issue Available online at WORD OF MOUTH ENGAGEMENT IN ONLINE BRAND COMMUNITY: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW ANALYSIS A. Ngelambong 1,*, M. W. Omar 2, S. Kibat 3, N. M. Nor 1 and Z. M. Rani 1 1 Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, University Technology MARA, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia 2 Faculty of Business Management, University Technology MARA, 8400 Kedah, Malaysia 3 Faculty of Hotel and Tourism Management, University Technology MARA, Sabah, Malaysia Published online: 7 March 2018 ABSTRACT There is a renewed interest among researchers and practitioners on word of mouth engagement as a significant behavior in the marketing literature. This as a result of the advancement of social networking sites on the Internet such as Facebook and Instagram. Although there is a wide body of literature relating to word of mouth engagement within the social networking sites, they seem to be rather broad, fragmented and inconclusive. Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide the current state of word of mouth literature in social networking sites. Specifically, the study attempts to identify research gaps and make suggestions for future research directions. A total of fifthteen articles that fit with the stated criteria were analyzed in this study. The findings from the study are expected to provide valuable theoretical and practical insight into the current state of word of mouth engagement. Author Correspondence, anderson@ppinang.uitm.edu.my doi: Fundamental and Applied Sciences is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Libraries Resource Directory. We are listed under Research Associations category.

2 A. Ngelambong et al. J Fundam Appl Sci. 2018, 10(6S), Keywords: word of mouth engagement; online brand community; systematic literature review. 1. INTRODUCTION In light of the advancement of social networking sites in the Internet, brand marketers have embarked on marketing campaigns to propagate consumers word of mouth engagement. In this study, word of mouth engagement is defined as individual s unpaid act of engaging in favorable brand communications with one s online [1] and offline [2] social network as a result of a firm s marketing effort. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have become increasingly popular among brand marketers to stimulate positive brand communications [3]. Known as word of mouth marketing, in [4] refer it as a marketing strategy that intentionally influence individuals to voluntary engage in brand related conversations. A good example of word of mouth marketing strategy is through the formation of online brand community on social networking sites that enable brand marketers to develop and maintain consumer-brand relationships with their consumers. In [5] describe online brand community as a grouping of individuals on Internet-based application that shares similar interest of a brand. Online brand community not only provides a great opportunity for brand marketers to boost word of mouth engagement, but also brand awareness, attract online traffic, minimize marketing expense and improving sales [6]. With more than 60 million business profiles [7], brand Facebook page is currently the most popular social networking sites used to create online brand community. Although many brand marketers are leveraging on online brand communities to encourage word of mouth engagement, not all are always successful. Recently, in [8] examined four major social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn from more than 40,000 companies and found that members brand engagement rate has declined on Instagram (by 25.85%), brand Facebook page (by 8.27%) and LinkedIn (by 7.6%). According to [9], there are members of the online brand communities who may prefer to be observers or lurkers without any active engagement on brand communications. Arguably, the growth of passive members may lead to the idleness of online brand community which impedes brand marketers word of mouth marketing efforts. Given the importance of word of mouth in

3 A. Ngelambong et al. J Fundam Appl Sci. 2018, 10(6S), marketing area, several scholars have been calling for the need and urgency for more empirical research. In [5] stated that limited research have done to understand the social psychological processes that motivate members to participate in engagement behaviors within marketer generated online brand communities. More recently, in [10] stressed the important to understand the mechanism of how members experience in marketer generated online brand communities influences their word of mouth engagement. Despite the considerable volume of studies on word of mouth engagement, the scope of the published studies is rather broad, fragmented and inconclusive [11-12]. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to provide the current state of the literature related to word of mouth engagement within the context of online brand community. Specifically, the objective of this study is twofold: (1) to identify the gaps of the previous studies and (2) to suggest future research directions. 2. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW PROCESS To provide a systematic review of online word of mouth literatures, the study search and collect relevant articles from three primary online databases. First, the study used six major index databases as suggested by [11-12] in their systematic literature review analysis of online WOM research. They included Academic Search Premier (EBSCO), Business Source Premier (EBSCO), Emerald, Sage and Science Direct. Second, several top-level journals in the domain of information system, electronic commerce and marketing are included to ensure that no significant online WOM articles were left out. The information system and electronic commerce journals that were reviewed include Information Systems Research, Management Information Systems and International Electronic Commerce while the marketing related journals were Marketing, Marketing Research and Consumer Research. Third, the most popular search engine commonly employed by academicians, Google Scholar, in [13] was used to ensure that other articles outside of the selected journals have been accounted for. Two researchers were involved in the process of searching, identifying, collecting and analyzing the articles in accordance with the following three-step procedures. First, an electronic search was conducted using the three aforesaid online databases with a list of keywords that include word of mouth, online word of mouth, electronic word of mouth,

4 A. Ngelambong et al. J Fundam Appl Sci. 2018, 10(6S), ewom, word of mouse. These keywords were combined with social networking sites, social media, online brand community and virtual community that reflect the context of the current study. The used of these keywords facilitated the search across literature in different academic disciplines. All electronic copies of the articles were downloaded through the online databases accessible through University Technology MARA digital library. In all, the searches via the online databases yielded 977 online word of mouth related articles. Second, drawing from the guidelines to develop a sound literature review suggested by [14], several inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to the 977 articles. These were conducted to ensure that the final articles used for further analysis were suitable for the current study. The inclusion criteria for an article to be considered appropriate for the current study were as follows: 1. Published within the period of , 2. Reputable high impact factor journals (number of citation), and 3. Focus on factors influencing positive online word of mouth marketer generated online brand community setting. While, the exclusion criteria were applied to article that was: 1. Focus on online word of mouth as an outcome of products/services consumption. 2. Examining online word of mouth spread by paid agents such as bloggers. Additionally, articles related to conceptual paper, conference proceedings, doctoral dissertations and master s theses all were removed from the study. As a result of the multiple filtering processes, a significant number of 962 articles were excluded from the analysis because they did not meet the specified criteria. Out of the 962 articles, 583 articles were excluded because they examined either the impact/outcome of online word of mouth, conceptual in nature, and for other reasons. Thus, at the end of the screening process, only 15 articles were considered appropriate within the context of the current study and used for further analysis. In the third and final step, the two researchers work independently to code, classify and analyze the identified articles. The inter-judge reliability between the coders was more than 91% that demonstrated adequate reliability and validity of the literature content analysis. First, using Excel software, the content of the articles was extracted and coded recording key traits

5 A. Ngelambong et al. J Fundam Appl Sci. 2018, 10(6S), such as author, year of publication, title, main keywords and abstracts for the article classification. Second, the themes for classification is created based on the work of [15, 12] which provided guidance on the organization of the key findings into the following themes: (1) theoretical framework, (2) research method, (3) enabling factor category, (4) antecedents used to examine online word of mouth and (5) dependent variable. Third, the consistency of the coding and classification results were verified and discussed between the researchers. In the case of disagreement between the researchers, a third researcher was introduced to help provide assistance into the discussion. 3. CURRENT STATE OF THE LITERATURE Through the systematic literature review process of articles published from 2006 to 2016, it was found that significant amount of word of mouth engagement articles has been published in broad spectrum of top reputable journals in both Marketing and Management Information System disciplines. Clearly, this shows the relevance of word of mouth phenomenon as a critical subject in the academia community. Table 1 shows the 15 articles included in the systematic literature review process. Table 1. Articles selected for the systematic literature review Year References Title Journal (Impact Factor) 2010 [16] The influence of belonging to virtual brand communities on consumers affective commitment, satisfaction and word-of-mouth advertising: The ZARA case [17] What drives consumers to spread Online Information Review Decision electronic word of mouth in online consumer- opinion platforms Support Systems [9] The role of self-construal in consumers electronic word of mouth Computers in Human 3.611

6 A. Ngelambong et al. J Fundam Appl Sci. 2018, 10(6S), (ewom) in social networking sites: A Behavior social cognitive approach [18] Drivers of in-group and out-of-group electronic word of mouth (ewom) European Marketing [19] Exploring the commercial value of social networks: Enhancing consumers brand experience through Facebook pages [20] Analysis of fashion consumers motives to engage in electronic word-of-mouth communication through social media platforms 2014 [21] Brand followers retweeting behavior on Twitter: How brand relationships influence brand electronic word-of-mouth [3] The Role of Trust in Creating Positive Word of Mouth and Behavioral Intentions: The Case of Online Social Networks Enterprise Information Management Marketing Management Computers in Human Behavior Relationship Marketing [22] Online word-of-mouth communication International on social networking sites: An empirical study of Facebook users Consumer Marketing [23] Hotel Facebook marketing: An Worldwide integrated model Hospitality and Tourism Themes

7 A. Ngelambong et al. J Fundam Appl Sci. 2018, 10(6S), [24] Using a consumer socialization framework to understand electronic word-of-mouth (ewom) group membership among brand followers on Twitter [25] Investigating customers satisfaction with brand pages in social networking sites [26] What makes brands social content shareable on Facebook? An analysis that demonstrates the power of online trust and attention [27] Linking customer engagement to trust Electronic Commerce Research and Applications Computer Information Systems Advertising Research and word of mouth on Facebook brand communities: An empirical study Internet Commerce [28] New gratifications for social word-of-mouth spread via mobile SNS: Uses and gratifications approach with a perspective of media technology Telematics and Informatics Conceptual Research Gap and Future Research Direction Most of the articles conceptualize the dependent variable, word of mouth engagement, as behavioral intention. Among 15 articles, only 5 (33.33%) measured word of mouth engagement as reported actual behavior. Intriguingly, there is no study has been conducted to examine the link between members online and offline word of mouth engagement. In relation to the independent variable, it was found that most of the articles cover more than one category of independent variables. Factors related to personal and social category are the two commonly used independent variables, accounting for 73.33% of the total articles. So far, only 4 studies have incorporated brand related factors as their independent variables. For example; brand identification, brand trust [21] brand relationship quality [24] brand love and

8 A. Ngelambong et al. J Fundam Appl Sci. 2018, 10(6S), brand experience [19]. Future studies should consider measuring actual word of mouth engagement instead of word of mouth engagement intentions as a dependent variable. In [5] stated that potential inconsistency between the two measures should be addressed particularly in the field of human-computer interface on the Internet where individuals are afraid of privacy violations. Thus, it is interesting to know the influence of privacy concerns on word of mouth engagement behaviors. Future studies should include brand related factors such as relationship quality, relationship value, prior relationship or relationship investment to extend the nomological network of member-brand relationship within marketer generated online brand community. Additionally, future studies should consider various variables that may mediate or moderate the associations between independent variables and word of mouth engagement Contextual Research Gap and Future Research Direction Majority of the studies (60%) were conducted in western countries particularly in the United States (40%), followed by Spain, Portugal and United Kingdom with 6.66% respectively. Thus, it may be difficult to generalize the results to other regions or countries. Only a small number of the articles originated from Asian countries namely Taiwan (13.33%), Hong Kong, Korea and China (6.66%). Among the different types of social networking sites, brand Facebook page was the most popular research setting accounting for 53.33% of the total articles. The result is expected since Facebook is the most popular social networking sites with 2 billion users worldwide. With the increasing number of social networking sites users from the Asian region, particularly Southeast Asia countries, further studies should be taken to investigate word of mouth engagement behavior in these unexplored geographical areas. This is crucial since western and eastern social networking sites users have distinctive values and cultural background. Comparison of cross-national or cross-cultural studies should represents an interesting research avenue, especially for those investigative the role of culture in this context. Also, given the importance of word of mouth in the hospitality industry [3, 23], scholars should pay a great attention on examining word of mouth engagement behavior among members of hospitality online brand community such as hotels, restaurants and airlines. Future studies should also focus on marketer generated online brand community that may provide different insights.

9 A. Ngelambong et al. J Fundam Appl Sci. 2018, 10(6S), Theoretical Research Gap and Future Research Direction As part of the systematic literature review analysis is to identify the underpinning theories and research frameworks that were used by the 15 articles. Interestingly, there is no single theory dominating the word of mouth studies. Scholars employed a wide variety of theoretical framework in examining word of mouth engagement in online brand community such as uses and gratifications theory technology acceptance model [18, 28] and theory of reason action [20]. Intriguingly, 5 of the articles (33.33%) did not have any theoretical background at all. This is quite disturbing since theory should be the central part of any studies to help in the understanding of events, behaviors or situations under investigation. Since online brand community is based on member-brand relationship, future studies should look into theories related to relationship marketing paradigm. Theories such as commitment-trust theory [29] and consumer-brand relationship theory [30] could help further the understanding on factors influencing word of mouth engagement in online brand community. Moreover, future researchers may integrate different theories or/and model in order to provide a solid theoretical basis for examining members motivations to spread brand communications among their online and offline social networks Methodological Research Gap and Future Research Direction All of the articles are based on cross sectional studies that limit the identification of causal or cause and effect relationships between variables. A significant number of articles (66.66%) used online survey to collect data from the respondents. Also, majority of the articles (66.66%) applied structural equation modeling for data analysis. In term of sampling, majority of the articles used non-probability sampling and college students as samples which might lead to biased results. Specifically, 53.55% of the articles employed convenience sampling while more than 40% of the articles used college students as the respondents. These might limit the generalizability of the results to other populations of online brand communities. Although college students are main users of social networking sites, they do not denote all members who participate in online brand communities. Future studies should consider a longitudinal study focusing on the casual direction between variables that represents a major research opportunity. With regards to sampling, whenever possible, future researchers should carry out survey using diverse sample of actual members in different background such as age categories,

10 A. Ngelambong et al. J Fundam Appl Sci. 2018, 10(6S), professions and ethnicity. This would closely resemble the true populations of the online brand community. 4. CONCLUSION The main purpose of the study is to provide current state of the literature pertaining to word of mouth engagement in online brand community. The systematic literature review analysis revealed that empirical research on word of mouth engagement in online brand community is relatively new and remained unexplored. This is due to the fact that it is still in infancy stage and just started to gradually increase in the recent years. This study discusses four underlying research gaps in the current literature: conceptual, contextual, theoretical and methodological for future studies considerations. However, as with other similar studies, this study is without its limitations. First, the results offered in the current study were restricted to the collections of journals that satisfied the predetermined selection criteria. Second, due to the vast number of articles and journals in the electronic database, there is a great possibility that the study might have overlooked some of the related articles. Lastly, the classification of the research gaps was based on previous similar studies. As the word of mouth engagement literature continues to progress, it would be valuable to extend the classification of research gaps in the current study. Despites the shortcomings, this study provides an interesting insight on word of mouth engagement as an emerging research area in marketing domain. The results of the systematic literature review serve as a critical guideline for future research directions. Also, it provides practitioner better understanding of significant factors influencing members word of mouth engagement within the context of brand marketer generated online brand community. 5. REFERENCES [1] Hennig Thurau T, Gwinner K P, Walsh G, Gremler D D. Electronic word of mouth via consumer opinion platforms: What motivates consumers to articulate themselves on the Internet? Interactive Marketing, 2004, 18(1):38-52 [2] Goldenberg J, Libai B, Muller E. Talk of the network: A complex systems look at the underlying process of word-of-mouth. Marketing Letters, 2001, 12(3): [3] Barreda A A, Bilgihan A, Kageyama Y. The role of trust in creating positive word of mouth

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