Mechanisms of influence of communication related to Moroccan ready-to-wear brands in virtual communities on consumer behavior: a netnographic approach

Abstract

In the era of digitalization and the use of virtual communities, consumers purchase intention is a privileged area of ​​academic research in marketing. Understanding it could enable brands to better act in the face of behavior leading to the act of purchase by an individual and which becomes more and more changing following numerous stimuli. This study looked at the influence of brand-related communication at the level of virtual communities on consumers purchase intention. Thus, the study aims to study this relationship with the main objective which is to detect, through what brands and consumers convey on the web, the main components presented by consumers. To carry out this research, we used the method of netnography for exploratory reasons which aim to analyze what is communicated on virtual communities about Moroccan ready-to-wear brands by the brands themselves and especially by Moroccan consumers. The collection of reviews published by our targets, from 5 virtual brand communities on Instagram and 7 virtual consumer communities on Facebook, enabled us to retain a fairly consistent textual database, the use of which was recorded in an analysis textual data (ADT) using "Iramuteq" word processing software, this software allowed us to have an overall visibility of the terms contained in the texts submitted to it using graphical representations which we had to interpret in order to answer our research question.

The results of the research imply the existence of a strong influence between brand-related communication at the level of virtual communities and consumer purchase intention. But also the integration of certain variables in the process and the analysis of the effects of which reveals significant results.

JEL Classification : M3

Paper type: Empirical research.