THE MEDİATİNG ROLE OF BRAND EVANGELİST İN INFLUENCİNG CONSUMERS FROM BRAND ASSOCİATİONS RELATED TO THE E-COMMERCE SİTES WHERE THEY SHOP

Abstract

Brand associations, which express the emotions and thoughts in the customer's mind, are a concept that is related to the preference of e-commerce brands and brand evangelism. With brand evangelism, actual customers who have experienced that brand say positive things about the brand, fulfill brand loyalty by showing repurchasing behavior, and disparage rival brands to other consumers so that they are not purchased. Thus, both brand associations and brand evangelism influence the behavior of potential customers in choosing an e-commerce site by ensuring that the brand is a distinguished. The purpose of this study is to understand whether other customers of the brand who display evangelistic behavior have a mediating role in these preferences of consumers who choose e-commerce sites by being influenced by brand associations. When a literature review is made, it is seen that studies directly examining this mediating effect are still limited, and this study can contribute to the development of the literature. In the study, online data were collected from 416 people using the “convenience sampling method”. Hayes Process Macro Model 4 in Regression Analysis was used to analyze the hypotheses of the study. The results show that the participants were more influenced by the ""affective brand associations"" dimension in their e-commerce site preferences than the ""cognitive brand associations"" dimension; and it was found that the ""positive brand referrals"" dimension played a more mediating role in this effect than the ""oppositional brand referrals"" dimension.