Decomposing Positive Word of Mouth: Scale Development and Marketing Application

摘要

The growing importance of customers as spokespeople for products and brands in an online context has prompted researchers to analyze parameters of word of mouth messages. However, customer-to-customer communications vary according to qualities that go far beyond referral volume. At present, the measures of positive WOM behavior do neither capture the richness nor the content-related specificity of customer referrals, especially in the context of offline WOM. A thorough investigation of distinct message dimensions is needed to better utilize customer referrals as a targeted marketing instrument. Based on a large-scale customer survey across diverse product and service categories, this paper empirically confirms eight gen-eralizable facets of positive WOM messages. The derived customer referral scale is applied to describe specific referral patterns across channels and industries and to investigate the influence of pre-purchase marketing measures on post-purchase consumer referral. The findings allow marketers to monitor recommendation activities on specific dimensions and to determine targets for future plan- ning. Derived referral dimensions enable researchers to better predict specific consequences of customer WOM and to investigate its marketing-related antecedents in causal effect models.