The influence of corporate image, relationship marketing, and trust on purchase intention: the moderating effects of word‐of‐mouth

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of corporate image and relationship marketing on trust, the impact of trust on consumer purchase intention, and the moderating effects of word‐of‐mouth between the influence of trust on consumer purchase intention.

Consumers of an online travel agency in Taiwan aged over 18 were taken as the research sample. Primary data were collected through convenience sampling. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The main findings are: corporate image has a significantly positive influence on trust, and commodity image has the most significant influence on trust, followed by functional image and institution image; structural and financial relationship marketing has significantly positive influence on trust, and structural relationship marketing has greater influence on trust compared with financial relationship marketing; trust has a significantly positive influence on consumer purchase intention; and positive word‐of‐mouth has a moderating effect between the influences of trust on consumer purchase intention.

Limitations of this study include: the data obtained in this study only reflected the correlations and cause and effect among the variables studied during a specific period of time; this paper only focused on tour agencies; consumers who used only the most popular online tour agencies were selected. Therefore, the samples might involve some bias. The implications of this study include: different types of corporate image will have different levels of influence on consumer trust. There is a need to support the previous study that relationship marketing has a significantly positive influence on consumer trust. The moderating effects of positive word‐of‐mouth between the influences of trust on consumer purchase intention must be examined. The influence of trust on purchase intention must be considered.

The study findings reveal the need and importance for a company to improve corporate image continuously. The study indicates the need to emphasize the use of critical relationship marketing and to realize the nature and importance of the moderating effect of word‐of‐mouth.

The value of this study is combined theory and practical and finding four management implications and three practical implications.