Impact of Word-of-Mouth in Creating Brand Identity

This research proposal evaluates the impact of word-of-mouth marketing on the creation of brand identity of a product or service. The study focuses on the effectiveness and disadvantages of word-of-mouth marketing technique on building brand identity for organizations.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Impact of word-of-mouth in creating brand identity
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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1. Introduction
In today’s world, brand identity is extremely important for the organizations. Brand
identity represents the values, ideas, services and personality of an organization. It helps in
generating employee commitment and engagement and also to generate loyalty from the clients
and customers. As stated by Wheeler (2017), brand identity of an organization consists of the
elements that are presented in the market to create a perception about the product or service or
the brand and these include both tangible and intangible elements. Logo, design, name, symbol,
taglines, packaging etc. are the tangible elements and expectations and thinking are intangible
elements that help to create an appeal and product or service recognition. Thus, brand identity is
an essential factor for any organization to deliver a particular and consistent message about their
product or service to the target as well as existing customers (Ruzzier and De Chernatony 2013).
Brand identity depends heavily on the marketing techniques adopted by the organization. Since,
it is created by delivering a consistent message to the customers, hence, communicating with the
customers is essential and that is done through different marketing techniques. Various types of
marketing techniques are adopted by the companies for effective communication with the
audience. Word-of-mouth (WOM) is one type of marketing technique which works as a credible
source of information regarding the product or service of a company and helps to create brand
identity. As stated by Berger (2014), word-of-mouth marketing refers to the type of promotional
technique in which a customer’s interest for a particular product or service of a company gets
reflected in their daily dialogues. It is treated as a free publicity or advertising that gets triggered
by the customer experiences. WOM generally occurs when the experience with the particular
product or service goes beyond the expectations of the customers (Lovett, Peres and Shachar
2013). This research proposal will evaluate the impact of WOM marketing on the creation of

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brand identity of a product or service. The study will specifically focus on the WOM marketing
among all other marketing techniques and its effectiveness and disadvantages on building brand
identity for organizations. The study will examine the impact of WOM on the brand identity of
Walmart, the retail giant of the world. The paper will consist of research aim, objectives,
research questions or hypothesis, followed by a literature review, which would help to create the
context of the research study and would provide an insight about the research variables. This will
be followed by the research methodology, which will consist of the strategies and actions to be
taken to undertake the research study.
1.2 Research aim and objectives
The aim of this research study is to evaluate the effectiveness of word-of-mouth (WOM)
marketing technique on the creation and maintenance of brand identity of Walmart, the retail
giant of the world.
The objectives of the study are:
 To explore the factors that creates brand identity of Walmart
 To evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing
technique
 To investigate the effectiveness of WOM marketing technique on creating and
maintaining the brand identity of Walmart
 To provide recommendations on how to increase the effectiveness of WOM for Walmart
1.3 Research questions
1) What are the factors that create brand identity of Walmart?
2) What are the pros and cons of WOM marketing technique?

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3) How much the WOM marketing is effective in the creation and maintenance of the brand
identity of Walmart?
4) What factors should be addressed by Walmart to increase the effectiveness of WOM for
improving their brand identity?
1.4 Research hypothesis
H0: WOM does not affect the brand identity of Walmart
H1: WOM has significant impact on the brand identity of Walmart
1.5 Significance of the research
The study has two types of implications. Firstly, this study will contribute significant
insights about the specific factors that help Walmart to build brand identity and maintain and
improve that. It will also provide academic insights about the advantages and disadvantages of
WOM and how it affects the brand identity of the retail giant, Walmart. On the other hand, the
study will provide useful organizational insights about the factors that influence WOM and how
to improve those organizational or brand factors which would lead to a more aggressive and
effective techniques of WOM for creating and maintaining brand identity.
2. Literature review
To understand the concept of brand identity, it is essential to know the basics of brand.
Wheeler (2017) states brand of a product, service or organization helps to create an emotional
connection with the customers through the experience and it also helps the organization or the
product or service to stand out amongst the competitive market. It also helps to build trust among
the customers regarding quality and performance. Hence, perception of a brand influences its
success. The author also stated that brand has three primary functions, namely, navigation, that

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is, helping customers to choose from a massive array of choices, reassurance about the quality of
the product or services and make the customers feel right about their choices, and engagement,
that is, making the customers identifying with the brand. Thus, in this context, the brand identity
becomes useful. The organizations purposefully present some tangible and intangible elements
that create a best perception about them or the product or service among the customers, which is
known as brand identity.
On the contrary, according to Da Silveira, Lages and Simões (2013), dynamic business
environment includes customers as co-contributors in the construction of brand and its identity.
In other words, the study emphasized that not only the managers are responsible for brand
identity creation, but the consumers also contribute in creating brand identity over time through
mutually influencing the inputs by both managers and consumers.
Visual brand identity is another aspect that shapes the consumer responses about a brand.
As stated by Phillips, McQuarrie and Griffin (2014), most of the brands use visual representation
techniques and tools for creating a brand identity to the customers who encounter those visual
presentations. However, the visual representations, that is, the advertisements must change over
time, which will create a concept of product or service upgradation among the customers. To
retain the existing customer base and attracting new ones, the brands must not only improve or
change its features, but it should release new advertisements to showcase the changes or
improvements. Hence, this indicates that marketing or promotional techniques play a significant
role in creating as well as maintaining brand identity over time.
Marketing techniques are of various types, such as, print media marketing, digital
marketing, social media marketing, public relations and word-of-mouth marketing. Print and

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digital, such as, marketing through radio and television are traditional marketing techniques,
while the others are new age marketing techniques that are adopted by the companies to reach
out to a larger audience in a cost effective manner. Ahmad, Musa and Harun (2016) focused on
importance of the social media content marketing in developing brand health and identity. It has
been highlighted by the authors that social media establishes effective communication with the
consumers about the brand message and identity in a much faster and cost efficient manner and
keep the consumers engaged with the brands for a longer time. At the same time, awareness
about the brand for a long time helps to develop brand equity, which is measured through social
likes, time spent on the site, discussions, repeat visitors, subscriptions etc. Along with this it can
also be said that, social media content marketing technique also helps in developing and
maintaining the brand identity first, which eventually leads to brand health or equity.
Among the marketing techniques, word-of-mouth (WOM) is a technique which directly
involves the consumers in the promotion or marketing of a brand. As stated by Lovett, Peres and
Shachar (2013), WOM represents an unpaid form of marketing or promotion in which the
satisfied consumers spread good reviews about a product, service or a business based on their
experiences. It is an important form of marketing, which indicates the success of the business in
satisfying the customers. Even for the potential customers, WOM is a credible source of
advertising for a product, service or a business. López and Sicilia (2013) highlighted the
effectiveness of WOM on the adoption of new products by the consumers. The authors stated
that as effective communication with the consumers is very crucial for creating a brand identity,
image as well as awareness, which often leads to the product adoption. WOM has been found
quite effective for product adoption and hence, in the new age of marketing, the firms should

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adopt the WOM technique first and then proceed with traditional marketing techniques as WOM
helps in credible brand awareness among the consumers.
Yeoh, Othman and Ahmad (2013) evaluated the impact of WOM on the medical tourists
in Malaysia. In the medical industry, WOM plays a very crucial role in making a choice about
the healthcare service provider as WOM is considered as a credible source of information and
review because that is based on the personal experience of other patients or their friends and
families. Hence, more than any other marketing techniques, the medical tourism industry or the
healthcare industry focuses on WOM and take measures to generate positive WOM.
On the other hand, sometimes the WOM facilities affect the brand image or brand
identity negatively. When the consumers are not satisfied with the performance or quality of the
brand, they tend to give poor reviews. This affects the other potential customers and eventually
the firms face losses. Sallam (2014) showed the power of WOM in his study. Brand love ensures
that the customers use positive WOM about the brand and positively influences the purchasing
decision, and brand love gets created on the basis of factors like price, quality, and performance
of the product, service or business. On the other hand, likewise negative WOM affects other
customers from developing brand love and buying the products.
At the same time, Kazemi et al., (2013) mentioned through quantitative study that WOM
is strongly related to the brand loyalty, brand commitment and customer satisfaction. When these
factors are present in a brand, consumers spread good reviews about it and that reflects brand
loyalty and commitment on part of the consumers. Thus, through WOM companies can easily
gauge the popularity of its products or services which help then take improvement measures in a
more precise manner.

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3. Research methodology
Research methodology is defined as the actions and strategies undertaken to recognize,
select, collect and analyze the data to answer the research questions and examine the research
hypothesis in the most rational and scientific manner (Creswell 2014). In other words, research
methodology consists of plans and techniques to gather appropriate numeric or non-numeric or
both types of information and analyze those using suitable methods to address the research
objectives and research questions. Research methodology consists of research philosophy,
research purpose, research approach, design, strategy, data collection method, sample and
sampling, data analysis method, time line and ethical considerations. Those detailed explanations
are as follows:
3.1 Research Philosophy
Research philosophy represents the set of assumptions or beliefs about the process of data
collection and analysis to address the research issue (Hughes and Sharrock 2016). The most
commonly used research philosophies are positivism, interpretivism, realism and pragmatism. In
the given study, the researcher will apply pragmatism research philosophy, as that allows the
searcher to apply both the quantitative and qualitative interpretation skills and methods to
conduct the research study. The other philosophies will not be suitable as positivism allows for
only quantitative methods for numeric data, interpretivism allows for qualitative interpretations
of the gathered data and realism leads to the analysis of perceptions of reality (Potrac, Jones and
Nelson 2014). Hence, to address both the qualitative and quantitative aspects, pragmatism
philosophy would be most suitable.

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3.2 Research purpose
Exploratory and explanatory are two types of research purpose. As stated by Fetters,
Curry and Creswell (2013), exploratory research purpose helps the researcher to explore the
research topic in a new direction and with a new perspective to bring out new insights, while
explanatory research allows the researcher to explain the cause and effect, that is, the causal
relationship between the research variables based on existing theories. In the given study, the
researcher will follow the explanatory research purpose as the cause and effect relationship
between the research variables, that is, WOM marketing and the brand identity of Walmart will
be examined and explained in the context of the research organization.
3.3 Research approach
As stated by Sekaran and Bougie (2016), research approach indicates the plans to be
taken to collect and analyze the data for the study. Inductive and deductive are two types of
research approach. Inductive approach enables the researcher to generate new theory on the
research issue from the collected specific information, while under deductive approach, the
hypotheses are examined on the basis of existing theories to explain the cause and effect
relationship between the research variables to draw a specific conclusion. Thus, in this study, as
a research hypothesis has been formulated, deductive approach of research will be applied.
3.4 Research design
Research design is the system that is followed for framing the data collection process.
Descriptive, correlational, experimental and quasi-experimental are most commonly used
research designs. In the given study, correlational research design will be applied as the
relationship between the research variables will be evaluated using quantitative analysis
methods.

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3.5 Research strategy
This indicates the methods chosen to conduct the data collection process in the most
suitable manner. In the given study, the researcher will apply case study research strategy, as the
research issue will be examined in the context of Walmart and hence, Walmart is the case study
organization. The benefit of case study strategy is that it helps to assess the research issue in the
real world scenario and thus also helps to get the recommendations which are practical and
feasible for the organizations (Baskarada 2014).
3.6 Data collection process
The researcher will collect primary data to conduct the research study and for collecting
the primary data, a survey and interview will be conducted. The survey questionnaire will
contain 10-15 close ended questions with replicable scales for the answer and the interview will
be a structured one. The survey will be conducted on the customers of Walmart to get an
overview about the concept of WOM and brand identity of the company, and the interview
questionnaire will have open ended questions for the employees of Walmart to get their insight
about the research issues. Thus, both numeric and non-numeric primary data will be collected.
3.7 Sampling
The researcher will apply simple random sampling to choose 50 customers of Walmart
for the survey. This is a probability sampling , in which each sample equal and random chance of
being selected (Levy and Lemeshow 2013). On the other hand, convenience sampling method
will be applied to chose 5 employees Walmart for the interview process. This is a non-
probability sampling, in which each sample do not have equal and random chance of being
selected and the selection depends on the judgment of the researcher (Etikan, Musa and
Alkassim 2016).

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3.8 Data analysis techniques
Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques will be applied on the data. The
survey responses will be converted into numeric values using replicable scale and quantitative
methods will be applied on the data. On the other hand, qualitative, that is, descriptive methods
will be applied on the interview responses as those are mostly qualitative data.
3.9 Timeline
Month
Task 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Strategy formulation
Framework design
Literature review
Primary data collection
Conducting survey
Conducting interview
Data analysis
Findings and discussion
Providing conclusion and recommendations
Report submission
(Created by author)
3.10 Ethical issues
Similar to any other studies involving primary data, this study will also have some ethical
considerations to be met. Informed consents must be taken from all the participants and the
organization, that is, Walmart, before conducting the survey. The purpose and objective of the
study should be clearly informed to the participants. There will be choice for voluntary

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participation and the conditions of data confidentiality and anonymity must be met. The data will
be used only for educational purpose and it will be stored in the university data library.

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