Word-of-mouth marketing influence on offline and online communications: Evidence from case study research

Abstract

This case study reports results from three research studies conducted over 12 weeks as part of a product seeding campaign. Partnering with a word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) agency for this research, studies 1 and 2 report agency-conducted surveys of campaign participants' online and offline word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviors. Study 3 deployed an innovative web-based methodology to map and visualize WOM communication patterns, to reveal how campaign-related conversations spread within and across offline friendship networks and the role played by tie strength in that process. We find that agency reports of WOMM campaign results overstate reach and understate frequency. Our results have implications for the measurement of reach and frequency of WOMM campaigns.

Keywords::

• word-of-mouth
• word-of-mouth marketing
• brand ambassador
• Facebook
• social network analysis

Notes

^1. Email: [email protected]

^2. Soup works with a panel of more than 100,000 influencers who sample, advocate and help shape its clients' products. Soup works across many categories such as technology, FMCG, retail, finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and government in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

^3. This measure of closeness as an indicator of tie strength is not to be confused with the SNA centrality metric of closeness that is defined as the sum of graph-theoretic distances from one actor to all other actors (Freeman 1979).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lars Groeger

Lars Groeger, PhD, is Lecturer in Management at Macquarie Graduate School of Management where he teaches MBA students and Executives in Sydney and Hong Kong. His research aims to help managers gain an increased understanding of the various forms of social interaction between customers and the firm's power to stimulate these interactions in a systematic and value-creating way. Lars has been educated at leading international business schools in Germany, France and the US. Prior to joining academia, Lars gained extensive management consulting experience in the private and public sectors.

Francis Buttle

Francis Buttle, PhD, FCIM has over 30 years‘ experience in marketing and customer relationship management. He is Visiting Professor at Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Sydney, and was previously Professor of Marketing at Manchester Business School. He was the world's first professor of CRM. Francis founded and serves as Principal of Francis Buttle & Associates, a worldwide network of customer management experts established in 1979. He has published over 300 items including 8 books. His most recent books are Customer Relationship Management: Concepts and Technologies and the eBook Social CRM: what is it and what does it mean for your business?