Abstract:

The rationale behind the study was to evaluate the moderating effect of E-WOM of consumers on green purchase intention. Digital penetration increasing at an exponential pace has made E – WOM an important element in social sciences studies. Our idea was to understand its moderating impact as moderation allows a flexible way for researches to understand the effect with greater in-depth analysis. The model was built on an exploratory study done to understand the mediating effect of curiosity on green purchase intention with green knowledge as the independent variable, moderated by E – WOM. Very limited study has been done in this area especially in Uttarakhand state, and this triggered us to dwell deep into this sculpt and understand the underlying phenomena. The study revealed that there is a high correlation between green knowledge and green purchase with curiosity mediating these two constructs, later it was also observed that since these consumers are highly active in social media so any positive or negative experience after using the green product is swiftly expressed via mobile phones among their social groups, this is what E – WOM or (Electronic word of mouth) means. Our study revealed that since majority of consumers are socially active and such consumers are comparatively young between the age group of 16 to 28, so any negative experience reduces the sales drastically as information is transferred very quickly, so marketers need to be very careful while providing information to consumers which must be true and precise, as any false claims will mean marketers might lose their goodwill. The entire analysis was done using sophisticated software’s which included IBM SPSS version 20 for factor analysis, IBM AMOS version 18 for carrying our mediation and Daniel S Soper Interaction software version 1.7.2211 for analysing the moderating effect.

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