Impact of Word-of-Mouth in Creating Brand Identity

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Impact of word-of-mouth in creating brand identity
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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