The Effectiveness of E-Advertisement towards Customer Purchase Intention: Malaysian Perspective

Abstract

The primary objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of E-advertisement on customer purchase intention. Beside, this study examined the effect of mediating and moderating demography factors on customer purchase intention in Malaysia. Data from 570 respondents with previous experience on online purchasing products and services were collected. To do so, SPSS 19 was applied to analyze the collected data. Our findings revealed that service quality, social network and brand recognition can highly influence customers' perception toward web-based advertisement. Consequently, consumers who are more optimistic in web-based advertisement (E-advertisement) have most likely higher intention to online purchase. In other words, the effectiveness of E-advertisement is undoubtedly highlighted in this study. Besides, the results of this study showed that the demography factors cannot mediate the customer perception toward advertisement nor the effectiveness of E-advertisement toward customer purchase intention. On the basis of our results, companies must stress the intrinsic attributes of online advertisement to attract highly-involved consumers and must present a benevolent corporate image for consumers. Keywords- Quality of website, Social network, Brand recognition, Effectiveness of E-advertisement, and Customer perception toward E-advertisement. The emergence of internet technology has created a plenty of opportunities for marketer and all which are involved in vertical environment to carry on their business based on web advertisement (27). With the rapid growth of the Internet and the globalization of the world, companies have accepted and adopted new information and communication technologies in performing their activities It is not only to support their traditional activities, but also to support the new opportunities that have arisen from the Internet. At the moment, the most stands out opportunities are electronic or online advertisement. Most companies established their Website as new channels for business transactions and advertisement, which enable customers to make online purchases through the Web. At the same time, a company who has a website able to access the global market at a low operating cost. In addition, websites provided by the companies usually offer information at depth while providing customers electronic services (e-services) of superior quality by means of Internet interactivity, which has served to boost up competition among companies (12). Earlier studies discuss about E-marketing and its cornerstone component which basically referring to consumer perspectives, and thus have intrigued scholars to find out more about the characteristics of customers. With this regard, many concepts have been created, such as customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, perceive of e-advertisement efficiency, customer experiences, customer buying behaviour, customer equity, and others. At the same time, the increasing number of online users has caused companies to modify their structures in order to consider both online and virtual conditions. They have been struggling to identify the most important factors (related to customer-based issues) which may have potential affects and benefits to their businesses. Both groups of online buyers as well as sellers know that using online channels can ease the process of purchasing and selling. By considering this as an important factor, many e-marketers and companies tried to transform their business base to online approach. They understood that the traditional way of advertising cannot be the only way of capturing their online customer; therefore, they have integrated online advertisement through virtual environment as well as their own website to market their product and services. Hence, the needs for appropriate advertisement for their particular service and product has arisen, thus make it compulsory for them to select suitable advertisement base on their target market. (26). It is important to understand how customers perceive or react to web advertising and what components affect their attitudes and behaviors toward products and services as advertised online. Moreover, it would be valuable to know whether the effectiveness of web advertising leads to purchases of the advertised products or services or vice versa. The purpose of this study is to determine the role of internet and effectiveness of web-advertisement towards customer purchase intention in Malaysia. It is too significant for us to identify the perception and attitude of customers toward web-advertisement and its relationship to effectiveness of advertisement which is going to end up with customer purchase intention. In this study a framework has been conducted to figure out the quality of a website, social network and the recognition of brand which were considered under the scope of consumer behaviour that can impact on the attitude of online customer and effectiveness of Web-advertisement.