How Does Social Media Marketing Efforts, Electronic Word of Mouth and Consumer Brand Identification Leads Consumer to Pay a Premium Price

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Abstract. The main drive of this research was to study the practices of marketing that include social media marketing, electronic word of mouth and consumer brand identification while exploring the influence on customer willingness to pay premium price within food industry by mainly focusing on coffee shops of the twin cities (Rawalpindi and Islamabad), Pakistan. The significance of this research is the identification of critical high performance marketing strategies for customer satisfaction within a Pakistani context by comparing a total of 10 local and international coffee shop outlets within Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Capital Territory. Data collection method was quantitative through detailed questionnaires for an overall sample size of 250 respondents. The critical business areas were, therefore, customized to incorporate data collection from customers to ascertain preference and satisfaction of local or international coffee shop outlets. Additionally, the marketing high performance data was also collected qualitatively through Electronic Word of Mouth (EWOM) from social media platforms of different coffee shops online pages, thus it was proved that social media marketing efforts have an indirect or moderate relationship with premium price products because social media marketing does not influence the consumer’s purchase decision and willingness to pay premium price, but it may only enhances the Customer-Brand Identification or help generating electronic word of mouth. whereas, the food industry in Pakistan also showed a positive relationship between the consumer brand identification and customer’s willingness to pay premium price because when consumers regularly purchases products from a brand they are likely to become brand loyal, and the factor that is most effective is e-WOM influencing brand image, Thus this study shows the positive relationship between the EWOM and customers’ willingness to pay premium price. In this study it becomes clear that customer’s purchase decision is positively affected by the EWOM & CBI. Whereas, Social Media Marketing efforts helps in creating awareness and in enhancing the EWOM and CBI, not directly influencing the customer to pay premium.