Word of mouth is a form of promotion in which satisfied customers tell other people how much they like a business, product or service. Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications
Why do consumers pay attention to word of mouth? According to Schiffman & Kanuk in Consumer Behavior
The development of the Internet has led to the appearance of new forms of word of mouth communication. Consumers can now easily publish their opinions and viewpoints on products and services to the public at large.
Online word of mouth has a series of advantages, disadvantages and key features that need to be taken into account.
The Internet provides consumers with a large and diverse set of opinions about products and services from individuals with whom they have little or no prior relationship. According to Granitz and Ward in Virtual community: A sociocognitive analysis the difference between traditional and online word of mouth is the lack of constrain by circumstances of background, appearance, status and workplace in the participants identity. Thus a key difference between traditional and online word of mouth is the strength of the ties between the consumers who interact. In The strength of weak ties, Mark Granovetter suggests that the strength of a tie between two individuals is a function of the amount of time spent together, the emotional intensity and degree of intimacy in the relationship. Weak ties are particularly important in serving as bridges across cliques of strong ties.
But these weak ties present some difficulties for the consumer because they make it hard to assess the quality of the message, the intention of the informant and his expertise on the topic. For example, in Online Consumer Psychology: Understanding and Influencing Consumer Behavior in the Virtual World 
Consumers tend to evaluate a message on the basis of the content itself. For example, the presence of negative information along with positive information has been found to increase message credibility. Negative information is given more weight by consumers. Given the relative anonymity of communication on the Internet, people may tend to act in a freer, less constrained manner in this environment. This anonymity might have the effect of increasing the amount of negative word of mouth.
In addition to using the content of a published message to evaluate the message, consumers are also likely to use information about the source, or writer, of the message. The perception that the source of a message is similar to the reader can lead to a greater persuasive effect. Cues that give a source the appearance of expertise, such as credentials and past achievements, are also capable of increasing a message’s persuasive effect.
In the Published word of mouth chapter from Online Consumer Psychology: Understanding and Influencing Consumer Behavior in the Virtual World one can find a very interesting study.
Nineteen frequent online shoppers( 8 males and 11 females), age 15 to 56 undertook the test. More than half spend at least 7 hours a week online and the most common uses of the Internet included obtaining news, checking email, information search for school or work, checking financial information, and shopping. Approximately half of the subjects reported that they never participated in chats/forums or played games online. For their participation, informants received a $10 gift certificate from Amazon.com.
All but one of the 19 subjects had experiences using word of mouth. The most frequent word of mouth was consumer reviews. Most of the informants used reviews that were provided by the retail site on which they were shopping. Unless the purchase was very important or involving, informants were not likely to seek out reviews at other independent sites.
Study conclusions:
Overall consumers agreed that online information search was more efficient than other forms of information search and that Internet word of mouth information affected the content of their consideration sets (a set of alternatives that will be further considered). Online consumer information could lead to additions to a consideration set. It could also lead to items being removed from the informant’s consideration sets.
Consumers with information motives often rely on consumer reviews. Such reviews are typically more specific in focus than other types of Internet word of mouth. Consumers with support and community motives rely on discussion forums and particularly seem to value dialog. Participants in these forums exchange stories about their product experiences, helping others deal with common problems and building a community among product owners, users, or enthusiasts.
Consumers rely on Internet word of mouth when input from friends and family (or other strong-tie sources) is not available (for example, traveling to a faraway place). They were more likely to mention using online word of mouth for products or services that were new or infrequently purchased. Word of mouth was also used when purchasing gifts because in this situation, the person likely to be the best source of word of mouth – the gift recipient – is unavailable.
The test subjects identified two types of problems: untrustworthy or biased information (consumers questioned the credibility of the postings simply because they were found on a manufacturer’s Web site) and poor message quality with little or no valid information.
One of the most commonly mentioned aspects of a consumer posting that appeared to serve as a cue for its validity, or usefulness, was the presence of specific details in the posting (if a comment involves “I” statements or otherwise evokes real personal experience, then its credibility is enhanced). A second aspect of consumer comments that served as a cue for validity was the presence of some degree of consensus among reviewers. It appeared that consumer opinions were used to validate other consumer opinions. Information about the identity of the consumer who posted some information was also used as a cue for the validity of that information.
Another type of validity cue that our informants reported involves the wording used in the posted comment (inexpressive slang or extreme emotion words) because online comments are written rather than spoken and can be examined more carefully. For example, iF yOu ArE liKe loOkiNg aT s0Me qUaNtUm phYsiCs bO0Ks aNd yoU lIke sTuMbLe uP0n sOmE reVieWs wRiTteN liKe thIs, thEre’S a g00d cHanCe y0u wiLl diSreGaRd tHem. xoxo
A number of people mentioned that they read online word of mouth for fun. On Amazon.com you can find a lot of ironic and humorous reviews for things like the wolf shirt or the swallow shirt.
“This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. [...] I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him. I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.”
An interesting possible downside of the ability of online consumer information to make a buyer aware of new relevant features is that this information could also have the capacity to impair post-purchase satisfaction. For example, one informant appeared unsure of the value of having learned about a possible problem with a new car that he had recently purchased:
“I finally figured out what they meant by the clunk in the steering wheel and I wrote back “it’s such a tiny thing. If you hadn’t made me so paranoid I never would have noticed it.”"
Word of mouth Tips
- Create amazing products and provide excellent service.
- Earn the respect of your customers. Fulfill their needs. Stay honest.
- Give people a reason to talk about you (new features, interesting package, a special sale).
- Find a simple topic that is easy to repeat. What can people tell a friend about you in one sentence?
- Make it easier for the conversation to take place (allow people to post reviews, use tell-a-friend forms on your web site).
- Do you like to talk about boring products, boring companies and boring ads? Exactly! Everything has an interesting side. Find yours!
- Talk to them. When people are talking about you, answer them. Reply to their email. Comment on blogs that write about you. Send thank-you notes.
- Make them feel like they are part of the family(think about Harley owners, sports fans and Apple users).
- Keep in mind the consumer concerns regarding untrustworthy or biased information. Promise to publish every received comment that avoids obscene language and content offensive to any particular person or social group.
- Try to maintain some control of message content while at the same time showing a willingness to publish both positive and negative information.
