NFT, a buzzword or a strategy? The effectiveness and suitability of NFT marketing with brands on consumers’ purchase intention.

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), a digital one-of-a-kind intangible asset. NFT is a phenomenon that have gained popularity in the recent years. They are widely incorporated by different brands in different industries. These brands are implementing NFTs in their marketing strategies to attract new customers, to create new values to their brand image, but also to their products and promotion. Researchers are arguing that NFT marketing has the potential to emerge into a strong marketing technique. However, questions arise on how effective this newly introduced NFT marketing strategy is, how consumers react to this, how it influences their brand attitude and purchase intention. Questions also arise on the suitability of brands with NFT marketing, if all brands are suited for NFT e.g., if digitalized brands with components that are aligned with NFTs are a better fit with NFT marketing than non- digitalized brand. Therefore, this paper explores the effectiveness and suitability of NFT marketing with brands on consumers’ purchase intention. Deriving from The Uniqueness Theory, The Signaling Theory, Congruence Theory and The Elaboration Likelihood model, four hypotheses were formed to explore the effect of NFT marketing. To investigate the research question, a quantitative method approach was utilized by using an experimental online survey. For the experimental online survey, a 2x2 design was developed to test the hypotheses. The experimental design was based on a fictional brand in order to focus on the effect of NFT marketing. Further, a comparison was made between NFT marketing and social media marketing. A total of 142 participants were included in this paper. The results showed no significant effect of NFT marketing on brand attitude, digitalized brands also showed no significant effect on brand attitude. Furthermore, the result showed that congruency of brands with NFT marketing doesn’t have a significant effect on brand attitude. Despite the insignificance of the previous results, the last result showed that brand attitude does have a significant effect on purchase intention. It is suggested from the results of this research that brands should be careful when they consider incorporating NFT marketing as a strategy. Overall, this paper showed interesting results and further suggestions to the emergence of NFT marketing for different brands.