Amidst COVID – 19 Pandemic: How to Gain Customer Advocacy for Indonesian Online Marketplaces Selling Luxury Products?

Abstract

Amidst the prolonged COVID - 19 Pandemic, Indonesian online marketplaces selling luxury brand products have been experienced a decrease in their market share, while on the other side, Indonesian online marketplaces selling standard products have been experienced a bullish position with their extraordinary increase of market share. In this research, we tried to examine the impact of brand satisfaction on customer advocacy with brand loyalty as both mediating and moderating variable and luxury brand attachment as mediating variable. Our focus in this research was on Indonesian marketplaces selling luxury brand products during this terrible pandemic, COVID - 19 Pandemic. We examined 108 customers who had purchasing experiences on luxury-brand sports shoes at Indonesian online marketplaces. In choosing our respondents, we used a non-probability sampling technique, the purposive sampling method. To analyze our hypothesis, we used a qualitative approach, which is path analysis. The results show that luxury brand attachment has a significant positive effect on brand loyalty, brand loyalty has a significant positive effect on customer advocacy, both mediated by brand loyalty and luxury brand attachment, and brand loyalty strengthens the impact of luxury brand attachment on customer advocacy. From that findings, we suggest that Indonesian online marketplaces that sell luxury brand products should increase their brand satisfaction through customer loyalty and luxury brand attachment to gain higher customer advocacy during and post COVID - 19 pandemic