Word of Mouth Behavior and Online Activity: A Study of On/Off Line Communication Strategy and Online Business

Informações

Código: MKT1841
Divisão: MKT - Marketing
Tema de Interesse: Tema 01 - Comportamento do Consumidor

Autores

Danny Pimentel Claro, Sílvio Abrahão Laban Neto, Priscila Borin de Oliveira Claro

Resumo

Research on word of mouth WOM is recently becoming more prominent in marketing literature.Word of mouth (WOM) is recognized for quite some time as a powerful source of products andservices’ information dissemination (Brooks 1957). For example, referral programs generatemore profitable customers in the short and long term (Schmitt, Skiera and Van den Bulte 2011),high-uniqueness consumers (the consumer that prefers to differentiate from members of his or herreference group) were more likely to recommend privately consumed products (Cheema andKaikati 2010), and a “word-of-mouth equity” is proposed as an index of a brand’s power togenerate messages that influence the consumer’s decision to purchase (Court, Gordon and Perrey2010). Online communities have increased in size, number, and character to make companiesrecognize the growing importance of WOM. This paper is a result of a preliminary andexploratory research about WOM. We aim to study the WOM behavior and analyze the impact ofon/off line communication and online Activity on consumption. We tested four hypotheses withevidence of a survey with 248 online users. As our research model implies on antecedents,mediator variables and outcome variable, we estimated a three sets of ordinary least squareregressions. Our results show an indirect impact of a company’s communication, by WOMbehavior and WOM activity, on online consumption. The direct impact of communication onconsumption is interestingly negative. Consumers may look suspicious all kind of directmanipulation of press or customer evaluation. Consumers have become overloaded and skepticalabout traditional company-driven communication. On the other hand, communication impactonline consumption through WOM behavior and online activity. It appears that the rightcommunication messages echo and expand within interested social networks, affecting productperceptions. The rise of online communities and communication has increased the potential forsignificant and far-reaching momentum effects. Our study attempts to help understand the WOMbehavior and to identify those who influence online activity and consumption. The starting pointfor managing WOM is understanding WOM behavior and online activity. WOM analysis candetail the nature of the antecedents of consumption. The highest-impact messages, contexts, andsocial networks are essential components of a companies’ communication strategy and sales.

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