From the Archives: Happy 2,400th Birthday, WOM!
Scholars may have been pondering word of mouth 2,400 years ago, but it was only as recently as the 1940s that marketing research into the phenomenon began in earnest, at least according to Francis A. Buttle's 1998 Journal of Strategic Marketing article, titled "Word of Mouth: Understanding and Managing Referral Marketing." The problem with the research done thus far, Buttle contends, is that most of it has been from the customer-to-customer perspective, which neglects influence, employee, and recruitment contexts -- something that he attempts to correct in his analysis by identifying researchable gaps in knowledge.
Buttle's research reveals a slew of unanswered questions (some of which still haven't been adequately addressed, eight years after the publication of his article):
* Which is better at predicting intention to spread WOM/actual behavior: the disconfirmation or attitudinal paradigm?
* Which andecedent marketing conditions are more closely associated with word of mouth?
* How is intention to spread word of mouth connected to actual performance? What conditions, if any, enable or constrain performance?
* How can we better understand the focus of WOM in influence, recruitment, and internal markets?
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