Impact of Social Media eWoM on Purchasing Intention of Sri Lankan Fast Food Restaurants Industry: A Study among Facebook Users

Abstract

The fast-food market has shown rapid growth in the last couple of years due to quick and inexpensive meals and tech-savvy ordering. Moreover, the changing lifestyle patterns of consumers such as hectic schedules and growth of female employment have steered the necessity for fast food meals and the prevailing rivalry in the fast-food industry provides alternative choices to consumers. In addition, the rapid advancement in digital technology has provide the opportunity to search information over the internet and engage with other consumers and share their experience, knowledge via social networking sites. Today, consumers are more active than ever on social media, and online consumers are constantly flooded with information. Therefore, consumers are turning towards their peers and the referrals, recommendations, and counsel before making decisions. Thus, marketers are forced to find new ways to stand out from the crowd and promote their brands. With the aforesaid background, this study investigated to explore the impact of social media eWom on purchasing intention of Sri Lankan fast food restaurants industry. When coffering to the eWOM concept, in the means of literature review, Information usefulness and credibility of information identified as the commonly used determinants of eWOM based on past researchers. Therefore, this study has selected these two determinants as the independent variables. Further, this study adopts a positivist research paradigm and employs a selfadministrated questionnaire to gather primary data from the multilevel selected sample in the Western province of Sri Lanka and this study has used regression analysis and several statistical techniques to analyze the collected data to draw meaningful conclusions. In terms of findings of the study, the overall results revealed that social media eWOM positively affects purchase intention and using credible influencers and providing useful content is vital for the success of eWOM marketing which in turn affects the performance of the fastfood restaurants in Sri Lanka. Thus, the outcomes of the study encourage marketers to use different strategies to harness the opportunities of social media to influence online consumer behaviour. Using the lens of this study, marketers can better grasp how consumers process and evaluate eWOM information from social media to help their purchasing decisions in the context of fast-food restaurants in Sri Lanka. Overall implications indicate a positive commercial and economic impact in the present context, even though some limitations are associated with the study.