Content area
Full Text
Introduction
As consumer access to new media is increasing, the use of customer advocacy-based strategies has become imperative. Customer advocacy is the engagement and spread of word of mouth (WOM) online and offline (Lowenstein, 2011). Customers who proactively recommend the brand are known as advocates, champions, customer champions and word-of-mouth evangelists (Fuggetta, 2012). Advocacy indicates brand power. Beneath advocacy lays values which cause customers to speak about the brand. The WOM is a powerful influencer of consumer choice (Wragg, 2004). A major percentage of the reach from marketing campaigns comes from network build-up through customer advocacy (Mitchell, 2013).
Advocacy is a huge leap forward in the changing relationship between brands and their customers (Urban, 2004). Innovative companies engage in dialogue with their customers and act as advocates of their needs. This wins them customer loyalty and trust. Advocates actively spread recommendations (Fullerton, 2011). Failure to create and leverage the power of brand advocates can put a firm at a disadvantageous position.
The most powerful force affecting the consumption decision is brand advocacy by a customer (Edelman, 2010). Consumers become “brand advocates” when they are deeply involved with a brand. These advocates offer positive WOM about the brand to others (Fuggetta; 2012; Wallace et al., 2012).There are a number of studies focusing on customer brand advocacy (CBA) as one of the studied constructs (P. Becerra and Badrinarayanan, 2013; Fullerton, 2005, 2011; Jillapalli and Wilcox, 2010; Kwon et al., 2017; Raimondo et al., 2008; Stokburger‐Sauer, 2010; Turri et al., 2013; Wallace et al., 2012). There is, however, a lack of integration of CBA relationships. This study provides a quantitative integration of the CBA literature using a meta-analysis.
Literature review
CBA is routinely studied as a major component of the loyalty ladder framework (Raphel and Raphel, 1995; Radbourne, 1999). It is caused by changes in the attitudinal levels of the customer (Dick and Basu, 1994). According to some authors customer advocacy is a stronger indicator of consumer loyalty than the repeat purchase behaviour (Mazzarol et al., 2007; Reichheld, 2006). Three out of five items of the loyalty intentions scale measure advocacy and positive word-of-mouth communication intentions (Zeithaml et al., 1996). Brand advocates are loyal customers (Cant et al., 2014). The...