Empirical Study On Influence Of Extraversion On Consumer Passion And Brand Evangelism With Word-Of-Mouth Communication

Word-of-Mouth (WOM) is recognized as a powerful marketing instrument. Its importance as a communication mechanism has widely explored and established in influencing purchase decision in the consumer behaviour domain (e.g., Gilly et al. 1998; Herr et al. 1991; Wilson 1991). WOM was recognized as an important determinant of consumer’s buying behaviour early in marketing literature (Butler 1923), its influence reported as greater than personal selling and advertising (Engel et al. 1969; Feldman and Spencer 1965; Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955) and findings show that more extravert consumers are more likely to be passionate consumers and engage in brand evangelism. For decades, it has received extensive attention from both academicians and practitioners, who demonstrated that WOM communications could not only influence consumers' purchase decisions (Arndt 1967b; Whyte 1954), but also shape consumers' expectations (Zeithaml and Bitner 1996), pre-usage attitudes (Herr et al. 1991), and even post-usage perceptions of a product or service (Bone 1995; Burzynski and Bayer 1977). Researchers have documented the existence of certain types of consumers, opinion leaders and market mavens, who have a personal predisposition to disseminate WOM to fellow consumers (Feick and Price 1987; Lazarsfeld et al. 1944) in an influencing manner. This paper is an attempt to figure out the inter relationship of positive influence of extraversion on consumer passion and ultimately on brand evangelism as a marketing phenomenon in Indian context.