Your words, your conviction: The parallel mediation role of eWOM in the relationship between product involvement and purchase intention of smartwatches.

introductionThis study explores the role of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) as a mediator in the relationship between product involvement and smartwatch purchase intention among student-athletes enrolled in faculties of sport sciences, with particular attention to whether different eWOM dimensions operate symmetrically or asymmetrically within this relationship. Focusing on student-athletes is theoretically relevant, as this group represents a high-involvement, performance-oriented segment of young consumers for whom wearable technologies are frequently adopted in training and health-related contexts.

methodsData were collected from 918 student-athletes studying at the Faculties of Sport Sciences at Atatürk University and Erzurum Technical University (Türkiye). Participants were actively engaged in amateur or professional sports and were enrolled across first- to fourth-year undergraduate programs. Validated scales were used to measure product involvement, eWOM, and purchase intention. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to evaluate the adequacy of the measurement and structural models at the latent construct level, while mediation analyses were conducted using SPSS 27.0 and Hayes’ PROCESS Macro (Model 4) with bias-corrected bootstrapping to test simple and parallel mediation effects.

resultsResults showed that product involvement was positively associated with both eWOM and smartwatch purchase intention, and that eWOM was positively associated with purchase intention. Simple mediation analysis indicated that overall eWOM partially mediated the association between product involvement and purchase intention. Parallel mediation analysis further demonstrated that the indirect association was asymmetrically distributed across eWOM dimensions, such that only the Opinion Giving dimension exhibited a significant mediating effect (b = 0.089, 95% CI [0.050, 0.129]), whereas Opinion Seeking and Opinion Passing did not show significant indirect effects. The final model explained 48.1% of the variance in purchase intention.

conclusionThese findings underscore the central role of product involvement in shaping smartwatch purchase intentions among student-athletes and highlight Opinion Giving as the most influential eWOM pathway under conditions of high involvement. By demonstrating that eWOM dimensions do not contribute uniformly to intention formation, the study provides nuanced theoretical insights into the asymmetric functioning of eWOM behaviors and offers practical implications for marketing strategies in the wearable technology domain, particularly within sport-related consumption contexts.