Word of Mouth and Digital Marketing Outperform Brand Ambassadors in E-Commerce Brand Awareness

Ilustration by AI 

FORMOSA NEWS

Digital marketing strategies and peer recommendations drive consumer brand awareness far more effectively than celebrity endorsements and traditional advertising campaigns, according to new research published in 2026. The study, conducted by researchers Isti Faizah, Dina Lusianti, and Dian Wismar'ein from Universitas Muria Kudus, analyzed how corporate promotional tools affect modern online shoppers. Published in the International Journal of Asian Business and Management, the findings offer critical insights into modern consumer behavior as major e-commerce platforms struggle to maintain consumer engagement amidst shrinking traffic and intensifying market competition.

Background: The Shift in E-Commerce Engagement

The research comes at a crucial time for the Southeast Asian digital economy. Between 2023 and 2025, the e-commerce titan Shopee experienced a severe downturn in platform engagement, with annual web traffic plummeting from 2.35 billion visits down to 147 million. This massive drop forced platforms to deploy aggressive marketing mixes, including expensive corporate sponsorships and pervasive digital ads.

However, modern online shoppers frequently report severe consumer fatigue. Rising administrative fees, discrepancies in product descriptions, and doubts regarding product authenticity have created an experiential gap between corporate promises and user reality. Understanding which marketing channels genuinely build long-term brand memory is vital for tech platforms trying to protect their market share in a volatile digital economy.

Methodology: Testing the Impact of Marketing Stimuli

The research team adopted an objective quantitative framework grounded in the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) theory. This psychological framework models how external marketing inputs influence the internal cognitive processing of consumers to generate behavioral outcomes.

The investigators applied a cross-sectional research design, focusing on a specific geographic sample of 166 active e-commerce users located in the Kudus Regency of Indonesia. Using a purposive sampling approach, the participants were limited to consumers at least 17 years old who were explicitly aware of the platform's high-profile brand ambassadors, such as the pop group JKT48. Data were compiled using five-point Likert scale questionnaires and systematically evaluated through multiple linear regression, validity, and reliability models using IBM SPSS Statistics 26 software.

Key Findings: Peer Reviews Trump Star Power

The analytical results revealed distinct differences in how individual promotional strategies perform. While the combined marketing mix account for 46.3% of the variation in consumer brand memory, the individual impacts vary significantly:

• Word of Mouth (WOM): Peer communication emerged as the single most powerful driver of brand recognition, yielding the highest statistical impact ($\beta = 0.410$).
• Digital Marketing: Interactive corporate campaigns—such as live streaming events and targeted social media interactions—exhibited a strong, highly significant positive influence on platform recollection ($\beta = 0.183$).
• Brand Ambassadors: High-cost celebrity endorsements failed to produce a statistically significant effect on brand awareness, showing weak capacity to influence public trust or corporate authority.
• Advertising: Traditional or broadcast ad campaigns showed no measurable impact on long-term brand recognition, heavily restricted by budgetary inefficiencies and consumer ad fatigue.

Real-World Implications and Corporate Strategy

These insights offer actionable intelligence for digital marketers, corporate policymakers, and e-commerce executives looking to optimize overextended promotional budgets. Because consumers increasingly favor authentic peer reviews over paid celebrity endorsements, platforms must pivot away from high-expenditure star sponsorships.

Instead, businesses should reallocate capital into building operational trust and interactive consumer experiences. Investing in user referral incentives, improving live-stream commerce systems, and resolving discrepancies between ad descriptions and actual delivery will organicially boost positive peer-to-peer discussions.

"Modern digital consumers make highly rational decisions based on direct platform benefits, administrative costs, and collective user experiences rather than relying blindly on public figures," explained lead corresponding author Dina Lusianti of Universitas Muria Kudus. "Integrated marketing communication remains necessary, but corporate efforts must heavily prioritize digital engagement and consumer satisfaction to ensure positive word of mouth handles the brand heavy lifting."

Author Profiles

• Isti Faizah holds a degree from Universitas Muria Kudus, specializing in business management and digital consumer behavior.
• Dina Lusianti is a senior academic and corresponding researcher at Universitas Muria Kudus, focusing on marketing communications and electronic commerce strategies.
• Dian Wismar'ein is a business researcher at Universitas Muria Kudus with specialized expertise in quantitative corporate data analysis and marketing frameworks.

Source Document

Article Title: The Influence of Brand Ambassador, Advertising, Digital Marketing, and Word of Mouth Promotion on Brand Awareness
Journal Name: International Journal of Asian Business and Management (IJABM)
Publication Year: 2026
DOI : https://doi.org/10.55927/ijabm.v5i3.17
URL : https://journalijabm.my.id/index.php/ijabm/index