Factors Affecting Customer Trust in Enhancing Brand Interaction to Drive Word-of-Mouth Recommendations

This study aims to examine the key antecedents of customer trust and their role in enhancing brand engagement and word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendation within the restaurant sector. Specifically, it investigates the effects of food quality, social media influencers, emotional contagion, and memorable experiences on customer trust, and subsequently explores how trust influences brand engagement and WOM behavior. A quantitative research design was adopted using a structured questionnaire distributed to restaurant customers in Alexandria, Egypt. Data were collected from 540 valid respondents and analyzed using a two-step structural equation modeling (SEM) approach with AMOS. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to assess reliability and validity, followed by covariance-based SEM to test the hypothesized relationships. Social media influencers and emotional contagion emerged as the strongest predictors of customer trust, followed by memorable experience, while food quality showed a weaker yet significant effect. Customer trust strongly influenced brand engagement, which in turn had a substantial impact on WOM behavior. The proposed model demonstrated high explanatory power, with R² values ranging from 0.78 to 0.89. The findings highlight the importance of leveraging credible social media influencers and emotionally engaging content to build customer trust and stimulate brand engagement. Restaurant managers are encouraged to integrate social, emotional, and experiential strategies alongside product quality to enhance positive word-of-mouth. This study contributes to the hospitality and marketing literature by integrating social, emotional, and experiential antecedents of customer trust within a unified framework, offering new insights into trust-driven brand engagement and WOM behavior in a digital context.