Word-of-mouth

Word of mouth or viva voce, is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others a story about a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and traditions transmitted by word of mouth through successive generations. Storytelling and oral tradition are forms of word of mouth that play important roles in folklore and mythology. Another example of oral communication is oral history—the recording, preservation and interpretation of historical information, based on the personal experiences and opinions of the speaker. Oral history preservation is the field that deals with the care and upkeep of oral history materials collected by word of mouth, whatever format they may be in.

In marketing, word-of-mouth communication (WOM) involves the passing of information between a non-commercial communicator (i.e. someone who is not rewarded) and a receiver concerning a brand, a product, or a service. When WOM is mediated through electronic means, the resulting electronic word of mouth (eWoM) refers to any statement consumers share via the Internet (e.g., web sites, social networks, instant messages, news feeds) about a product, service, brand, or company. eWOM is typically executed via social media or social networking platforms. The process in which the sender of word-of-mouth communication is rewarded is referred to as word-of-mouth marketing. This process relies on the added credibility of person-to-person communication, a personal recommendation. Using WOM as an opposing force to commercially motivated word-of-mouth marketing has been coined Proconsumer WOM. Researchers have formulated a series of recommendations for how nonprofits and public sector organizations can utilize Proconsumer WOM effectively.

A recent study by A. Mohammed Abubakar and colleagues introduced electronic referral (eReferral) marketing. eReferral is define as a process by which consumers pass along a company’s marketing message and/or their product or service evaluations to their close allies, e.g. friends, family members, colleagues and group members via the internet. The authors argued that eReferral is often confused with eWOM, and that the two concepts are different. eWOM is anonymous in nature (i.e., a hotel review by unknown) while eReferral is onymous in nature (i.e., a hotel review by a friend or colleague on social media). eReferral is common among individuals with strong social ties, whereas eWOM is common among individuals with weak social ties.

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Wikipedia