The mediating role of electronic Word of Mouth (E-WOM) in testing the effect of celebrities on the consumer’s decision to Brand Switching: An applied study on YouTube app users in Mansoura city

Abstract

This study aimed at testing the mediating role of electronic Word of Mouth (E-WOM) ‎in testing the effect of celebrity’s on the consumer’s decision ‎to Brand Switching. In all of the study hypotheses, the researchers employed the descriptive approach, which involves gathering data, applying statistical analysis to it, and deriving conclusions from it. Due to the availability of the conditions for its usage, a virtual internet sample (snowball sampling) was used, and the sample size was 385 sample. The population‎ of this study is represented in all customers of the YouTube application and followers of celebrities of various kinds in the Arab Republic of Egypt. The data of the study were analyzed by using (Cronbach's Alpha test, The descriptive analysis, The Pearson correlation coefficient, Stepwise regression analysis, T-test, Simple linear regression analysis). The results of the study confirmed that E-WOM has a mediating effect in the role of celebrities s on the consumer's decision to switch brands, with a degree of congruence between E-WOM and Celebrities s with the majority of regression coefficients being high in morale , and the results indicate ‎that the mediating influence further explains the role of Celebrities s‎, on the ‎consumer’s ‎decision ‎to Brand Switching where the value of C.R was (18.771), and the estimate value ‎was (0.684).‎ In addition to that there is significant effect of ‎ Celebrities s on the consumer’s decision to Brand Switching, and Celebrities s' dimensions have a considerable impact on price, brand quality, loyalty to the brand, and trust. ‎