“The impact of surprise guerilla marketing on customer behavior”

This study aimed to investigate the impact of guerilla marketing (i.e., guerilla ambient marketing and guerilla sensation marketing) on customer behavior (i.e., customer purchase intention and customer brand attitude). The survey was held in May 2023; the questionnaire was distributed to a convenience sample of 450 customers of three malls in Jeddah city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The analysis was conducted by IBM SPSS and AMOS using 344 retrieved responses. Exploring research factors, confirming goodness-of-fit, and testing the hypothesized effects, the results indicated that both dimensions of guerrilla marketing had significant effects on both dimensions of customer behavior. However, the effect of ambient marketing on customer purchase intention was greater than its effect on customer brand attitude. Conversely, the effect of sensation marketing on customer brand attitude was greater than its effect on customer purchase intention. The paper concludes that ambient marketing has more power to boost customer purchase intention in comparison with sensation marketing, which is suitable for elevating customer brand attitude. For that, enterprises are required to try nonconventional marketing practices such as guerilla marketing in order to change customer behaviors. Further studies should use other dimensions of guerilla marketing and target more customers from different locations.


INTRODUCTION
Guerilla marketing was adopted in the 1960s by organizations in different markets, such as the US market, in order to cope with competitors.Jay Conrad Levinson coined the term "Guerilla marketing" in 1983 and defined it as a marketing strategy adopted by small and start-up companies to market their products using a small amount of money (Behal & Sareen, 2014).It is an advertising strategy designed firstly to be adopted by small firms (Yüksekbilgili, 2014;Milak & Dobrinić, 2017).In fact, a key reason behind the introduction of guerilla marketing was companies' inability to reach the Y generation through conventional marketing strategies like direct marketing or public relations (Shakeel & Khan, 2011).For Stoenescu (2018), guerilla marketing is a starting point for the era of uncongenial marketing communication.Following Hutter and Hoffmann (2011), Wendland (2016) divided guerilla marketing based on its effect into three categories: surprise effect, diffusion effect, and low-cost effect.Examples of surprise effect marketing strategies include ambient marketing and sensation marketing.Viral marketing represents an example of diffusion effect marketing.Finally, ambush marketing is an example of low-cost effect marketing strategy.Marketing literature included studies on guerilla marketing and studies on customer behavior.Nevertheless, few studies were conducted to investigate the impact of surprise-based marketing practices, like ambient marketing and sensation marketing, on customer behavior as measured by purchase intention and brand attitude.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Marketing literature includes studies on guerilla marketing (Al-Attari, 2021; Diaa, 2017;Behal & Sareen, 2014;Yüksekbilgili, 2014) and studies on customer behavior (Lin et al., 2012;Hsu et al., 2012).Yüksekbilgili (2014) investigated the adoption of guerilla marketing by small and medium enterprises.Shakeel and Khan (2011) identified the impact of guerilla marketing on customer perception.Fong and Yazdanifard (2014) reviewed the latest marketing techniques that affect online customer behavior.Diaa (2017) examined the impact of guerrilla marketing on purchase intention.Sharma (2011) introduced marketing practices that affect customer purchase behavior.Levinson (1984) defined guerilla marketing as using unusual marketing activities to publicize products considering the low budget invested by the company and its focus on novelty.Yüksekbilgili (2014) described guerilla marketing as an advertising strategy small companies employ to market their products with a low budget.Balážiová and Spálová (2020) noted that its concept depends on the military strategy of guerilla attacks to overcome the competition.Thus, guerrilla marketing comprises sponsorship programs, public relations programs, alternative media, and trade shows (Behal & Sareen, 2014).In general, definitions of guerilla marketing underlined specific characteristics such as nontraditional and unusual communication techniques in marketing products using limited resources (Diaa, 2017).Based on these definitions, guerilla marketing has several features distinguishing it from other strategies.For example, flexibility, simplicity, surprise effect, low cost, innovative communication techniques, and power of imagination are features of guerilla marketing (Behal & Sareen, 2014;Yüksekbilgili, 2014;Damar-Ladkoo, 2016;Susilo, 2020).
An extensive review of the literature showed numerous guerilla marketing dimensions.They can be categorized into three types: infection guerilla marketing, surprise guerilla marketing, and ambush marketing.The first comprises two subcategories (viral marketing and mobile marketing), while the second consists of ambient marketing and sensation marketing (Nufer, 2013).Viral marketing describes spreading a marketing message by recommend-ing products to others (Nufer, 2013).According to Kamau and Bwisa (2013), viral marketing is related to electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and can be adopted to spread marketing messages among many potential customers.Therefore, viral marketing is known as eWOM marketing, which is a direct marketing technique based on passing information from one customer to another using Internet-based applications such as e-mails or social media like Facebook (Fong & Yazdanifard, 2014).Mobile marketing refers to spreading marketing messages using smartphones (Nufer, 2013).Nowadays, an innovative application of guerilla marketing can be seen in using cell phones to ensure customer engagement and provide customers with experiential marketing activities (Behal & Sareen, 2014).
On the other hand, ambient marketing is related to marketing activities conducted in the direct living environment, like postcards.Sensation marketing is a one-time marketing activity with a surprise shown in some places, like high-traffic streets (Nufer, 2013).Šula and Banyár (2015) indicated that ambient marketing is an outdoor advertising in which customer attention is caught outside his home environment.This can be achieved through surprise impact to trigger individuals' attention or unconventional implementation through elements like unusual sizes, visuals, or colors in unexpected locations (Chuchu et al., 2018).Hutter and Hoffmann (2011) added that both ambient and sensation marketing offer a surprise effect in which customer attention is directed toward the marketing message due to the unusual activity.However, sensation marketing is different because it represents one-time activities like flash mobs in public locations.Diaa (2017) examined the effect of guerilla marketing on customer purchase intention, assessing guerilla marketing by five dimensions: clarity of marketing messages, emotional arousal, surprise, creativity, and humor advertisements.
Customer behavior has been defined as a construct of decisions customers make prior to or after some activities like purchasing, consuming, and deposing goods and services.It can be measured using activities such as searching for information, evaluating alternatives, purchasing, as well as post-purchase evaluations (Lin et al., 2012).It can be studied using the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) paradigm in which stimulus refers to objects and situations, organism describes persons, and response signifies behavior (Belk, 1975).Service quality is an example of customer stimulus, an individual's perception of a website's playfulness is an example of organism, and response refers to an individual's behavior like satisfaction and purchase intention (Hsu et al., 2012).
The term had been conceptualized in terms of customers' mental, emotional, and physical activities.It can be measured using customer purchase intention and brand attitude (Chuchu et Percy and Rossiter (1992), and Kim and Lee (2020) associated customer behavior with customer brand attitude.For the current study, customer behavior was measured using customer purchase intention and customer brand attitude.Customer purchase intention refers to customer preference to purchase a product (Younus et al., 2015) and can be used to measure the actual purchase behavior: the higher the purchase intention, the higher the desire to buy a product (Nasermoadeli et al., 2013).Customer brand attitude, which is the second dimension of customer behavior in this study, had been described as a customer appreciation of a specific brand (Mitchell & Olson, 1988 cited in Dolbec & Chebat, 2013).For Sallam and Wahid (2012), customer attitude toward a brand refers to preferences in response to advertising stimulus, affecting purchase intention.Therefore, building relationships between brands and customers is a key success factor (Rodrigues et al., 2023).
The relationship between guerilla marketing and customer behavior can be investigated by exploring the impact of guerilla sensation marketing and guerilla ambient marketing on customer purchase intention and brand attitude.Using sample of customers selected from fashion store, Chuchu et al. (2018) explored the impact of ambient marketing on customer behavior as measured by purchase intention and brand attitude.They found that ambient marketing had a significant impact on both customer purchase intention and brand attitude.Walia and Singla (2017) tested the impact of guerilla marketing methods on the behavior of smartphone customers using data collected from 214 customers, either through interviews or observations.The study measured customer behavior by customer loyalty, customer purchase intention, and purchase frequency.They found that guerilla marketing had a significant effect on customer purchase intention; their results confirmed that guerilla marketing is one effective tool that can be used to promote smartphones.Investigating perceptions of younger and older customers in Croatia, Milak and Dobrinić (2017) discovered no statistically significant differences between younger and older customers in relation to their perceptions of guerilla marketing.
Analyzing 400 responses collected from the members of sports clubs in Egypt, Diaa (2017) underlined a positive relationship between guerilla marketing and customer purchase intention.Specifically, the study indicated that the dimensions of guerilla marketing (creativity, clarity, surprise, humor, and emotional arousal) had significant effects on customer purchase intention.Similarly, the positive impact of guerilla marketing strategies on customer purchase behavior was widely observed (R. Sharma & S. K. Sharma, 2015; Satour, 2016; Farooqui, 2021).Spahic and Parilti (2019) asserted the impact of guerrilla marketing on customer attitudes using data from 406 participants in one university in Turkey.
Therefore, a gap in marketing literature requires empirical results and implications to direct customer behavior to the objects that the organization strives to market.Additionally, the importance of this study is that seeks to compare the effects of ambient marketing and sensation marketing on purchase intention and brand attitude.
Based on these studies, the following hypotheses were suggested to investigate the impact of guerilla marketing on customer behavior (Figure 1): H1: Guerilla ambient marketing has a statistically significant effect on customer purchase intention.
H2: Guerilla ambient marketing has a statistically significant effect on customer brand attitude.
H3: Guerilla sensation marketing has a statistically significant effect on customer purchase intention.
H4: Guerilla sensation marketing has a statistically significant effect on customer brand attitude.2016), and values of factor loadings and AVE should be greater than 0.5 (Sihombing, 2016).The results of EFA shown in Table 2 illustrate that all factor loadings were greater than 0.50, and AVE values were greater than 0.50.Moreover, CR and alpha coefficients were higher than 0.7.These results show that the questionnaire used to collect data from sample members was reliable and valid because all tests utilized to test reliability and validity resulted in acceptable values.This indicates that the items of the current questionnaire are consistent in measuring the same latent variables (Koufteros, 1999).In terms of thresholds, χ 2 /df should be less than three to be acceptable, GFI and CFI should be no less than 0.9 as well as RMSEA should be less than 0.08 (Shukla & Purani, 2012;Pontes et al., 2016).On the one hand, all standardized factor loadings of the indicators met the required cut-off criterion, which stated that standardized factor loadings should be greater than 0.5.
On the other hand, the results of goodness-offit indices, as depicted in Table 3, showed that the measurement model had acceptable values.These results indicated that the current model fits the empirical data (Schermelleh-Engel et al.,

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 2 shows a measurement model, and Figure 3 shows a structural model.Table 4 displays significant effects of guerilla ambient marketing on customer purchase intention and customer brand attitude as well as significant effects of guerilla sensation marketing on customer purchase intention and customer brand attitude.However, the results demonstrate that the effect of guerilla ambient marketing on customer purchase intention (β standardized = 0.42) is higher than its effect on customer brand attitude (β standardized = 0.38).Furthermore, the results show that the effect of guerilla sensation marketing on customer purchase intention (β standardized = 0.21) is less than its effect on customer brand attitude (β standardized = 0.33).
Table 4 shows that all research hypotheses were supported, which means that guerrilla marketing measured by ambient marketing and sensation marketing had a significant effect on customer behavior as evaluated based on customer purchase intention and customer brand attitude.
These results were mirrored by previous studies conducted using the same constructs.Note: = guerilla ambient marketing; CPI = customer purchase intention; CBA = customer brand attitude; GSM = guerrilla sensation marketing.The positive correlation between ambient marketing and customer purchase intention and brand attitude can be explained by the ability of brands to arouse consumers to behave in a specific and more effective way.Ambient marketing changes environmental factors that consumers interact with in an unexpected and creative way, rendering the elements meaningful and impactful in advertising (Ozer et al., 2020).Guerilla ambient marketing's effectiveness in influencing the purchase intentions is linked to the relevance of the advertisement.Relevance relates to how the campaign or ad relates to the consumer (Tam & Khuong, 2015), and is among the most influential factors in determining the consumer's love to buying a product, with other studies finding that it contributes to as much as 33.6% effect on purchase intention.The two forms of relevance are ad relevance (whether customers believe the ad is meaningful) and brand relevance (whether product is relevant or familiar with customers' choices) (Smith et al., 2007)

CONCLUSION
This study aimed to identify the impact of guerilla marketing on customer behavior.Particularly, it investigated the impacts of two dimensions of guerilla marketing, which are ambient marketing and sensation marketing, on two dimensions of customer behavior, which are customer purchase intention and customer brand attitude.Specifically, the study tested four hypotheses related to the impact of ambient marketing on customer purchase intention (H1), the impact of ambient marketing on customer brand Note: GAM = guerilla ambient marketing; CPI = customer purchase intention; CBA = customer brand attitude; GSM = guerrilla sensation marketing.
attitude (H2), the impact of sensation marketing on customer purchase intention (H3), and the impact of sensation marketing on customer brand attitude (H4).All these hypotheses were accepted.An important note is that the increase in customer purchase intention due to ambient marketing is greater than the increase in customer brand attitude due to the same independent variable, while the increase in customer purchase intention due to sensation marketing is less than the increase in customer brand attitude due to this variable.Therefore, the study concluded that guerrilla marketing induces customer behavior.Accurately, guerilla ambient marketing is crucial for customer purchase intention first, then for customer brand attitude in comparison with sensation marketing, which is more critical for customer brand attitude than customer purchase intention.
These results resulted in several managerial implications.First, enterprises are required to try nonconventional marketing practices such as guerilla marketing in order to change customer behaviors.
Examples of these practices include ambient marketing, in which outdoor activities are directed to customers using unusual themes of marketing like different colors, sizes, or locations.Categorically, these activities have effects on customer repurchase intention.This indicates that enterprises could use ambient marketing activities in order to activate customer purchase intention.On the other side, enterprises should employ other marketing activities to encourage customers' positive attitudes toward their brands.For example, these could use flash mobs in specific locations to introduce their brands.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Measurement model Chuchu et al. (2018) and Ozer et al. (2020) found statistically significant effects of ambient marketing on customer purchase intention as well as customer brand attitude.Concurrently, Walia and Singla (2017) and Hussein and Al-Qaysi (2023) stressed that guerilla marketing had a significant impact on customer behavior.Diaa (2017) also confirmed the positive impact of guerilla

Table 1 .
Questionnaire items

Table 2 .
22ploratory factor analysis resultsAnalysis of goodness-of-fit indices was conducted using IBM AMOS v.22based on the results of EFA following Marsh et al. (1988).The target measurement model encompassed 14 indicators distributed on four latent variables.The normed chi-square (χ 2 /df), goodness of fit index (GFI), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) were four fit indices used to test the measurement fit.Due to Chi-square sensitivity to sample size, other indices such as CFI and RMSEA measures were suggested (Schermelleh-Engel et al., 2003).

Table 4 .
Results of hypotheses testing