In the era of service marketing, word of mouth has becoming one of the key success factors of the competitive advantages of firms. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the intention of customers’ word of mouth.
One of the purposes of this study is to investigate the effect of customer participation on word of mouth. Customer participation is a new marketing paradigm that has been widely accepted by mar-keting scholars and practitioners.
The second purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating effect of gender on the aforesaid relationship.
This study distributed structured questionnaires to the customers of food and beverage firms. 600 questionnaires were distributed, 500 valid questionnaires were returned.
The research results show that customer participation is posi-tively related to word of mouth. The strength of the aforesaid rela-tionship is stronger in female respondents than in male respondents.
All of the research results support our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
