KOREASCHOLAR

This paper examines how to create customers’ advocacy and demonstrates that “Ambassador program” brings out Brand Advocates.

Introduction
This paper aims to identify how to effectively develop brand advocates from customers. Brand advocates are enthusiastic customers who promote a specific brand (Fuggetta, 2012) and expected to be a powerful marketing force by firms. In marketing literatures, “advocate” has been augured as an ultimate objective (Kotler et al., 2016) or a goal of customer decision journey（Batra and Keller, 2016）. It suggests that the importance of consumer-to-consumer (C-to-C) communication has been increasing. In marketing communication, it is necessary to manage paid/owned/earned media (POEM). Paid media means advertising; owned media are their own media such as shops, DM, and website; and earned media consists of publicity and word-of-mouth (WOM). Though the influence of WOM grabs attention, it is uncontrollable and unmanageable. However, in Japan, some major firms such as Nestle, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Seven-Eleven have adopted a brand new approach called “Ambassador program,” which is a long-term collaboration with customers. Though the activities are different from each company, they commonly involve their customers to create a brand experience (Brakus et al., 2009) and promote advocacy from the participants. In other words, first, they provide brand experience through owned media and then expand it to earned media. This study examines the following key research question:
Does the “Ambassador program” bring out a Brand Advocate?

NESCAFE Ambassador Program
To examine this research question, I selected the case of NESCAFE Ambassador Program, which is the largest in Japan and in the world. The program details are as below:
1. A person who wants to introduce NESCAFE coffee system to his/her office applies as a NESCAFE Ambassador through online application.
2. After an investigation, the person is authorized as a NESCAFE Ambassador.
3. After purchasing a coffee cartridge subscription, the Ambassador and his/her colleague can enjoy this coffee machine free.
The program started in 2012 and the number of Ambassador has reached 280,000 until June 2017. The Ambassadors are required to invest time and efforts in collecting money from colleagues to pay for the coffee cartridge, water, cups and so on; however, they voluntarily introduce the system to their office. They seem to be similar to brand advocates and this paper examines the relationship between brand advocates and ambassador program.

Method and Data
To examine the research question in this study, an online survey was conducted on NESCAFE machine (NESCAFE Barista and NESCAFE Dolce Gust) users (n = 2,000). The respondents consist of 492 NESCAFE ambassadors, 508 ambassador program participants (not the ambassador itself but ambassador’s colleagues), and 1,000 non-program participants (average 42.9 years old, male 61.5％, female 38.6％). The following data were collected through an online questionnaire:
(a) The frequency of advocacy in eight different ways; 1: Never 2: Seldom 3: Sometimes 4: Often
(b) The level of fandom on a 7-point Likert scale
(c) Touch point with the brand; touch points exhibited by Duncan (2005) (22 items, including 13 of pre-purchase information resource), the frequency and period of using NESCAFE machine, and expenditure toward NESCAFE
Data analysis was carried out as follows:
(1) Extract brand advocates from the respondents by the responses to questions (a) and (b); a person who “often” advocates NESCAFE in any ways in question (a) and also chooses 6 or 7 about the level of fandom in question (b) was regarded as a brand advocate.
(2) Multiple regression analysis was used to verify the difference between brand advocates (BAs) and non-BAs.
(3) Chi-square test was used to examine the relationship between brand advocates and ambassador program.

Result
As a result of the questionnaire, 201 BAs were found out from 2,000 respondents (see tables 1 and 2). There are significant differences between BA and non-BA in average age (BA 41.4 y.o., non-BA 43.1 y.o.) （t (1998) = 2.49, p < .05）and gender balance (male: BA 52.7%, non-BA 62.4%) (χ² = 7.16, df = 1, p < .01).

The features of brand advocates
First, multiple regression was calculated in order to predict being BA on the basis of “the way of advocacy” variables. The results showed that each of the following variable, such as “Have a coffee together at home” (β = 0.31, p < 0.001), posting to the community (β = 0.17, p < 0.001), and face-to-face communication (β = 0.14, p < 0.001) were significant predictors of being a BA (F (3, 1,996) = 237.91, p < 0.001) (Table 3). Consequently, multiple regression analysis was made to predict being a BA on the basis of “touch point” variables. The results showed that multiple prepurchase variables such as face-to-face WOM (β = 0.25, p < 0.001), both in-store (β = 0.10, p < 0.001) and out-of-store trial (β = 0.07, p < 0.001), which means that the respondents had used NESCAFE machine at a friend’s home, the contact rate for the brand such as customer service (β = 0.07, p < 0.001) and financial contribution to the brand such as monthly expenditure (β = 0.08, p < 0.001) were significant predictors of being a BA (F (12, 1,987) = 60.51, p < 0.001) (Table 4). In addition, a BA’s frequency of usage was significantly higher than a non-BA’s (χ² = 148.67, df = 6, p < .001) (Table 6).

The relationship between brand advocates and ambassador program
Finally, a chi-square test on participation to the ambassador program revealed that it significantly brought out brand advocates (χ² = 67.17, df = 2, p < .001) (Table 5). Interestingly, not only ambassadors themselves but also participants, ambassadors’ colleagues, showed higher rate of being a BA than the nonprogram participants.

Conclusion
Several important findings are derived from this study. First of all, “Ambassador program” brings out BAs. It makes the participants to take NESCAFE as a dairy habit and then percolate advocacy voluntarily. It is also revealed that BA’s communication is often among peers and face to face. Both academic researchers and managers tend to focus on digital communication; however, this paper showed the importance of offline communication. Furthermore, this study showed that BAs follow the brand’s own media. It means that firms can access BAs through their own media. Based on these findings, this paper recommends to managers that WOM is still not within their control; however, they can increase customers’ advocacy by enhancing their brand experience through their own media; and Ambassador Program is one of the solutions for them.

ABSTRACT
  Introduction
  NESCAFE Ambassador Program
  Method and Data
  Result
  Conclusion
 References
 Appendix

• Kei Aoki(Osaka Jogakuin University)