Inbound marketing: The impact of visibility management, active listening, and community building on purchase intention and word-of-mouth intention.

摘要

The widespread adoption of social electronic communications by consumers has created a marketing paradigm shift: from a traditional marketing-to, or outbound marketing paradigm, in which companies were focused on sending one-way messages to consumers through traditional media, to a new marketing-with, or inbound marketing paradigm, in which companies must instead focus on being visible online, attractive, and responsive to customers who are searching the Internet for their market offerings and can easily share their opinions and experiences with friends and strangers alike.;The purpose of this research is to study the impact of a company's inbound marketing practices on its marketing performance. Inbound marketing practices are measured by online visibility management, active listening, and community building. Marketing performance is measured by consumers' purchase intentions and word-of-mouth intentions. Researchers have examined the effect on business performance of some of these variables individually but no one has studied their simultaneous impact, which is what occurs in reality when a consumer searches online for a product or service and finds pages with customer comments and links to social communities.;Results from the empirical research performed in this study reveal that active listening had the largest effect on both purchase intention and word-of-mouth intention, followed by community building and then visibility management. Consumer word-of-mouth intention was found to be a significant and very important mediator of the effect of perceived visibility management, active listening, and community building on consumer purchase intention, even fully mediating their effect in some cases.;This research contributes to the academic literature by developing and empirically testing a theoretical framework that could lead to a better comprehension, explanation and prediction of the effectiveness of these new tools. It also offers insights for marketers interested in understanding how inbound marketing initiatives and the use of electronic social communication tools affect consumer behavior.