Brand awareness brand love and word of mouth marketingexamination of behavior: Example of travel agencies

Tourism is a fragile sector due to its characteristics. For this reason, marketing activities of brands can be shaped according to the emotional bond established between customers and the brand. The formation of certain emotions in customers towards the brand they receive service from can also play a role in their behavioural tendencies. In this sense, travel agencies, which are one of the service providers of tourism, have an important role in establishing this bond. The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating role of brand love (BL) in the effect of brand awareness (BA) on word of mouth marketing (WOM) behaviours of individuals who receive services from travel agencies. In the research, which utilised the survey technique as a data collection tool, convenience sampling technique was used. The data collection process took place between March and June 2024. In the online environment, individuals who received services from a travel agency at least once during their travels within a year were reached. A total of 403 data were evaluated. In the process of testing the research hypotheses, simple regression was used to measure the linear effect and multiple regression analysis was used to measure the mediation effect. According to the results of the analysis, brand awareness has a significant effect on brand love and WOM behaviour. At the same time, it has been determined that brand love has a significant and positive effect on WOM behaviour. However, when the mediating role of brand love is in question, the effect of brand awareness on WOM behaviour is found to be insignificant. In other words, it was determined that brand love has a full mediating role. According to these results, it has been determined that individuals show more WOM behaviours when brand awareness turns into an emotional closeness defined as love. These results show that travel businesses should not only engage in marketing activities to create awareness. It shows that the promotion activities carried out for the formation of love or affection have an important share in individuals showing more positive behavioural outputs. By examining the relationship between the variables in terms of travel agencies, it is thought that the study is important both in terms of guiding the businesses and in terms of tourism literature.