The Effect of eWOM and Webcare on Customer Engagement and Brand Loyalty toward Live Streaming Platforms

Abstract

Based on the negative electronic word of mouth (NeWOM) under the live streaming platform, the paper aims to explore the mechanism of proactive and reactive webcare on customer brand loyalty. We constructed three separate experiments with no webcare, proactive webcare, and reactive webcare in response to NeWOM during the live streaming platform. In this study, 210 valid questionnaires were collected for statistical analysis, including the Mann-Whitney U test and Pearson correlation analysis. Our findings reveal that proactive and reactive webcare positively influence cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement, with proactive webcare demonstrating greater effectiveness. We confirm a positive correlation between these forms of engagement and brand loyalty, highlighting the strong connection between behavioral engagement and brand loyalty. At the same time, this study provides crucial inspiration for the live-streaming platform managers to focus on providing proactive webcare and develop behavioral activities in live-steaming platforms to enhance customers’ brand loyalty.