2018 tez yaziminin aşamalari danışman ve konunun belirlenmesi 2

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE

Name and Surname: Halil ŞİMŞEK Field: Business Administration Department: Business Administration

Supervisor: Yrd. Doç. Dr. G. Banu DAYANÇ KIYAT Degree and Date: PhD – 2017

THE MEDIATOR ROLE OF CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN RELATION TO BETWEEN BRAND AUTHENTICITY AND WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING: A RESEARCH IN READY WEAR SECTOR

ABSTRACT
Every consumer or customer who has an idea about any product, service, or brand has a set of thoughts to share around it. Likewise, shopper-oriented people need to be informed whether they are familiar with the product or service they are considering purchasing, regardless of whether they are independent of the vendor or not. This reality has been one of the important factors in shaping the market over time.

Numerous businesses that exist to date in the field of marketing have realized the marketing communication activities that they need in order to keep the brands they have and to be able to take it further. However, a concept emerging in recent years seems to have increased its influence from day to day. This concept is "Brand Identity", which has a large number of elements related to the brand. Brand authenticity; Has the ability to accommodate a number of values that distinguish it from other concepts such as continuity, authenticity, inheritance, obsolescence, naturalness and reliability. These qualities are sought by consumers and customers, knowingly or unknowingly. In this context, it would not be hard to have a place in the consumer mind for a brand that adapts the value of originality to the World.

The focus of the study is on the relevance of the concept of brand-specificity to businesses that want to strengthen their presence in the market, and the relationship with oral marketing that is claimed to be more effective than all known marketing communications activities. However, it is not right to say that brand perception is always related to word-of-mouth marketing activities. Sometimes it may be necessary for something to be offered to others in experience sense. Therefore, it is possible to talk about the existence of an element with an intermediary effect on the relationship between these two variables. This is the customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction that will arise in the event of shopping. It has also been looked at in the direction of the study of whether customer satisfaction has an intermediary role in the context of causal influence, in relation to brand identity and word-of-mouth marketing

In this context, a three-variant model was developed on the basis of literature review. The first two of these variables are brand authenticity and mouth-to-mouth marketing while the third variable is customer satisfaction. After looking at the existence of the relationship between the two variables, the brand identity was determined as independent and the oral marketing as a dependent variable in order to determine whether this related customer satisfaction was an intermediary effect.

In the collection of research data, easilysampling method is used from non- random sample methods. In the research, feedback has been taking into accountfrom national and international rating agencies which every year performing the evaluation report and four turkish origin appearal brand determinded. 645 data were analyzed using SPSS 21 and AMOS 21 statistical package programs.

Questionnaire method was used for collecting research data. In the first part of the questionnaire consists of demographic variables and in the second part the question of the closed-ended scale, which represents the variables determined as the result of the literature search, and rated on the basis of "I strongly agree with I strongly disagree" 5-point likert-type, closed-ended scale questions.

In the prepared questionnaire; from in total 35 questions 15 questions for brand equity measurement, 13 for word of mouth marketing measurement, and 7 for customer satisfaction measurement. The exploratory factor analysis was first applied to the scales that looked for reliability values before factor analysis.

In the context of EFA; four dimensions and a total of 15 questions were collected under one dimension. Therefore, in terms of the respondents, it turns out that a brand is either unique or not.

The six expressions related to sales made directly to the internet, which are in the word of mouth marketing marking scale consisting of four dimensions with a total of 19 questions, were extracted from the scale because they were excluded from the research purpose by being confirmed by the pilot study data. In terms of EFA, it has been seen that the word of mouth marketing scale consists of two dimensions and

12 questions in the form of positive and negative word of mouth marketing. Factorization of scale expressions under two dimensions, positive and negative, has led to a two-dimensional scale in the form of positive and negative word of mouth marketing.

The new structures obtained by EFA are subjected to CFA analyzes. Data- model adaptation has been achieved through revisions on each scale. According to this, it was observed that the brand specificity scale consisted of 15 questions in one dimension, the word of mouth marketing scale in 12 questions with two dimensions, and the customer satisfaction observed as scale in total of 33 questions except the demographic variables in the questionnaire with one dimension and 6 questions and it has been decided to use this scale in the hypothesis tests.

In the hypothesis tests, firstly, the relationship between positive and negative oral marketing is examined. As a result of the correlations analysis, it was seen that brand identity was positively correlated with word of mouth marketing and negatively correlated with negative word of mouth marketing. Then, in the causal relation context, it was examined whether customer satisfaction was mediated in the causal interaction between brand identity and word of mouth marketing factors. A highly variable regression analysis was performed for this, and it was seen that customer satisfaction was partially mediated between both causal relationships. The results reveal that brand authenticity will lead to customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction will have an effect on word of mouth marketing activities from the mouth.

Finally, brand equity, positive and negative WOMM and customer satisfaction are examined in terms of demographic variables after comparing the authenticity between brands. For this, t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were applied to parametric tests on each data set with statistically normal distribution.

It is evaluated that the findings obtained will shed light on the researches that will be done by researchers and practitioners on brand specificity and oral marketing.

Key Words: Brand Authenticity, Word of Mouth Marketing, Customer Satisfaction.

Ek 9: İngilizce Özet örneği